Extremes usually are irritating. It usually doesn’t matter which end of the stick they beat you with.
I didn’t read the whole thread, but I felt like I read enough to understand the perspective of the OP, and I don’t think that’s a fair assessment at all. AFAICT, he and I would generally agree that there’s a neurotic fixation on time in our culture and it leads to a lot of silliness. Sure, there are some people who are habitually late and some people take it as a personal offense to the point of ending friendships over it. I just think that’s overkill.
Say, for instance, you plan to have lunch with someone at noon who is often late, and you can only stay for an hour because you have to go back to work. What’s the big deal if they show up 5 minutes late? You still have plenty of time to order, eat, and get out on time without being rushed. Cut them some slack, enjoy their company, and just forget about it. Even if it is a common occurence, is it really worth ending a friendship over?
If they show up 10 or 15 minutes late? So maybe you won’t have enough time to casually order, and eat. So you know what, you just go ahead and order at a point to make sure you won’t be have to shove food in your face or be late for work and let them manage their own time if they’ll be late somewhere else. You can still enjoy 45 minutes together if you enjoy their company, right? And, you weren’t exactly planning anything else for those 10 or 15 minutes, so what’s the big deal?
I can understand if someone is, say, 15 minutes late, then gets upset that you already ordered or that you can’t stay after a certain time. That’s when they’re saying their time is more important than yours. Otherwise, if that 15 minutes that you would have otherwise been spending with them anyway, so I just can’t really understand being upset about it.
I can also understand if you have hard plans that can’t be changed like a concert or a movie. In those cases, one is well advised to try to allow enough time to meet up in advance and then if they can’t make it in time, just leave without them. If they make a big deal that you left without them, that’s one thing, otherwise, I just fail to see what the big deal is.
And it goes both ways too. Plenty of times I’ve waited around on other people too, and I apply the same guidelines. If I can wait, I do, and if I can’t, I don’t; it’s just not worth getting upset over. The only time I can remember getting upset with someone else being late was when I was still somewhat early in a relationship, a friend was having a bachelor party and his fiancee was having a bachelorette party at the same time. I ended up being late because I was going to give her a ride but an hour after we were supposed to meet up she wasn’t ready, so I had to arrange a ride for her (which involved getting one of the women from the bachelorette party to leave to go pick her up). Still not a big deal until I found out later that she still wasn’t ready to be picked up more than 3 hours after that, so she was more than 4 hours late total and got there pretty much when the whole thing was winding up and, to make matters worse, did some other obnoxious stuff when she got there. Of course, since the relationship was still young, her being THAT late made all them think poorly of her, and while I don’t insist my friends approve of my girlfriends, it’s certainly better for everyone if they like her. And even then, I told her I was upset, why I was upset, I forgave her, and that was that.
In my mind, it really just comes down to whether you value a particular relationship more or less than you value that time that got wasted when they were late. If they’re someone you don’t really like anyway, I can understand that being a catalyst for ending or modifying the relationship. But if it is worth that time, then you obviously want to keep that relationship, so you just learn to cope with it.
Really, I have to ask, do people really schedule all day every day within less than 5-minutes of tollerance? I can understand for some days that are just really busy with work and errands and other obligations, but every day? And even if you’re that busy, how do you deal with traffic jams and other unexpected inconveniences? I couldn’t imagine trying to spend some time with someone, muchless enjoying myself, with that sort of inflexible schedule every single day.
To which I reply she’s not my friend, she’s my sister-in-law and if I ever want to see my nieces and nephews, I have to suck it up with a smile.
Probably every person in the whole world can say essentially the same thing, substituting in “boss”, “parent” or “spouse-who-wasn’t-like-this-when-we-dated-I-swear!”.
A boyfriend once told me he was a scorpian (or snake?), and that I could not trust him. Yet he wooed me anyway, always in the back of his mind, I think, that he had all the right in the world to treat me badly because I had been duly warned. He was absolutely truthful about his character. Not to be trusted. Pretty twisted, eh?
I’m going to post a really interesting anecdote to this thread.
It sounds like he was the opposite of the thread title. Pretty admirable.