People who are never late think things like this - but they’re wrong. For people who are always on time, being late might be a way of acting out or demonstrating importance. For people who aren’t on time, being on time doesn’t have the same meaning. Assigning motive is unfair.*
I’d have a 50/50 chance of missing 6:43. And my dad wouldn’t have even made it into the car until 6:50 or so.
*However, it is fair to decide you no longer want to deal with late people. But do it because they’re late (which is true and provable) not because they’re evil & selfish (which may be true, but also may not be true at all)
My mother is CL. I was late so often to school that on some days I just refused to go, because it is embarrassing to walk into 3rd period algebra with a note from your mom. We had to be in 1st period at 8. She would show up to pick us up and drive us to school (she didn’t live with us) at 7: 57. We would get up early and call her and wake her up, just to make sure, and she would still make us 45 minutes late. She would be hours late to pick us up after school. Classes let out at 3:15. I often waited until nearly 5. One time I was sitting out front at 6:30 conversing with the custodian when she pulled up. My band director drove me home after a (home) football game (which ended at 9:30) at nearly midnight, because he couldn’t leave until all the students had, and I was the only one left. It was humiliating. She showed up at the house at 1 AM and told me off for not being where she expected me to be. In order to be on time for football games I would lie and tell her the band director wanted us there at 4 for practice, and hope she’d have me there by 5:30. Sometimes, I just refused to leave the school for the entire day, and instead sat in the band room and played or studied between school ending and the band getting back together for game time.
These days, I don’t go anywhere or do anything with her. She is never invited to my house, because she will be late. She will. Period. And I? I am completely chronically early. 20 minutes early to school, 30 minutes early for work. An hour early for job interviews. I’ll drive to a meeting and sit in the parking lot for 45 just to be sure I won’t be late. I’ve been late for work twice in the last 5 years, once because of a flat tire and once because my power went out and killed my alarm clock. I was mortified both times.
I’m late all the time, everywhere I go. Over to a friend’s house, parties, work, I’m always at least 5 minutes late. Two of my friends are also late. One is obsessively early. Each one of us runs on our own “time”
I can’t stand people that are always early. If I say come over at 7, come at 7, not 6:30, not 6:50, not 6:55. I would rather you be late.
It’s not a lack of planning, or carelessness, or anything, It’s what I can get away with. With friends I call if im going to be over 15 minutes late. At work, I skip a lunch break on Saturday to make up for being late. They don’t care, as long as I work my 40 hours. With appointments, I know I run the risk of losing the appointment, so I do actually make an effort to be on time, and am usually only one or two minutes late. I usually get around this by asking for as late an appointment they have available.
It’s really hard not to take it personally when your family does this to you. My mother is the same way, and I had a hard time forgiving her for it. Funny thing is, once I stopped depending on her to be on time, she got much better. There is certainly some type of psychological power-struggle there, because she stopped being late as soon as she realized I stopped caring or depending on her for stuff.
Why can’t some people do simple math though? When I pick up my daughters from school, I am always on time down to +/- one minute even after a 40 minute drive. I have pushed managers out of my way at work so that I can get them because they are much more important than either they are my job is. Their day-care and school closes at specific time. I speed up or take shortcuts if I am running a little late. Train operators do this type of stuff for a living. It isn’t that hard. It must be some sort of mental retardation for people that can’t realize this. I would rather be a hermit than have to deal with people that habitually waste my time. Time is the only truly unreplisible resource that we have.
I would have taken it less personally if she had been willing to teach me to drive (which she flatly refused to do) or got me a bike or a carpool with another kid, but she wouldn’t. To this day I have no doubt in my mind that there was malicious intent behind it. She wanted to be in control of me. She wanted the power to make me happy or miserable, and she knew that missing band practice or sitting outside the school building alone for hours, with my teachers feeling sorry for me, would make me miserable. A half hour before my graduation she called to tell me that I’d better find another ride, because she wasn’t going and she wasn’t driving me. She wasn’t doing something else–she just wasn’t going. She knew a half hour wouldn’t be time to find another ride, because all my friends would already be on their way. What kind of person does that?
I’m sorry. My father was the exact same way and I just learned to forgive him as an absolute screwup that I couldn’t expect anything from and, if it worked out the right way, it was a gift. He has improved greatly in his later years though but I had to reverse roles and coach him on how to treat his granddaughters. It hasn’t worked completely but it has improved and I know he is sorry for much of it.
People who do that can be nearly as bad as those who are late, because the person they’re visiting may be doing last-minute work and not want it interrupted by having to entertain an early guest. I leave to arrive early, then wait nearby until I’m on time.
Regarding procrastination - I’m a huge procrastinator, myself, and do get distracted, but I make it a priority to be on time. It’s doable. I’m never obscenely early, I don’t leave hours before I have to be anywhere, etc.
Yeah, and when those of us that acutally make an effort to be on time learn that you are going to be late, we start saying “never mind, no need to rush he’ll be late anyway”: making us 5 minutes late. Then the chronically late starts coming 10 minutes late. Cue never ending circle until 2 means 3, and lunch means dinner
Because for some of us, it’s not simple math. I have ADHD, and until the meds hit my system, time telescopes meaninglessly for me. It felt like it took an hour to get breakfast around and eaten this morning, but the clock said it was only 10 minutes. Since I had a bit of time, I picked up a book I’m reading for what felt like 5 minutes, but the clock said was 45. If it’s not a work related task, I have no idea how long it takes, and because I can be distracted by nearly anything, start to end of something is usually massively longer than actuall time working on it. I’m a chronic clock-watcher due to this, and I still have problems sometimes. My schedule is always padded to allow for time I spend distracted by random crap. The meds help a great deal, but they take time to get into my system.
I’m usually on time, though I can be both very early and very late. No one ever notices the very early though, it doesn’t impact them if it’s at work, and I won’t knock on someone’s door more than a few minutes early. I don’t miss or show up late to important events (though I did miss a friend’s bachelor party, but that was more the hurricane than poor planning on my part(driving through a hurricane because they shut down the airports sucks)).
Similar. I wouldn’t describe myself as chronically late, but when I’m tardy, it’s almost always due to poor time perception. Often I’ll run into something and think, “Oh. In my mind that only took about 5 minutes. Turns out in real life, it’s more like 15! My mistake.” If something’s really important, I’ll give myself some ridiculous amount of time, so that if every possible thing goes wrong (as has been the case), I’ll be on time. And if everything runs smoothly and I’m ridiculously early, I always make sure to have a book and a flask on hand to pass the time.
I have a sister who is late beyond my comprehension. I’m talking about *hours *late. To everything. You have to flat out *lie *to her and tell her something is occurring three hours before it is just so she can be an hour late.
I used to be chronically late; nowadays, I’m usually on time, but not always. My lateness has been historically caused by two reasons:
1. Disorganization/readjustment. After I got back from South America, I had to readjust - where I had been living, being a bit late to social engagements was considered the norm. If you arrived at someone’s house punctually, the hosts were always gracious of course, but you were considered a rube. It took a while to get used to being on time again. Then when I got a job, although I’d had one pretty much since aged 12, just one of them had been full time, but suddenly I had a full-time job, two part-time jobs and was putting myself through grad school. It took me a while to be able to plan professional clothing, a change to more comfortable clothing (very much appreciated after you’ve worked 14 hours) and meals for a whole day when I wasn’t accustomed to doing so. Then I got married and had a kid. That was the biggest adjustment of all because when you’re a new parent, you tend to cart around everything and the kitchen sink every single time you go out. By the time I’d finished packing my luggage, it was only to find that I’d completely underestimated the amount of time I needed to get out the door.
2. Many of my friends are still chronically late. Even though I’m now pretty punctual, there are some events that I do show up 10-15 minutes late to because I’m good enough friends with those people to know that they will actually consider it an inconvenience if I show up on time. The last time I went to a party, I got there right at the time the invitation said. The hostess looked at me, surprised, and said, “Oh, I didn’t expect anyone to actually get here at 6:30. Can you help me finish getting ready?”
Again, when I watch my dad fail to make it somewhere on time, it seems that he has honestly no perception of how much time things actually take nor how much time has passed.
If it were a word problem, he would get it correct. However, he can’t apply that knowledge at all. First, he’ll underestimate how long it takes to get from point A to point B. Then on the way out the door, he’ll notice something - the dishes aren’t put away, there’s a package to be mailed, the headlights on the car (not the car he’s going to drive, a totally different car) aren’t working and should be replaced, etc. And in his head, all of these things take “two minutes” - and surely, if he takes a shortcut from point A to point B, he can make up those two minutes.
The reason I don’t attribute selfishness is because he’s cleaning the kitchen so that someone else will have things available he’s not going to be cooking again for a while. The package is something that his daughter asked to have sent and she’s more important to him than being on time. And the headlights are for his wife’s car, even though she could take care of it herself. He’s generally doing stuff for other people while time gets away from him. (Also, just to head it off - he doesn’t passive aggressively bring this up later when asked why he’s late. I’m not sure he knows why. If no one was watching him do this, no one would know what he was doing instead of driving to his destination.)
See, this is what I don’t get about my boyfriend, who has a similar problem - if you know you get distracted, why don’t you set an alarm? Why not use the calendar on your phone or something and program in alerts?
In addition to my friend that CrazyCatLady mentions above, I have another friend who is chronically late because he has raging ADHD. (So do I, but I daresay his is several steps beyond mine.) The problem is that he gets distracted and doesn’t look at the clock. If he has to leave for somewhere at 7:30, he might look at the clock at 6:30, 6:47, 6:56, 7:05, and 7:18, each time thinking (correctly) that he has a few minutes before he needs to go. Then he looks again, and it’s 7:43.
He also has that classic ADHD hyperfocus, so even if he is aware that it’s time to go he often has a hell of a time getting his brain shifted into “gotta go” mode. That’s a hard thing to explain to people without ADHD, but it can be a big deal. (No excuse, really, but a limitation to recognize and plan around.)
He’s getting married, and he will benefit greatly from having someone to tell him when it’s time to go.
I had a colleague (a doctor) at my last job who showed up to the office an hour late every single day. He always claimed that he was held up at the hospital, but if that happens every day it means you’re just starting an hour later than you need to. He did it because he was the kind of person who would get up in your face if you challenged him about anything, so nobody did, and he just didn’t care who he was inconveniencing.
I went to the store to buy extra clocks, and ended up with a haircut :p.
That works for meetings and such like, but doesn’t help with things like having five minutes to read and realising that 45 have past. I can’t have an alarm go off for waking up, making breakfast, getting in the shower, getting dressed, making my lunch, walking out the door. I’d need 6 different alarms all with different sounds in different parts of the house. My wife would kill me, and I’d probably not notice them half the time anyway. I simply make sure there’s padding in my schedule for “got facinated by the blue in the rug we’ve owned for the last decade”.
Part of is that almost all stimulation hits my brain at the same level, so the filter that means I don’t get startled everytime the house creaks in the wind also filters out the phone ringing. It’s also rest and wakefullness related, as well as general boredom (my wife dreads any slow periods at work that last longer than a month). Once I wake up and the meds hit my system, I lose most of the distractedness, and time seems to move at a rate comparable to the way people around me precieve it.
As long as no one expects me to be in the office before my first meeting, I’m fine. If they want to go over something first, and don’t tell me that before I leave the day before, well, they might have two hours to go over it, or two minutes.
Like I said earlier, I’m not going to be late to anything that requires my physical presense, barring mother nature or major accidents, but I’ll never keep any job that has actual work hours. Fortunately, as long as I make the meetings and get my work done, no one cares if I was in today at 7:30 or 9:30.
On Edit: What DoctorJ said. Once I picked up that book this morning, nothing existed outside of it. This is really useful at times. Oh how did it take me half an hour to write this?
My co-worker is late 99% of the time. On any given day he moseys in 7-10 minutes late. It is incredibly annoying. He lives less than 3 miles away and his route involves 2.5 miles on a single street. In almost four years, he should have figured out he needs to leave home a few minutes earlier, but no.
But that’s okay…since I’m always early, I pack up and leave 7-10 minutes before the end of the shift. He would never have the nerve to complain!
Hmm…. I think I’m starting to understand the ADHD problem. But that doesn’t explain the people that are consistently late, but can make doctor’s appointments and airline flights. One poster even admitted that it’s about what ‘he can get away with’.
And anyone that would get angered at someone for leaving when they are an hour late is just out there.
I also think a smart phone would be a great help to many of you. For myself, I use it as a calendar for future events. For instance, I know I’m going to PA in November to visit the in-laws. But the details escape me. My Wife gets tired of me asking the same questions over and over, so I put events in my phone. It’s very easy to set up reminders.
For those of you that have unstructured jobs, that’s great, but I wonder if that contributes to you being late when meeting in social situations. Just a thought.