people who are always late v. people always on time

In My Humble Opinion
81

Erl,, it is not inconsiderate to be late when you have not agreed upon a specific time, and both parties understand that the time is a vague range of times. I had misunderstood your general distaste for “on-timers” to extend to people who were upset that you were a half an hour to and hour later than the agreed-upon time.

Hell, I’m trying to see your side of it, honestly.

Maybe I’m just too socially-acclimitized (me?) but I think that making people wait around is considerably more rude than asking them to show a bit of forethought and planning so that they can meet at a mutually-convenient time.

You have control over all those hours before the agreed-upon time, and you can choose to do whatever you want with them, as long as you end up in a position to walk away with plenty of time to meet your friend. If you take a modicum of trouble to arrange your schedule wisely, then only rarely will you find that you must endure some sort of unpleasantness to make the appointment on thime.

When somebody is killing time waiting for you, they’re stuck. They have a limited subset of things to do, but, however pleasant they are, they are almost certainly not as pleasant as enjoying your company–the goal of the whole outing, after all.

82

Then you’re an even more self-absorbed twit than you’ve come across as before - you can’t be late, by definition, unless there’s a set time, so you’ve set a time ahead of time, either:

a) Knowing you’d be late.

b) Knowing you might be late, but not making allowances for it.

c) Not knowing either way.

c becomes bad because you don’t think they have anything better to do than wait around for you, so you

a) Don’t get in contact with them to tell them you’d be late.

and

b) Get pissed at them for being upset by this.

83

I have no hurry in my personality, and am so thoroughly unstressed by my schedule that I walk to work, with a book in my hand, reading. I stop for lunch on the way. I get to work on time, except maybe twice a year. On those occasions, even if it is only one or two minutes late, I have called and told them that I am likely to be late. Work is just about the only thing I do that has to be done on time. Well, almost the only thing. I like to watch the sun rise or set from some very pretty places, once and a while. But time, and tide wait for no man. Neither do I.

When I am invited to someone’s social gathering I ask when I should arrive. I point out to them that I will actually arrive at that time, not some other time, in case they expect me to be late. I get there when I said I would. If they said “eightish” then I get there between eight and eight twenty. If they said Eight, I get there at Eight, within a minute or two. I don’t hurry. I never hurry. I am simply not so stupid as not to know how to read a clock. Since I have driven a mile before, I know about how long it takes to drive a mile. Or ten, or a hundred. It’s not hard. I can set an alarm clock. I can wake up, and get up when my alarm goes off. If I needed some other system, I could arrange that, before the fact. I don’t hurry because I am late; I am not late, because I don’t have any difficulty telling time.

If you know you are always late, be assured it is not because you are unstressed in your lifestyle, it is because you are rude, selfish, and unable to see others as people. But, I never try to change the way people choose to deal with this. I deal with it by not waiting. If I said the movie starts at seven thirty, so we need to leave by five after, be assured that I am leaving by five after. I will not wait. I might choose not to go to the movie, or I might go without you. But I will not spend my time waiting for you, if you are habitually late. If I know you well, I will have already told you about this. We will have to understand that I value my time, even if you don’t. It has nothing to do with hurrying.

Now, even I am late twice a year, or so, and I am the least busy person I know. I don’t fret, fume, or vent angrily when my friends are late. I simply assume that they were unavoidably detained by circumstance that prevented letting me know about it earlier. No problem, I probably won’t even notice, really. But the same behavior that needs no excuse twice a year is inexcusable twice a week. You aren’t late, you’re holding court, so you wanted to make an entrance. When you get there, I will probably have left, or have started without you.

The smug assumption that punctual people must be slaves to routine, hurrying through life in some frenzy of “type A” mania is just another way to depersonalize the people you rudely disregard by assuming that the world should wait on you. Perhaps the world will, but I won’t. You are the one who is late, so, you have to deal with the fact that the party started without you, the plane left, and the table was given to another party. By the way, you missed a kick ass sunrise.

Tris

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” ~ Aristotle ~

84

I think it is pointless to continue this discussion. Erislover has shown that he/she will say anything to avoid being caught in the wrong. Frankly, I was impressed with the honesty and audacity of the original post:

[quote]
Whoa, I can’t believe how many on-timers there are. I’m one of thoe habitually late people, largely because I just don’t care.

[quote]
I have no real problem with this attitude as long as the person is honest about it.

Unfortunately, erislover soon amended this bold statement by stating that he/she didn’t make appointments. Soon after that this changed to being half an hour early (though with no arranged time, this would seem hard to measure.) Which is it? If you don’t make appoinments, why did you ever say that you were “habitually late?”

I make no bones about the fact that if someone wants to spend time with me, they will often have to meet me at a specific time. If they can’t do that, I don’t think they are a bad person, but I’m not going to rearrange my life around their iconoclasm.

My advice to you erislover, is that you should stop stressing so much about whether people live as you think they should. Lighten up and enjoy life!

85

oops, sorry about the posting error.

86

Well, amend that to be I try to avoid making appointments.

Not really; with no arranged time I have no problem seeming to arrive at a certain location before other people show up, is all.

Because it is next to impossible to actually get people to accept a non-solid meeting time, so I am often reduced to setting a time and then getting caught up in doing whatever it is I am doing and then being late.

Right… I do. I just get irritated, that’s all. It passes rather quickly. :slight_smile: Thanks for the support, however ambivalent :wink:

87

I didn’t realize the pit moved to IMHO. Since I do dedicate myself to my tasks I won’t respond in kind in this forum.

Are you blind?!?

Allow me to CLEARLY paint the scenario for those for you at home who don’t have the mental ability to do so.

  1. I keep myself enjoyably busy at all times
  2. Time itself is not more important than any of the things I do (ie- I don’t care about it)
  3. because of (2) I often lose track of time
  4. THIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE A SHOW OF SUPERIORITY, COCKINESS, OR ANYTHING ELSE. GET OVER YOURSELF. I HAVE NOTHING TO PROVE TO ANYONE BY BEING LATE. IT HAPPENS BECAUSE I AM INTERESTED IN ALMOST EVERYTHING I DO EQUALLY AND I LOSE TRACK OF TIME.

Is that even fucking possible to understand? If I were your employee you would pay well for that dedication. If I were your friend you’d be glad that I would not worry about sorting laundry while I was hanging out with you, and that when I was with you you could be assured you had my complete attention.

I have never, ever, in my entire life come across such a den of self-absorbed, self-righteous— oh, I don’t even want to finish. Remind me to be late for the next Doper gathering-- I was mistakenly on time for the last one in my area.

88

Gee, I guess the next time someone makes me wait for them instead of being irritated, I’ll thank them :rolleyes:
So if 30 people disagree with your viewpoint then all 30 must be “self-absorbed, self-righteous” people who cannot possibly “have the mental ability” to “fucking understand” your point of view, is that it? Which is more likely, that just about every poster to this thread other than you is idiotic and self-righteous as you propose, or that maybe you are just wrong on this issue?
I don’t see why you can’t understand that “losing track of time” is not an acceptible excuse to make someone wait 30 minutes for you. Not only do you not think that that is rude, but you think that we should be glad?!?

And you think that we are the arrogant ones. Sheesh

89

I side with erislover here, y’all are too uptight. If your time is that important to you, here’s a novel concept: don’t wait up for the latecomers. Few things in life are A-1 maximum priority. So what if you’re already eating your dinner salad, or the movie’s already started, by the time X and Z show up? It’s not a BFD, and they suffer any consequences without having to deal with some inane hissy fit from you too.

90

Hey now, let’s try to be fair to erl. I’m yet another of the on timers (or actually, I’m usually one of the people who show up slightly early), but I think some of y’all are totally missing what he’s saying. For instance…

No, but next time you hire someone who loses himself in his work and puts in 50 or 60 hours per week rather than showing up at work at 9:00 and leaving promptly at 5:00, you should be pleased that your hireling puts so much effort into his job. Next time you have a friend visit, you should be pleased that he’s giving you his attention rather than folding his underwear.

In other words, he’s saying that while what he does might irritate you when you’re a victim of his lateness, when you’re a beneficiary of his lateness, maybe this isn’t seen as a huge problem. Geez.

And this isn’t self-righteous? If 5 million people disagreed with him, that wouldn’t make it wrong. It would make it socially unacceptable. If he and I were friends, we probably wouldn’t see much of each other except when one person randomly drops by, because he doesn’t like being forced to adhere to someone else’s scheduel and I don’t like being forced to wait for others, but that’s not an indictment of either of us.

Fine, so society thinks it’s rude to make others wait for you when you have an appointment. You’ll notice erl claims to be on time for those. His claim is that it’s also rude to force other people to make appointments if they want to interact with you. In all honesty, I can’t say I entirely disagree with him. If I wanted to make appointments all day long, I’d be a receptionist.

91

“His claim is that it’s also rude to force other people to make appointments if they want to interact with you”

And our claim is that a lot of people have to make appointments to do stuff because they have a very tight schedule. To say that they are rude when they have no choice but to schedule things that way is inconsiderate. People have the choice to get ready and leave on time so that they are not late.

92

I am, in fact, one of those people who often has to schedule things to death as well. I get plenty irritated when someone says that they’ll meet you at 7:00 and show up at 7:45 (this is presuming I haven’t left). People who are always late to firm engagements irk me, so in order to reduce the stress in my life, I don’t make appointments with them if I know the nature of the beast. If this means that I never see them, so be it. IOW, I quite understand that sometimes one may have no choice but to schedule things, and I sympathize with the frustration that arises with knowing that the person you made the appointment with WILL be late. (In a brief nod to the OP: I’m convinced that I suffer far more stress in being forced to wait than the late person does in being forced to hurry.)

That said, labelling someone as a rude selfish arrogant little twerp because they are habitually late to semi-solid engagements (“How dare you! You said you’d be here at ‘7 or so’ and it’s 7:20! Dear God, you’re scum!”) smacks of having a 2x4 up the wazoo. If a person does show up on time for appointments, prefers not to have to make them (because he rightfully values his time more than he values yours), yet would like to be able to spend time with you anyway, how does that make him inconsiderate?

When we’re telling people to meet us at 8:30, we’re just as much expecting them to run a portion of their lives according to our clocks as they are doing the reverse when they show up at 9:00 for that same meeting. The biggest difference to me is that one person lived up to his committments and the other did not; the latter person is being rude in failing to honor his word. However, I can appreciate that people who prefer not to live their lives according to an atomic clock might find it equally rude when someone else forces them to do so, no matter what the reason.

93

It’s inconsiderate because the person who is limited to making appointments has no choice in the matter. The other person, with their loose schedule, is much less inconvenienced to show up at a specific time than the other person is in trying to fit a “loose engagement” into a tight schedule.

I understand that that the second person doesn’t like to make appointments. Fortunately, since his schedule is so easy to work with, being that he virtually has none, it isn’t too difficult for him to make an appointment.

It’s much harder for the first person to try to hang out with the other guy if he has a finite amount of time to spend and he spends most of it waiting for him to show up whenever he feels like it.

I’m sorry if he feels put off by having to be on time once, but it’s a small price to pay if he wants to hang out with the guy who has no choice but to make an appointment.

94

by the way, I never called anyone “a rude selfish arrogant little twerp”.

In fact, I went out of my way in this thread to avoid insulting anyone. I used terms like “kind of inconsiderate” or “a little rude”. So if you are responding to one of my posts, please don’t throw things at me that I didn’t say, or put words in my mouth. I never projected the attitude that you described in your post and I would appreciate it if you would refrain from heaping me in with this stereotype of anal people who “have a 2x4 up their ass”.

95

Of course, since the person who’s tight on time has a 2X4 up their ass, and the person who doesn’t is a self-absorbed twit, why do they want to spend time together?

96

Very interesting thread. Not very much gray area, that’s for sure.
I’m an on-timer.
There seems to me to be two kinds of “late” people.

  1. Lost my keys, store was closed, out of gas, ad naseum. Something always seems to go amiss. They are always rushing to and fro and seem to have some mysterious force that follows them and screws things up. I actually have some sympathy for these people. They don’t seem to understand that a little bit of planning and organization would make their lives much easier.
  2. Lost track of time, didn’t care, what’s the big deal. Sure that can happen to anyone - occasionally. If it happens a lot, they are saying “Meeting you wasn’t as important to me as what I was doing at the time.” This is the same as saying that your time is more important than mine. It’s very inconsiderate.

If someone doesn’t want a firm time to meet, fine. But “around 6:00” does not mean 6:30, and it sure doesn’t mean 7:00. Again this can happen, and if it’s a group of people you’re meeting or a party I guess it could be called “fashionably late”. But that’s not what we are talking about here.

It may be that the chronically late person doesn’t want to be inconvenienced by possibly having to wait by themselves, so they show up late. Problem solved, for the late person.

By the way - Very well put Triskadecamus.

97

My apologies! I definitely could have phrased that post better. No offense intended (despite how it reads); what I was trying to do was to illustrate how I imagine the attitude of a perennial on-timer might come across and then taking it to extremes for effect. (For instance, I can’t imagine anyone I’ve ever met calling someone else scum for being 20 minutes late to a semi-solid engagement.) It wasn’t intended to imply that any of y’all are like that.

So for the record, a big ol’ public apology to Airbeck, and no, I don’t think any poster I’ve seen thus far has a 2x4 up the wazoo.

shuffles back off to his hole in the ground

98

That’s cool. I just normally like to keep discussions and debates that I’m involved with as civil as possible. I feel that there is no reason to resort to name-calling or pit-type rantings in these things. If a debate that I am involved in starts getting to that level, then it’s a sign to me that the debate needs to end.

A couple of on-timers did sound a bit like you described in this thread and there were a few insults tossed about from both sides. I was just hoping to avoid getting involved in that aspect of the discussion is all.

99

I want to give a huge “Thank You” to you. This is exactly what I am trying to say when I refer to the double-edged sword.

IMO there is no matter of “no choice” to anything. If you are so time constrained, you should-- IMO-- choose better days to meet your friends. I can’t see having a carefree evening with someone who needs to check their watch every ten minutes, sorry. :frowning: And I’ve tried that, too.

Me: “Blah Blah Blah” (Them looking at watch studiously for a moment-- for the tenth moment in as many minutes)
Them: “What? Sorry, just that I have this appointement at ten tonight / 7 tomorrow moring / whenever…”
Them: “What? Sorry, just that I haven’t been getting much sleep lately…”
Them: “What? Sorry, just that when I make time for you I don’t really mean it, I’m permanently out of time etc etc”

It hurts to be the other side, too, just when the “rudeness” comes in is different.

100

O.K., one more try.

Umm - it’s fine if you don’t like making appointments. But it’s kinda tough to live without making at least some.

For instance-

I’ll meet you Saturday at Joe’s Dinner for something to eat. I think you would agree that we should set a time. I don’t think this could be considered expecting them to run a portion of their lives according to our clocks. The key concept here is that we AGREE to meet at a certain time. No one forced you into anything.

I get there at the AGREED to time.
You don’t.
I admire the decor.
You decide that you want to finish the chapter of the book you are reading.
I realize I hate the decor.
You decide to walk instead of drive because it’s such a nice day.
I’m stuck in a dinner.
You see an acquaintance and stop for a quick cup of coffee.
I re-read the daily paper (I forgot my book).
You feed the ducks at the lake.
I wonder if you’re going to show.

Now this may not be deliberate on the part of the late person. They just aren’t thinking. By not thinking and trying to be on time they are being inconsiderate. In other words, they are not considering how their actions, or lack thereof are affecting the person that is waiting for them.

Surly you can see that. If not, I give up.