As at my work.
One time I got into trouble for not ringing ‘technical’ by the MD when things were going wrong. I said directly to him (well over the phone anyway) “I knew they would know less than me about this, and wouldn’t be able to help”
He didn’t deny it.
Is the lateness consistent? You could set your appointments to come early so that when they come “late,” they’re actually on time. Sort of like when the chronically late set their watches 15 minutes fast so they’re on time for stuff.
I am actually glad it doesn’t work. because it gives me an excuse to not compile the 200 or so reminders that my boss keeps bugging me to do.
Have you tried running Outlook from the comand line with the resetfolders switch?
Here’s an article in Microsoft’s kb about the resetfolders switch.
Well if you are using Outlook 2000 there is a known bug that causes ‘late reminders’: Microsoft Knowledge Base article number q321179.
You can download the fix here: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/lsait/Outlook/techfaqs/lateremind.html
Wow, I’m suprised at some of the animosity here. This is a rather widespread problem with Outlook 2000, and most people I work with don’t rely on reminders for this reason. For those who aren’t grasping the issue, let me clarify: when a reminder is due, nothing happens, and the popup generally won’t come up until either (a) some indeterminate time later, as much as several hours, or (b) you start clicking around in Outlook, which seems to ‘wake up’ the app somehow (but sporadically). What usually happens with me is I’ll go to check an email, and after clicking on a few folders I’ll get 5 overdue reminders simultaneously.
I’d try the patch posted by Fingolfin, but it’s a corporate imaged machine and I really can’t. 
And since this is the pit, what’s with people responding to bug problems with “oh, I’ve used it for years and never seen it, so you must be an idiot!” Bullshit. Almost all major software bugs occur only under certain conditions on certain platforms and don’t occur at all for some or most people. Unless you’re running a full scale QA lab with all available versions and platforms, saying “hey it works for me, must be you” doesn’t help one little bit. This goes double for techchick, who seems to think ridiculing someone with a legitimate gripe because her relatives don’t have the same problem is worthwhile. Sheesh. Next time your car breaks down and you call for assistance, how about the person you call says “well, my brother has the same kind of car and it’s been running fine for years” and see how you appreciate that.
Q. How does a bad technician change a lightbulb?
A. “I’ve got that same kind of lightbulb in my office, and it works for me. Must be something you’re doing wrong.”
As an aside to anyone who wants help with a technical problem: It really is critical to tell people what operating system you’re using (“Windows” isn’t enough… “Windows XP service pack 1 installed” would be useful), what specific tool you’re having trouble with (for example, there are six different flavors of Outlook… and I’m not meaning to pick on you Lobsang, just using your problem as an example), the environment you’re working in (Outlook as a standalone mail client, or connected to an Exchange server to handle calendaring, or attached to a dedicated Ical server?) and to limit the “Have you tried…” answers, a list of what you’ve already tried to try and get it to work.
Software is written by people, who are fallible, to run on machines, which fail… yes, I know it’s frustrating, but few people who write code for a living feel comfortable releasing utter crap upon the world; chances are there’s a solution to your problem, assuming the tool you’re using was meant to address the need you’re using it for. Developers (any of them worth their salt, at least) are the retentive sort. 
Windows troubleshooting is such a pain as well, because there are so many hardware issues, so many software options, and so many add-on packages which can cause problems.
Case in point, I was asked to resolve a “my network doesn’t work” issue yesterday, and came to find out that the user had clicked on one of these “PROTECT YOUR COMPUTER NOW” banners and installed a demo version of a personal firewall package over the net, and had it set for “Don’t let my machine even touch the network, until I tell you to” (essentially).
Cheers,
Well, of course as soon as I said I shouldn’t try the patch, I was tempted by the Dark Side and installed it. Reminders seem to work better now, but now my “mark as read on preview” is broken! Now I have to double-click every message to get it to stop showing as a new message. Bleh.
Just a word of warning to those thinking about trying it out.