As a chronically late person to both work and social engagements, I’ve never understood why people get so bent out of shape about punctuality, especially for work situations where there doesn’t actually need to be some sort of coverage. Who cares? It seems tied up in some sort of uptight, self-flagellating protestant work mentality.
Are there other cultures where, on a societal or cultural level, they tend to not really care about punctuality?
Yes. I’ve alternately heard it referred to as “Filipino Time”, “Congo Time”, “Balinese Time”, “Italian Time” or “Native Time” - each by people of the correlating ancestry. I believe it’s actually quite common in other places - by other, I mean, not the US, Canada, the UK or parts of Europe.
I’ve always said, you only need to be exactly on time if you are working an assembly line and your not being there impacts the entire flow of production, or you are relieving someone who gets off when you come in, something like that- for a regular office job, you come at 8:10 instead of 8:00 sometimes but you get all your work done before you leave, bfd.
“flex time” is common in the tech industry (at least in my experience). As long as you put in your hours (more importnatly get your tasks doen), the exact hours you work aren’t important. Sometimes there is a requirement for "core hours: (10-2 or something), or some coordination that somebody is there to answer questions.
Of cousre, sometimes you are expected to put in extra hours (at no additional pay) to get your tasks done.
If your presence is required or requested, then it’s rude to keep others waiting.
To be “chronically late” implies that you are deliberately making others wait for you. If that were not the case, you’d be early or on time as much as you’re late.
Really. If I had an employee who was always late, I’d fire him in a heartbeat. I’d figure if he can’t be bothered to be on time, he can’t do the rest of his job either.
I suppose there are some job where punching a clock is not necessary, but those are few and far between. In general, the person who shows up after everyone else manages to drag their ass to the office is resented, and understandably so.
Every engineering job I have had does not require me punching in at a certain time. There are tasks that need to get done. These tasks have durations of months. So 9 to 5 is not a lot different from 10 to 6 or what ever. There are times that I need to be in the office for scheduled meetings but aside from that time is very flexible. VCO3 get thee back to school and get a professional technical job.
We have had some mind-boggling discussions with people here that say they can’t comprehend time as a dimension and therefore can’t expected to be on-time for any given thing. The logical conclusion to that would be that the person in question oddly shows up an hour ahead of time sometimes, 30 minutes early at other times, and is right on the money at others. At other times, the opposite is true and, lacking the ability to understand dimensions (or buy a watch) the person in question may just show up on top of the building across the street from time to time. A complete lack of comprehension of time can’t always be one-sided. Otherwise it is passive aggressiveness or an extreme lack of time management skills or just a mental defect that prohibits learning an essential skill.
There have been points in my life where I have been late to work most of the time. The reason because I simply didn’t care and would rather use that time for myself and my family. Sometimes I got talked to and, in the most egregious case of coming in a 10 and leaving at 4, nobody ever said anything. At the same time, I was always self-aware enough to know what I was doing and how all of this magically happened.
Officially, my hours are 8-5. Unofficially, I’ve run the gambit from 9:30-4:00 to 8:00 (AM)-2:00 (AM). When a report needs to get done, it needs to get done. When you arrive and when you leave doesn’t really matter as long as it gets done.
I’ve never had a job where I had to punch a clock. I don’t think it’s as rare as you seem to think; a large percentage of modern office jobs allow varying degrees of flextime, in my experience.
[splutter] They’ve actually said they cannot comprehend time? TIME? The thing all of our clocks are so happy to tell us about??? One wonders what else they can’t comprehend. How do these marginal humanoids deal with the shoe-tying thing or that nasty taking-out-the-trash business?
Or might find him or herself standing on a train platform in the middle of the night in the rain, mewling piteously.
Exactly. Chronic lateness is selfishness. It’s a way of telling everyone else to F off, that their time is not important.
At the end of the day if you can manage to tell others you are chronically late, then you obviously know what “being on time” means. Therefore, for whatever reason, you have chosen to not be on time.
We seem to be concentrating on the job situation. I don’t work for a living, but I’m still in situations where I need to be on time - appointments, social engagements, and so on.
I could try to dig up some older threads but it might be hard. Yep, some people claimed that not only did they not understand time but, more importantly, why anyone would care if they meet someone in a restaurant an hour late or more. Those threads were disturbing in their sincerity.
No shit. I haven’t had to punch a clock since I graduated. As for being late on social occasions I have no tolerance. If you are late it means you think your time is more valuable than mine. It is one thing if it is an ongoing event but if someone says meet me at someplace at a certain time I get really pissed if they are late without a valid excuse. If it is a professional meeting I wait 15 minutes then leave. If I was paying someone to do something from 9 to 5 and they showed up at 9:05 more than a couple of times I would fire their ass. I am paying, it is not their prerogative to decide whether it is important to be there on time or not. Professionals are paid to do a job, hourly workers are paid to be at a certain place for a certain amount of time to do a certain task. If you can’t be there when I tell you to be there, how can I know you are doing the other things I am paying you to do?