You are very patient. 
Consistently late = dealbreaker for me.
Ever since my wife and I moved to California, (Southern, whenever we show up on time to a party, the hosts will exclaim, with a smile, but with no irony*: “You’re early!”
My wife can’t bring herself to be what she calls late, so we shall always and forevermore be called “early” by all our friends. Even though we’re actually right on time.
-Kris
*I have little truck with debates about what “irony” “really” “means” but have at it if you must…
There should be a close-paren after “(Southern”…
-Kris
In my family, we rotate the Thanksgiving dinner. My turn is next year. It’s expected that the hostess does all the cookiing with the guests bringing drinks or dessert or something, and then the hostess gets to digest while the guests do the washing up.
Note, this is family. I would offer to help clean up at a friend’s house, but I won’t automatically assume authority in her kitchen.
Lissa, do you think maybe your mom wasn’t quite ready to pass the torch?
There’s a word for that: “rude.”
If you won’t be there until 6:45, you should call in advance and tell me you’re going to be late. I’m planning a dinner (or whatever) and showing up 15 minutes late will throw things off.
I’ve shown up late because of flat tires and late babysitters and work troubles, but I simply can’t imagine being rude enough to show up 15 minutes late on purpose.
Hal Briston, I like the way you think. Doing anything for dinner tomorrow? 
So it seems some people think it’s rude to show up on time, and others think its rude to show up late.
Is there a regional distinction underlying this? Some socioeconomic distinction? Something else?
-FrL-
It depends on the occasion.
If it’s a casual party (simple food and drinks all evening) and the time is 8:00, I don’t see anything wrong with getting there a little past 8:00.
However, if it’s a dinner invitation and says 8:00, you better be there at 8:00 for dinner. Even if the host is serving appetizers and drinks beforehand, there’s a lot of planning and timing that goes into a dinner for a group of people. I’d expect dinner guests to be on time.
Yes! Exactly. Nothing else remains to be said.
In the Indian subculture in the Hudson Valley Region, for example, lots of parties will invite you at 6 PM. No one shows at 6 PM. They don’t even start serving snacks until 8 or so, then dinner is at 10 PM. That’s expected and known that it will be that way. If you actually shwowed up at 6, they wouldn’t be ready for you.
We have one friend that I will not go out with socially because of his chronic lateness. And we’re not talking 10-20 minutes, he has NEVER been less than an hour late. More normal is 90-120 minutes late.
For some reason, my SO still does things with him on occasion. Like a few weeks ago they went to a party in Laguna Beach, the friend said he would pick my SO up at 1. He finally showed up at just before 4.
No, that’s not it.
Have you ever heard those stories of long cattle drives across arid regions? They say that when the cattle smell water, they stampede toward it. Nothing can stop them. My mom is like that with messes. I have to watch her carefully whenever she comes over or she might sneak away to scrub the grout in the bathroom.
My grandma is the same way. On the day I had minor surgery, my Hubby brought me home but couldn’t stay with me because of an emergency at work. He called my grandmother to come over and stay with me. I slept on the couch. When he came back, he found her cheerfully mopping the kitchen floor having already scrubbed the counters, wiped out the fridge and washed the three dishes that had been in the sink.
They aren’t doing it to say, “Your house isn’t clean enough!” They do it because they want to be helpful, and truthfully, though they complain about it, I think they like to clean.
See - as long as the guy is consistantly late, I have no problem.
I used to date a guy that was always 2 hours late. If we said 3, I’d expect him at 5 - within a few minutes he would show up at 5.
Then one day we said 3. At around 5 I started looking for him. At 6 I started to get pissed. At 7 I was fuming mad. At 8 he called me from the hospital where he had been taken after driving like a jackass and crashing his motorcycle. Heh. Nothing sucks worse than having the drain pulled out of all your outraged indignation! 
As far as being early - I’ve got you all beat - I had an appointment for a phone installer to be at my house at 6:30 PM. At 10:00 AM he phoned me on my cell phone and said I’ll be at your house in half an hour! Uhhh, I’m at work, actually… I’m still not sure how that happened.
I live in Alabama. Do you think your mom and grandmother could come for a visit? I’ve got enough mess to keep 'em happy for a loooooooong time!
If that’s an invite, please let me know ASAP. Montana is a 30-odd hour drive straight through – I wouldn’t want to be late.
Can they come to my house and play?
You may think you do, but these are two women who made their living as do-it-yourself landlords. They cleaned and rennovated apartments after the tenants left. After having experienced scraping six solid inches of dog feces off of a basement floor, nothing you can throw at them would faze them. They work like they’re demon-posessed and generally have the place done in half the time you’d expect.
If I ever suggested such a thing they would immediately set into complaining about how much work they have to do in their own homes. My mother’s home always looks like the “suburban living room set” you see in movies. You know, the one where you say, “Nobody’s house looks like that if they’ve got kids!” Well, my mother’s house does. I’m sure she’s right that it’s a hell of a job to keep up with that level of perfection, but she never hesitates to take on the homes of her children as well.
Heh, I thought I was the only person who did this. I remember arriving at a student’s house (I worked as a tutor) fifteen minutes early once. It was in the middle of winter and below freezing, but I couldn’t bring myself to go in. I called a friend to pass the time, and she informed that I was being weird and masochistic. But at least I wasn’t early.
We fixed that problem with an old friend. We’d get a group together and tell everyone to meet at my house at a particular time. Half an hour after that time, we’d leave and go somewhere else. The first time we did that to him, he was fuming mad, but he got the message. The second time he realized we were serious.
Hmmm. Kind of difficult to pull that off for dinner tomorrow night, then. Let’s plan dinner or drinks the next time we’re within 100 miles of each other.
People showing up early is never a problem around here. In fact, as an American I have trouble adjusting my arrival time for meetings to be late enough so I’m not sitting around alone for a half hour or more.
For mixed parties of Panamanians or Americans, people of both groups will usually specify “American time” or “Panama time.” Panamanians will be told to arrive two hours before the Americans; that way everybody will get there at about the same time.
A Brit expatriate who has lived here for many years once told me he would meet me at 7 PM, a la hora inglesa (“English time”), which is a common term in Spanish for “on the dot; precisely.” When he showed up at 9, I knew he had gone completely native.
I notice that right here in NY State! On conference calls, the NYC, Albany, and Syracuse offices are all on time. Rochester and Buffalo? As much as 15 minutes late.
My rules on timing:
If you invite me–and only me–to your house for dinner, then I will show up exactly at the time specified. With a nice hostess gift and an offer of kitchen assistance.
If you invite me to a party at your house, I will show up about after the specified time. Why? Because that’s when EVERYONE generally shows up, and there’s nothing more awkward (IMHO) than being the first guest to show up…especially when you don’t know the host all that well. A professor invited me to her house for an Easter party, and I showed up 20 minutes late. But I was only the second guest to arrive! Fortunately, the other guest was a friend and we got our buzz on before the other people arrived. Otherwise, I would have felt completely weird, just standing around looking at family pictures and whatnot.
It also depends on who’s hosting the party. If it’s a family affair (like a barbeque or a child’s birthday party…not like a holiday meal or something), I will show up whenever, depending on how much I feel like going. If it’s a friend’s affair, I will show up within 15-45 minutes of the appointed time. If it’s a coworker/boss thing, I aim as close to the specified time as I can get while still leaving a decent “buffer”. Maybe a window of 15 minutes. But all of this changes if the party is held at a restaurant or some other reserved place. In that case, promptness is always in order.
But arrive early? Uh, no. I’m too cool for that.