I’m not sure what QG’s response to this will be, but I wish to register the following fact: I think it’s entirely appropriate in many or even most cases for a chronically tardy to feel excluded and frustrated by the results of his lateness. And they should not be upset at the boss who fires them because of their lateness. Their upset should be turned internally, either at themselves, or at their brains. (Whichever happens to be appropriate :).) This will lead to the most effective course of action on their part. If they are upset with their boss for firing them, I am likely to think exactly what you’ve said here: That they are letting themselves be upset at someone they should not be upset at.
Notice that one subthread of this conversation deals with the issue of responsibility. I wish to point out that by blaming a late person for one’s own anger, one places the responsibility for one’s own attitudes and actions in the hands of another. This is inappropriate, especially by the lights of those here who are likely to bring up the issue of responsibility, since their line is that we each ought to be taking responsibility for that over which we ourselves have control.
I personally am well acquainted with a person with bipolar disorder. Sometimes the disorder is not responding well to meds for whatever reason and she ends up being so late for things she really, really wants or needs to do that she cancels out entirely. She knows she’s late, it causes even more stress, which exacerbates the illness she’s struggling against. She struggles with it. She tries. I forgive her.
I have another friend who is chronically just 15 or 20 minutes behind schedule. She has no illness or disorder that I know of that causes this. Until recently she also refused to own a cell phone, and thus could not call when it was obvious she would not be at the appointed place at the agreed-upon time. Other friends and I have taken to giving her some leeway but will not make ourselves late to time-related events like movies on account of her. Once she was supposed to meet me at my home at a specific time so that we could drive together to another friend’s place. I waited a while and then left. She was more than a little bit annoyed because she’d already had a long drive, and then had to drive even further. Oh, well. Tough. Interestingly, she is not especially a self-centered or selfish person, in fact, she’s one of the kindest people I know. Go figure.
That said, among the various people I know who are not punctual, most of them have no particular reason for it other than things they could change if they made the effort. They let themselves get distracted and don’t focus on time. They underestimate how long it will take to do something or to drive someplace, and don’t plan for any delays en route which is of course ridiculous. The classic in this last category is my husband, who will see that a particular place is, say, 100 miles away and estimate it’ll take about an hour and a half to get there. No. You’d have to go more than 60 mph the whole time and encounter not a single traffic delay. Even if the whole route is on the interstate, you’re much better off assuming in this example that it’ll take 2 hours. I love him anyway but sometimes he irritates the heck out of me.
Why would you think it is up to you how you react to an axe slicing through your flesh? Do you have any control over that reaction? Do you think its even possible for someone to have control over their reaction to such a situation?
That sounds exactly like the personality characteristics described in the book that was discussed above. I think this points to a conclusion that chronic tardiness is not a sign of disrespect or anything like that. There’s a kind of irrationality involved, but not a serious deficiency in character or morals.
My reponse to that has already been posted. To reiterate: now you know that there might be an explanation for someone’s problems, you might wish to take that into account when dealing with that person and, rather than be angry and upset, try to determine if the person struggles with the issue and would benefit from information that would help. If it turns out the person has not got a chronic problem, tells you to shove off because they’ll do what they do and to hell with you, then by all means be mad. But first give them the benefit of the doubt.
Those are the ones I’m addressing.
I thought I had made it abundantly clear that it doesn’t but that it needs to be a starting point and something to be investigated before one leaps to the assumption that something else more sinister is the reason. In short, don’t accuse until you find out the truth of the matter.
Never have I made that contention and I’m not sure why it would be inferred that I did.
My experience with people with ADD is with adults who did not know they had it. While they stuggled mightily just to manage to appear ‘normal’, they were castigated by friends (and sometimes family) for being ‘stupid’, ‘lazy’, and ‘selfish’.
And they tried to do better and usually failed.
I had an SO with ADD. Also thought he was a lazy, selfish SOB. Then I got educated. He didn’t realize he had it. I tried to figure out what was up with him by researching (my usual default). I landed in a world I didn’t even know existed where perfectly good humans were having one hell of a time trying to live among us non-ADD types. I read the ADHD e-book and some other articles and that launched a year of research and study. Realized (as soon as I’d read the e-book) that I’d been an ass for judging my SO. Resolved to mend my ways and to try to educate others towards understanding.
Cursing and condemning someone like that won’t help. I even saw Dr. Phil tell a wife on his show that ‘every time your husband is late he is telling you he doesn’t love you’ :eek: The guy looked like he’d been hit with a baseball bat because he was just like all the other hyperfocusers - he said himself he ‘lost track of time’.
The proper answer to him would not be to abuse him and tell his wife to mistreat him. The proper answer would be to say ‘most people don’t deliberately harm the people they love so let’s see if something else is up here’. Dr. P. has apparently since been educated about ADD (lord knows I sent enough emails and I know I’m not the only one) but others still harbour misconceptions.
Point of all this is that it’s not fair to assume that somebody you care about and who cares about you does things to you deliberately to cause you grief. Doesn’t mean that you just ignore it forever. Does mean that you haven’t any right to slang that person until you’ve made the effort to find out if it is, indeed, deliberate or if it’s something the person doesn’t understand and doesn’t really know how to fix.
People here have been accusing the latesters of being lazy, stupid, and selfish. Sound familiar?
You (vous) want to ostracize someone for something they maybe can’t manage well? You want to accuse them of being stupid or whatever when they’re not? I guess if that makes you feel better
Which, according to her, is 9 out of 100 million people. Is that really what we are talking about? When I was asked to explain how I knew that tardiness was a choice, I remarked that the person was capable of being on time for some things. Several times. Several pages back. Now seems like an odd time to object.
Can you point me to that? The line is that people should take responsibility for their actions. Who would insist that someone take responsibility for things out of their control? What exactly am I responsible for if someone else breaks her word to me and is late for an appointment? The passage of time?
Is not? As in never? Your support for making this a moral issue rests on this (unsupported) statement, although I did request your rationale – “Respect is a moral concept.”
Well, I suppose it can be, but it does not follow that all discussions concerning respect are discussions of morality, or that a case of disrespect is necessarily a case of moral failing.
If you will, defend the premise that respect is a moral concept.
No. The line is that that they take responsibility for their actions. That may be a subset of “things in their control,” but it is not the point in contention.
My rhetorical question was meant to point out the redundancy of asserting that someone should take responsibility for things in their control, since those things are the *only *things that people *can *take responsibility for.
When I say “X is not a sign of Y” I mean “We should not feel moved to conclude from X that Y absent further information.” I believe my usage here is standard.
To be disrespectful is to fail to show the appropriate kind and amount of decorum. For there to be an appropriate kind or amount of anything with respect to anything else is for there to be a standard against which actions or states ought to be judged. Standards are either moral or practical. It is implausible to think that “disrespect” is inappropriate merely for practical reasons. (For example, it is easy to imagine situations in which showing respect is impractical yet still the correct thing to do.) Therefore I conclude that disrespect is regarded as inappopriate for moral reasons.
People get angry about others’ disrespectful actions. We do not generally get angry at others actions merely on the basis of their impracticality. Therefore I conclude disrespect is generally regarded as a moral failing or a failing of character.
Disrespect can sometimes be appropriate–i.e., when the person disrespected is not respectable. But notice that the thing that justifies some acts of disrespect–the non-respectibility of the disrespected–is itself a moral characterization. or a characterization involving the evaluation of character as good or bad. Therefore, I conclude that disrespect is a moral concept. (Or a concept having to do with the evaluation of character as good or bad.)
Is respectibility really a moral concept or a concept having to do with the evaluation of good or bad character as I have claimed? The argument for this is as follows. To say that someone is not respectable is to say that there is a standard which they have failed to meet. Standards are either moral or practical. We would not generally call somone “non-respectable” simply on the basis that their actions are impractical. Therefore, I conclude that respectibility is a moral concept (again: or one having to do with the evaluation of character as good or bad.)
Its not redundant to point out that people should take responsibility for things in their control, because some people fail to take responsibility for things they do have control over.
So, for example, presuming a particular tardy person has control over his actions, I would say that since he has control over them, he ought to take responsibility for them.
And also, I claim, in many cases, a person has control over his emotional reactions, and so, I further claim, ought to claim responsibility for them.
I am not sure I’ve been accused of these things to my face (except “lazy,” which I got a lot as a kid), but I know I have frustrated people beyond belief. And, frankly, I still don’t know if I have ADD, as I have never had a diagnosis, but every description fits me to a T, and all the ADD on-line tests say I should look into getting evaluated for it. The thing is, in my mind it doesn’t matter whether I have it or not, the point is that an adult needs to find coping mechanisms for it that allow them to function in society. I will always have problems with it, but I try extra hard to control myself in situations where other people are going to be affected by it, and I realize that I can’t expect people to constantly cater to what is, essentially, my own problem. That’s really the bottom line. I think it’s important to think about the disappointment or inconvenience you might be subjecting others to, and use that as motivation to keep on track. Once you start down the road of expecting everyone else to just understand you, you lose the motivation to try harder.
Then I submit that three anecdotes is insufficient to reach that conclusion.
Struggle as I might, I fail to see a flaw in your logic. Very well presented. It seems that I *am *claiming that chronic tardiness is a character flaw, with the caveat that if it is absolutely uncontrollable tardiness, no moral issue attaches. I still contend that such cases are so rare as to be insignificant. How many people are *never *on time?
I assume this refers to the emotional reaction to being stood up, or otherwise inconvenienced by a tardy person. I assure you, if I did not suffer negative consequences, my reaction would be mild. When my time is being wasted, that is bothersome to me. Often, there is no particular reason for the wasting of time. It is still bothersome to me. However, when a tardy person wastes my time, it is her fault. I simply fail to acknowledge that people exist, in any significant numbers, who are late all the time and are unaware of it. If you cannot be on time, don’t say you can. That is where the moral issue attaches. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.
QG, in a previous post you said that those that are habitually late are not damaging. If you believe that is true, why did you seek out help for you and your SO?
If this had no effect on you or your SO, why did you research it?
Frylock, a further point. While it may be the case that showing disrespect to me is a moral failing, I place it near or at the bottom of the scale in terms of importance. It says very little about a person to say that she is disrespectful towards me. Perhaps that is why I did not see it as a moral issue at first.
I am so flustered by the notion that someone in a GD thread has actually decided someone else’s argument is convincing because logical that I now no longer have any idea what to say. *
I can say this: I think people should not make promises they know they can’t keep. I also think there are “late” types who know they can not keep their time promises, and so should not be making them. I think people, especially people who are in circumstances which make it hard to disassociate from such a person, are right to feel frustrated and even wronged. I also think, though, that the number of instances of people who, though they should know it do not in fact understand about themselves that they will generally not be able to keep their time promises, is larger than others might think.
As I’ve mentioned, two people who were prominent in my life were exactly like this. When it came to issues of timing and task managing, they were just… stupid. They weren’t showing disrespect, and they weren’t even lying. They were just being incredibly blind about certain facts about themselves.
Also, someone who is late with you and not with others, definitely has a particular issue with you and it is much more likely that it is appropriate to be frustrated with them. Why you and not others? Something’s going on there and should be investigated (if its worth it.)
-FrL-
*It occurs to me this might look like a kind of gloating. I really don’t mean it that way. The arguments may be bad ones after all for all I know, after all.
I don’t know about “with others.” I just know that when she *has *to be on time, she can. Work, plane flights, medical appointments, massages, etc.
I didn’t see it as gloating. Mine was a grudging admission. But since I have conceded the validity of the arguments, I will defend them to the death! By God, If I change my mind, it’s going to stay changed!
On the particular days when I had to be there at 8, the gods were much more likely to conspire against me. Sure, it could happen if I had to be there at 9, but it was less common.
I probably could have. This was one instance. I sat there, kind of thinking–Oh, it’s an hour earlier than I thought it was!–and my boss brought me coffee and told me how much he appreciated my being there.
I don’t know where you live, but in the great midwest “9 to 5” actually mostly means “8 to 5” for office jobs. So yes, I tried it for some time. The job with the 5 a.m. start time was a shift change to accommodate my schedule while I was taking a class and there was a definite time limit to it, I wouldn’t want to have that schedule forever, but I managed it for about three months without being late.
In one instance here is what happened. At the job interview I was told that the hours were flexible and I could show up any time between 7 and 9 a.m., adjusting the time I left accordingly. Great. This was not only what my prospective boss said, but it was in the employee handbook in black and white.
This was a salaried position, not hourly, and my prospective boss did point out that it was not a 40-hour week. When they say that, it never means fewer than 40 hours–and I was okay with that, too.
So for the first few weeks I got there always before 9. The only time I arrived after 9 was when my car broke down (and it was a brand-new car, too) and AAA didn’t arrive for a couple of hours.
Then my boss sat me down and let me know that she was extremelly unhappy when I wasn’t at my desk by 8:30, and 8 would be even better.
We had an editorial meeting every Friday at 10, so being late for meetings was not the problem. The problem was that my boss got there at 7 and started thinking of things she wanted to tell me at approximately 7:05 and she didn’t want to wait. Well…this wasn’t how the hours were presented to me, or I likely wouldn’t have taken the job. She said flex time, 7 to 9, and if she expected me to show up closer to 7 than 9 every day, with an occasional lapse to 8:30 or 8:45, she should have said so.
In the other instance I told my boss that I had children to get off to school and because of that it would be extremely hard for me to show up before 9 and he said okay. Two weeks into the job it turned out it was not okay and it was a source of conflict for the entire time I had the job.
In my current job, I was 30 minutes late for the job interview (because I got lost), so they were well warned. It hasn’t been a problem.
*
But since I have conceded the validity of the arguments, I will defend them to the death! By God, If I change my mind, it’s going to stay changed!