How about an invisible clock. Would that help? (They didn’t have any calculators.)
But I am sure you are aware that the question whether someone has a low IQ and the question whether someone has a disfunction such as ADD are entirely different question. This fact renders the argument implicit in your post invalid.
Also, you’ve given room for the following possibility as well: Perhaps there are people who can control their tardiness, but only when there are unreasonably severe consequences involved. (Anyone can do amazing things while under duress.) Should we impugn the character of such people?
-FrL-
For some reason, when I click on your link, it just sends me back to this thread. Is anyone else having this problem?
-FrL-
If it is an assertion of moral superiority, it is of a sort so common, and of so little import, as to be meaningless.
Shall we not call a spade a spade? Is disrespect a character flaw or not? If it is, then impugning it (a rather strong word) is fair. If it is not, then no character was impugned.
They are arguing that some unknown portion of perhaps 4% of the population *may *have ADD such that it is difficult to keep appointments. I will stipulate that someone who claims that that pertains to them is being incorrectly charged with disrespect. I would further submit that a fair portion of them are aware of the situation, and therefore don’t make promises they can’t keep, so they are, in effect, not tardy. (Sorry, Bob, you know me. I’ll try to be on time but that’s all I can say.) That leaves us with 96% + x% of the population who in fact are disrespectful if they are chronically tardy. I fail to see how pointing out the obvious is some claim to moral superiority.
If someone really is unaware of the passing of time, and calendars, clocks, alarms, and schedules are truly incomprehensible to them, then it is not their fault if they are late all the time. No one in this thread has claimed such to be true on a personal level. I suspect that such creatures are few and far between. All others are choosing not to take the steps required of them to be punctual. And many of them, while hiding behind the claim that “you don’t know how my brain works,” simultaneously claim that punctuality just comes easy for some people. How can they know that? How can they possibly know how hard it is for me to be on time, and what steps I have to go through to insure that I am?
Weird. Okay, well you can just go to Featured Products for Helping with ADHD and search on clocks. There’s only one, called the “invisible clock”.
If her point is that a statistically insignificant number of the chronically late, compared to the whole, may have a brain disorder that makes getting places on time difficult for them, then I’d agree that the point has been made.
However, it has not been demonstrated why it makes sense to presume that an individual who is frequently late is a member of that tiny minority—or that having the disorder makes it impossible, rather than just more difficult, for the afflicted person to find a way to be punctual.
If there is evidence for that, I would still like to hear it.
Sorry to sidetrack the discussion, but don’t you think you should have reported these staff members to the proper authorities? I haven’t worked in that field, but I have to think physically abusing mentally-challenged residents is almost certainly illegal.
‘Clocks’ won’t do it. It has to be ‘clock’ or ‘invisible clock.’ And I have no idea why that would not work, as I have more or less stated above. I can accept that someone loses track of time, what I don’t understand is how someone can function at all if he is unable to use timers, clocks, calendars, etc.
#1 - No, it doesn’t. I was saying that almost anyone can choose their behavior, if the motivation is high enough, despite dysfunction.
#2 - Did I say anything about character? I said being timely or not is a choice. In fact, I said “the effort may be so great and the repercussions mild enough that it is not worth it to that person.” That pretty clearly indicates that the mental strain for some people to be on time (as has been claimed by some in this thread) may be so stressful that the negative consequences (receiving the reprobation of one’s friends) are not severe enough to make the required effort. If this is truly the case, then I think the person has no moral onus to bear, because the consequences for him are much worse than for others. I don’t think that particular argument is conclusive, and if it is, it probably is only true for a small percentage of people; but my post said nothing of the kind.
It is very illegal. Unfortunately, I never directly witnessed anything like this. I only got the information 2nd hand. I do believe it was reliable, however.
I suspect that they are a small fraction of 1% of the ADD or otherwise brain-damaged population and their numbers are so small as to render this reasoning inconsequential to the discussion. ADD diagnoses are freekin’ rampant in the U.S. today, and I don’t see the ones I’m acquainted with showing up late all the time.
Exactly. In high school, I had a number of friends who had trouble with getting locked into a mental “time warp” because of having severe ADD/ADHD, and every single one of them had adapted a method or set of tools to ensure that they didn’t have to succumb to being late or not getting what they needed to get done because they were easily distracted.
As for QG’s argument that I should be forgiving of every late person because they just might have some sort of brain abnormality that causes them to be incapable of keeping track of time, I’m not going to do that, especially when a large proportion of the latesters I know have disregarded other social norms because they didn’t feel that rules or societal norms applied to them. This may not be everyone’s experience, but it certainly is mine. I really am under no obligation to bend to everyone else’s whims, but I will make exceptions for people who are earnestly trying to do what’s socially obligated. (Generally, though, I’ll try to help them find adaptive behaviors that’ll counteract the “time warp” syndrome that often causes their lateness.
Speaking as a PWADD with a certain passive-aggressive streak, I don’t run late most or even much of the time. I most often run late when I have past experience that the other person doesn’t get right down to business or give any indication that they value my time with them.
If you’re one of the hard core who get your back up, say, when someone’s 10-15 minutes late for a lunch date, you’re more or less insisting on punctuality as an end in itself. People like that strike me as self-righteous (does that answer your question, Contrapuntal?), and I freeze them out whenever possible.
I don’t know about the others, but punctuality isn’t the end in itself for me. Respecting other people’s time is the end I’m striving toward. Punctuality is the vehicle with which we meet that end.
In fact, I agree, which is why I’ve been trying to shift the discussion away from “moral superiority” to “impugning character.” As to the latter concept, see my next comment.
A generally disrespectful attitude is a character flaw. It is therefore fair to impugn (lets not worry about the strong connotation of the word for now, but call me on it if I implicitly rely on the strong connotation by accident) someone’s character who it has been established has a disrespectful attitude.
But what QG (and now me) are arguing is that chronic lateness is not a sign of disrespect (necessarily). To impugn someone based on their being disrespectful is fine. But to impugn someone based on their being late chronically is not–because their being chronically late is not (necessarily) a sign of their having a character flaw worth impugning.
What you take to be obvious is this: Most people who are chronically late are being disrespectful in so doing. That is fine. It is not an undue impugning of any indivudual’s character.
What I am saying one shouldn’t do is this: “Bob is late all the time. I therefore condemn him as disrespectful.”
Again, this is okay: “Most people who are late all the time are thereby disrespectful.”
This is not okay: “Joe is late all the time. Therefore, he is disrespectful.”
This would be okay: “Joe is late all the time. I happen to know there’s nothing wrong with his brain. Therefore, I can treat his tardiness as disrespectful.”
This would not be okay: “Joe is late all the time. I don’t know much about him except that I need him to be on time and he almost never is. Therefore, I can treat his tardiness as disrespectful.”
The reason the non-okay ones are not okay is as follows. There is a good chance (a “good chance” is not the same as “a greater than 50% chance”) that any given person I encounter who is chronically late has a brain disfunction of some kind. Since there is a good chance this is true, I should refrain from any impugnment of their character based on their lateness, unless I have further data about the cause of their lateness. This means it is not okay to decide, about any particular individual, that they are disrespectful, just because they are late.
This is true even if the majority of chronically tardy people are chronically tardy out of disrespect. If there’s a good chance that someone you know might be chronically tardy because of a brain disfunction, then you can not fairly accuse any chronically tardy individual of disrespect unless you know more about them than the simple fact that they are chronically late.
“Most X are Y” does not always imply “I can safely assume about this individual X that it is Y.” Sometimes it does imply that, sometimes it doesn’t.* This is a case in which it doesn’t.
-FrL-
*I can’t think of a really good example right now, but I think its fairly clear that what I’ve said is correct. Here’s a not so good example: “Most frogs are safe to lick, therefore I can safely assume this individual frog is safe to lick.” In fact, you probably shouldn’t lick a frog unless you have further data as to its species and so on, even though it is indeed safe to lick most frogs.
Right: You have further data about them other than simply the fact that they are late alot, and that is what justifies you in not being forgiving of them.
One problem: You said the majority of latesters you know generally think rules don’t apply to them. But what about that minority of latesters you know who don’t think this? Is there some reason you think you shouldn’t be forgiving of them as well?
-FrL-
Based on the 4% figure you posted, I’d say there’s a slight chance; not a *good * chance, that tardy people are brain-damaged and lacking control over their tardiness. With those odds, I think it’s safe to assume they’re rude rather than incapable of keeping appointments. Though if someone offered me proof (or even evidence pointing toward the probability of this connection) as opposed to a WAG theory, I’d mea culpa my ass off.
I suppose you and I disagree on what constitutes a good chance. No evidence has been offered, despite several requests, to show what percentage of the population suffers from ADD or brain damage related chronic tardiness. If less than 4% suffers from ADD, and some unknown percentage of them is therefor chronically late, I just don’t see how that suggests that any particular person whom s chronically late has a good chance of having ADD.
At any rate, the people who I accuse of being disrespectful to me are able to make other appointments on time, as are all of the posters in this thread who claim that their brains do not process time, or whatever. If you can get to work on time, you can make an appointment with me on time.
And here is I think a crucial point, that thought I had made before, but perhaps not clearly enough. A person is only late if he commits to a time and fails to show on time. If you know you cannot be trusted to be punctual, don’t say that you can. It is a further matter of disrespect to essentially lie to me about whether you will be on time. No one who suffers from ADD related tardiness should ever make such a commitment. The corollary to that is, in the absence of such a commitment, no tardiness can be alleged, and therefore no accusations of disrespect are possible.
I simply refuse to meet with people who cannot be trusted to be on time. By “on time,” I mean whatever we agree upon beforehand. Hell, I tell most folks “you tell me,” when questioned as to what time we should met. You would be surprised how many of them can’t make it.
How about “Joe is late all the time. Unless I discover he is brain-damaged in such a way to render time meaningless, which is an extremely tiny probability, I will interpret his chronic tardiness as a sign he does not consider meeting me on time important enough to ensure that it happens.”
Just because someone does not consciously intend to send a message of contempt (e.g. “I am going to be late on purpose to make everyone wait, because I don’t respect them”) does not mean the actions cannot be disrespectful. Indifference, or obliviousness to the impact of your behavior on others, also shows a lack of respect.
I also have a policy of not setting appointments with people I don’t think will keep them. In my case, I do this without a thought as to whether they are being respectful toward me or whether their tardiness says anything about their character.
To your post and Kalhoun’s last post I will say: I think it’s turning out to be a matter of how much caution a person thinks they should show in deciding whether to judge someone disrespectful or not. I tend to show a lot of caution (in a large part because the very notion of “respect” is not really one that shows up on my radar very readily, so its going to take alot for me to notice any putative acts of disrespect) but I recognize that others are, due to various circumstances, not in a position to be able to not come to (what would look to me like) “snap judgments” about things like this.
If you are in situations where questions of respect are important, and where tardiness is generally acknowledged to be a sign of disrespect, and you do not generally have the resources or time available to assess people’s brain function (and who does? 
) then I think you can be justified in deciding that someone is disrespectful because they are late. But I don’t think all situations are like these situations. I think a lot aren’t.
-FrL-