As much as I hate the procrastinators who make my life difficult, I hate their opposite even worse. These are the people (notably my boss) who suddenly spring a huge-freaking-emergency project on me, and make me work my ass off, only to either:
a) finally get around to actually testing it months after I finish it or
b) never use the work (which happens more often than one might think).
Preach it, sister. You would not (or maybe you would) BELIEVE the temper tantrums, both figurative and literal, that I witness when the precious little snowflakes realize that in my class, a due date means a due date, and no, special arrangements because you had Dave Matthews tickets are not available.
I’ll definitely make allowances for genuine (and verifiable through documentation) emergencies, but just because a student didn’t plan well and “OMG I didn’t realize it was due today I thought it was due next week please let me hand it in late just this once I promise it’ll never happen again!”? Not on your Abercrombie & Fitch-wearing life.
Yeah, that makes me all stabby when that happens.
“You HAD to have this by EOB last Friday, and you sat on it until the following Thursday?”
That was my experience, too. Those who gave extensions were a mixed bag, but the professors who refused extensions were all excellent. There was by-and-large more leniency about due dates for those who asked three days before than those who asked on the day of, but it was still fun to watch those who couldn’t meet deadlines whine.
Sorry but I could never bring myself to feel much for procrastinators. I started papers at the earliest time I could manage. I absolutely hate to feel rushed about anything. I have always tried to get projects done as early as possible, because if something goes all wahooni shaped it doesn’t matter.
I like the people that, having sat on the urgent matter until the eleventh hour, upon getting you to do it, ring every few minutes to see how it’s going.
“Quicker if I wasn’t talking to you, fuckwit.”
It’s not just academia, law, or business. Welcome to the wonderful world of food catering!
When a lunch/dinner/buffet/whatever is scheduled, and the provider says “we must have a menu, and number of guests by a certain date” they mean just that. Customers wait until the last minute, which can make it difficult to provide what they want.
Or, they call the day of the event, or as people are coming in, and tell the provider that “ten more will be showing up than we had RSVP’s for, is this a problem?” Yes, it’s a problem!
Sometimes, if a customer calls the day before they need, say, fifteen lunches provided, we can do that, if they don’t want anything exotic. But a caterer has to make regular orders from their own supply providers, and won’t always have on hand what a customer suddenly decides they want.
And don’t even get a caterer started on the subject of PAYMENT. They need the agreed on fee by a certain time, so they can pay their own bills. I once heard a customer get indignant because a caterer would not take their order until they paid for the last event, which was two months overdue.
I worked in a job like that in an accounting department - everything was a crisis and a rush and a deadline, then when we missed deadlines because we were so short-staffed, oh well, I guess we’ll get it done sometime this week. That was a good life-lesson for me - when I realized that was how the game was played, I put in a full day’s work, but I didn’t stress over artificial deadlines any longer.
I’d’ve given him extra points for that, but it was nothing that exciting. We have a teachers’ training course every summer for the new TAs at my university, and they have assignments and practice teaching sessions. The sessions aren’t assigned randomly; there are several factors that determine which student will be in which session. This dude decided he didn’t like the time or place of his assigned session, and faffed off to be in the same session as his buddies.
When I called him on it (when he deigned to show up), he just chuckled and shrugged his shoulders.
However, the consequences are: because at his assigned [live] session, he was marked absent, and that his teaching exercises will not be reviewed (some sessions are reviewed live by an instructor; others have to be filmed so they can be reviewed later.)
Why is this a problem? We pay these students to take this course (they get a little stipend), so they are expected to act as university employees. Additionally, they are either scholarship/teaching assistantship students or here as international students on a big scholarship. The rules are, miss more than one training session class in the next few weeks, be dropped from the training session. Be dropped from the training session, lose funding. Lose funding, lose visa. Lose visa…be sent home and explain to whomever funded your travel/scholarship that you lost your funding because you couldn’t be bothered to go to your assigned section for a simple teaching exercise.
Every time we have one of these annual training sessions, one or two people lose their scholarships for flaunting the rules.
Even if it’s not this dramatic, their respective departments are informed about the student’s issue(s), and sometimes the depts will say, ‘Hmmm, maybe this guy/gal isn’t responsible enough to direct 50-100 undergrads this autumn. No, thanks.’
So, yeah, had he gone pracing about the hallways in a mink stole, no one would have given him a second glance. We’re pretty open-minded about that.* But flaunt the rules because you think you’re above them and that this isn’t a serious course? Buh-bye.
Sorry about the long-winded explanation! 
But, yeah, I guess the irony is, if that’s the right word here, is these future TAs are nervous about taking on their own classroom, and ‘what if the students don’t listen to me,’ and then turn around and do something dumb like this (this guy isn’t the first student to decide he’s going to re-write the syllabus.)
*Although one summer we did have to tell a female TA from Japan that her ‘I’m a friend with benefits!’ T-shirt didn’t mean what she thought it did…
Do we have to limit this to coworkers? Cuz’ you just described a lot of my family members and formal GFs.
You still don’t get it, do you professor?
It’s flout, not flaunt. Two entirely different words
Merriam-Webster says it’s fine.
Yeah, that schedule’s all you’d ever want, a deadline you’d like to flaunt, and take to dinner…
As I read it, you “flaunt” something to show it off, you “flout” something to show it up…
Formal GFs? :smack:
Former GFs.
Yeah, I figured I was screwing up something – :o
Not the first time.
Ed – wait, now I’m confused – I’ve always used ‘flaunt’ to mean to show contempt for something, that dictionary entry cited above says it can mean both dress up and show contempt. Argh – which one is it?
Sorry, missed edit window because I went to check the OED
The OED notes that my use of ‘flaunt’ to mean ‘flout’ came about from people misusing it to the point that it’s become an acceptible synonym.
Hmmm…you know what, I will stand corrected, and remember to use ‘flout’ because I’d rather use the correct word, and not the one that became ‘correct’ simply because it’s been misused too many times.
I promise, end of hijack! 
The only correct response is to show you could care less.
Flout is generally accepted to mean “show contempt for”. Flaunt is the word for “dress up”.
In a formal setting, eyebrows would be raised if you used one for the other, but enough people have misused flaunt that it’s becoming more acceptable in either context (which shouldn’t be too surprising, since the original flout had both meanings and likely evolved into both words.)
Irregardless, I like to check these things out.
That’s just mean …