Seems on time/early people are rude even when people *aren't* late (LONG)

The BBQ Pit
21

Yes, we all agree on a time. Why do we agree on a time? Because, hey, I won’t accept it any other way! Which, of course, is my point in the first place.

Believe me, they know. In fact, about 50% of my friends are just like me! Can you believe we all get along? I know it is hard to wrap your bigoted mind around, but it is true! People can work around such things!

And why the fuck do you suppose we agreed to a time? Hmm? Can you guess who’s idea that was to make time so fucking important? In fact why I am so pissed in the first place?

“What do you mean around one? One thirty? Pick a time!” For example, you say:

Poopy-head! Can you think about this for a second and see why it both doesn’t solve the problem and doesn’t eliminate the double standard? Please.

Why do you suppose we agreed to a time, you fucking inconsiderate piece of shit? Was it… satan? No, no. Was it… weapon threats? No, no. Was it… because you can’t fucking use one ounce of empathy in setting a meeting time by not making it a specific meeting time? “I think he’s got it now!”

Oh, that’s cute! Because you know, people who hold time to be so important really don’t mind that at all, nope. They never say anything like, “Well which one, seven or seven-thirty?” They never pressure for a more exact time, nope, not those sweet innocent babes who don’t impose their standard on anyone else, nope nope…

I may have said some shocking things on this board, I admit it. But this just disgusts me, it really does. I mean, we’re not talking about physical violence, spitting at people, calling someone names all the time, stealing… we’re talking about trying to work together so time isn’t a huge deal. And that is too much for you.

Your love runs real deep, man, real fucking deep.

Yes, I realize you do, that’s my problem. :frowning: Why do you insist on making explicit meeting times? Why do you suppose they do? Do you think they don’t know they are late all the time? It is almost impossible to avoid referencing time with a looooot of people. That really annoys me (I don’t consider it rude and arrogant because I think they are just making a mistake in judgment). But I’m pointing it out to you: I don’t want to agree on a time in the first place. See what I mean now? As an exercize, when a get together of some sort is going to occur that doesn’t depend on external events (like movie times, for example), try not to set an explicit time. With a lot of people it just isn’t that easy. True, the exact time we meet doesn’t matter… and yet, they require an exact time anyway. Like in Cheesestak’s post above: “If you can’t make 7:00 say 7:30”. You see why this doesn’t solve the problem?

22

Erislover, could you please explain to me exactly how your social life works? It all sounds a little serendipitous. When I make plans with someone, I usually have to work them around other plans- work, school, other social obligations, my own errands and to-do list. I don’t see how to do that without setting times or jettisoning my own life.

Hypothetically, let’s say X and Y are friends meeting for lunch. Per Y’s preference, they do not set a time. X shows up at noon (why? well, maybe that’s when X is hungry). Y does not show up until 2:00.

a. Would X be an uncaring and unloving friend if X ordered and ate lunch before Y came?

b. Would X be an uncaring and unloving friend if X left before Y came?

c. What if X had to be at work at 2:30? What if X had to be at home at 2:30 because that’s when the little X-lings came home from school? What if X had no other plans that afternoon?

23

You don’t want to agree on a time? How about a place? How about what you will be doing with other people? I can just imagine the conversation;
“Hi Fred. Wanna go do something at some place at some time?”
“Sure, erislover, that sounds like lots of fun. See ya some time!”
I think you may have to concede that for social engagements with other people to actually occur, you will have to set times and places.

24

There is usually a slight difference between “Meet me at 5:34:46” and “I’ll be there around 6:00 or 6:30”.

Of course you do, as do I. When I have a specific time to meet, I try and occupy every instant I can up to that time, usually causing me to be late. When I don’t have a specific time, I find it is much easier to arrange priorities.

Like those number puzzles, where you have a square of numbers 1-15 and you have to shift them around? You know why that hole is there, right? Ever wish you had another?

25

I think between 6 and 6:30 is perfectly reasonable. I’d do that. But I’d start getting steamed around 6:40. I’d be history by 7.

Oh, and I have a cell phone, so friends who will be late could do me the courtesy of giving me a heads-up call. And they can expect to get a call on their cell or a message on their voicemail before I give up and leave.

[UNSOLICATATED, UNWANTED ADVICE]Well, you’ve identified a problem here, but it’s your problem. Maybe you could work on some time management issues? It sounds like that habit of filling up your time is just causing you stress. I’ll shut up now.[/UNSOLICATATED, UNWANTED ADVICE]

26

Sure. But do you say, “Meet me on the third tile from the left wall and four tiles from the front wall, based on the entrance? Ok, I’ll give you +/- five tiles or so, but otherwise you’re just being rude!”

27

See, this is the problem, your time is so fucking valuable, that you plan to use every single second, wind up late, and cause others (who weren’t late) to waste their time waiting for you. You consider your time to be more valuable than the time of your friends. You refuse to waste an instant, and don’t give a flying fuck if your friends waste their time waiting for you.

This works fine if you’re just meeting me at my house to hang out, or go out later. If you want to say “I’ll come over tonight after dinner sometime.” that’s fine. If we are meeting at a location, a restaurant, or a movie, or whatever, how the fuck am I to know when to show up? How does this work? Enlighten us.

28

Only a person who was concerned with time in the first place would think like this, that much is obvious. It is not the time that is important, it is the tasks, which all have varying degrees of importance. Time is the little number puzzle we shift our activities around in. It is the paper we write our poems on. It is just there as a handy guide, it is not a prison.

Please do not tell me what I consider important. You have shown no ability in this thread to understand what I’ve said, so I don’t think it is appropriate to speculate on my “inner” motives and desires.

Time does not have to be important to me just because it is important to you. At all. And this decision is reached completely independently of any value judgment on people I interact with. The way I feel about my friends and the way I perceive time are totally unrelated.

Great! That’s what I like to hear, no pressure, just whatever happens happens. Of course that is not always possible, everyone has lots of things to do.

I believe I have already at least 5 times in these three threads. For entertainment purposes only, I will outline a conversation:

“Hey, erl, what’s going on?”
“Nothing, man.”
“You busy today?”
“Sort of, I got laundry I’m doing and some cleaning I need to get done today.”
“Yeah, I got some shit to do, too. Wanna get together later today?”
“Yeah, actually, that’d be cool. Play some pool?”
“Sure!”
“Alright, say, sometime around 5?”
“OK! Give me a call.”
“Alright.”
So it is maybe 4:30 or 5:10 and the phone rings, and plans are worked on from there.
“Hey, it’s erl. I’m about ready to go here, you?”
“No, not yet. But I could probably be there around 5:30.”
“Ok, cool. You’ll just have some catching up drinking to do!”
Hang up phone, go to bar, and enjoy one’s self instead of compulsively checking the time.

Here’s another example, one I can take from work. My boss and I frequently go out for dinner.

“Well, erl, should we have dinner tonight?”
“Yes, that sounds great. Joe’s?”
“OK.”
“What time were you thinking?”
“Any time you want.”
“Well, let’s try and wrap stuff up around 7.”
Of course if one of us doesn’t, the other still has other things to do.

Funny, he never seems to mind when dinner gets pushed back because I work late. My friends never seem to mind when I put off some chores to hang out with them longer. I wonder why? Can anyone speculate?

29

Time is just one of the dimensions in the space-time continuum. Suppose we use space instead of time to analyze the same problem. Let’s say that I don’t think space matters. People who insist that we agree upon spatial coordinates are unreasonable and hold to a double standard. If you insist that we specify a place to meet, then you are the one who has caused the problem when you arrive at 10th Street where we agreed to meet, and I arrive at 15th Street. If you had not insisted on a specific place, then we could have simply wandered around in a sort of search-and-rescue matrix until we bumped into each other. If you were any kind of friend, that would have sufficed. And in general, unless you are willing to occupy yourself with unnecessary and avoidable effort to find me where I am, you hold friendship to a very low standard.

30
31

That seems to imply that you have already covered this, when you haven’t. No one is saying “Let’s meet at 07:03:52:11 GMT”. But you seem unwilling to pin down even the building, much less the tile on the wall.

Let me ask you this: what is a person supposed to do while he is waiting for you? Should he bring a book to read, or what? And if you arrive while he is in the middle of a chapter, are you willing to stand around and wait quietly until he gets to the end of it?

32

erislover, face it you are a selfish prick. Just show up on time when you agree to a time. It’s that simple. Cheesesteak has explained why. The problem is that you are concerned with not wasting your time, but don’t care about wasting other people’s time. You’ve made that manifestly clear. And if that wasn’t bad enough, you try to make it their fault that you are an inconsiderate fuck by claiming that they only care about it because they, for some bizarre reason, care about the time they spend waiting for your loser ass to show up. You make an agreement to show up at a certain time, then show up at a certain time. It’s called keeping your word. Obviously you don’t understand that little concept.

33

Eris,

I agree with you up to a point.
I am usually late for work, usually about 5 minutes. My job, howver, is pretty lax about that.

However, I think your comparing tiles on a floor to time is pretty weak.

For Example:

Hey pal, let’s go meet at the mall.
where?
Orange Julius?

If my pal met me at the Panda Express…no big deal. I can see them from the Orange Julius.

As being someone who is late (I have a really hard time waking up. Once I am up, all is swell), I can see your points about 5 minutes…give me a break. Life should not be THAT regimented. At least for me.

But it does get to the point that 20 mintues is late (that is my magic number to begin getting antsy). To me, that is 20 minutes I could have been sleeping, dammit! :wink:

but seriously, how late is too late?
When you go to a Doctor’s appointment and she is running 5 hours late, is that cool? What if you are taking time off of work? What if you have to go get your kids? (jusy curious…you don’t have kids, right?)

Yeah, living live by a clock sucks.
But * that’s just the way it is*.

When in Rome, ya know?
And as far as I can see, though it sucks for me, the majority of ‘Romans’ out there are punctual.

one more cliche:

time is money.

34

I believe people that are habitually late are both rude and self absorbed. Erislover looks to be another prime example.

There’s this guy I’m in law school with, walks in five minutes late to every fucking class. I mean, the guy is punctual, he’s just wrong on the time. Class starts at 9, at 9:05, in comes Dumb Fuck. Every fucking day. Second class of the day starts at 11. 11:05, Dumb fuck walks in. He’s allready been in the fucking building for two hours, and he still can’t get there on time! WTF?

I understand making vague plans, but you have to admit there is a difference between these phrases.

I’ll be there at seven.
I’ll be there around seven.
I’ll be there some time between seven and eight.
I’ll be there some time tonight.

If you don’t want to tie yourself to a time, then don’t say you will be at a place at that time. The English language provides for all sorts of flexability, just use it!

35

I don’t think Eris is a selfish prick. Far from it. He just doesn’t see this issue the way we do. I hope we can change his mind. He has said before that he is willing to do that in some cases. Maybe this will be such a case.

36

When I wait for someone, I am not wasting my time, I am occupying it with something else Nuerotik.

Face it, you are a selfish prick. Just don’t set a specific time. We could go back and forth on this one all day.

I am not making it their fault at all. Where the hell did you get that from? I said, if I am being rude by not adhering to strict time schedules, then they are being rude too for forcing me to adopt them. Try and keep up, will you?

No, but some are saying ten minutes is too much. So like I said, I’ll grant you +/- five tiles, no biggie. You can handle that, right?

If 30 minutes in a spatial analogy amounts to an entire structure to meet at… sure. I do not think space and time are perceived proportionately, but then again, I didn’t make up the analogy, I’m just working with it. When I say I’m going to meet someone at a certain bar, I have to search the whole building for them, in principle. Of course in fact I do not, for there is only so much seating available and we are not hiding from each other. When I say I’ll meet a person around 5, I mean around five. Give or take a few. If it happens that you can’t wait, don’t.

I always carry books myself; in fact I carry three of them and a journal, because you never know what sort of delays you are going to run into. I would not tell other people what to do, however. I would suggest bringing whatever work they can, or a book, or a deck of cards (something I used to carry around, too). That’s up to them, of course. I never thought to ask how people occupy themselves when waiting for meals, or a TV show, or tapes to rewind, or red lights, or traffic jams, or all the millions of things we wait on every day, day in and day out and don’t go ballistic over.

37

Okay, fair enough, I suppose. Now let me ask you this. Suppose when you arrive, the person asks you to wait there while he finishes his book and runs a quick errand. After all, I reckon you’re not demanding that they conform their time to yours since you’re not conforming yours to them, right? If his errand takes only 20 minutes or so, then when he gets back, he’s within your tolerances.

38

Eris, I’m reluctant to post as this is beginning to be a pile-on, but no one has expressed irritation with the type of situations that you are describing in your hypotheticals. The situation people are complaining about is more akin to if your friend who could probably be there at 5:30 is still not there at 6:30, and if he pulls that shit all the time.

39

This is called setting a time, 5:30. You’re setting the time later in the day, and keeping it flexible undil then, but you still set a time Of course, it could be 30min or 45min later, depending on how late someone shows. YOU might not care, but some of us do. I don’t particularly enjoy sitting alone in a bar drinking, waiting for someone to show. There are other things I’d rather do than wait.

When a friend says 5:30, I expect them to have made an honest assessment of when they really think they’ll be there. I do not expect that 5:30 really means 6:00. There are people who will tell you 5:30 20 times and show up at 6:00 19 times. A few minutes here or there rarely bothers anyone, it’s the people who are always late, by a significant amount, that is a major irritant.

40

Wow, I had no idea there were this many incredibly anal-retentive pricks on this board. I simply can’t believe the number of people in here who say they’d end a friendship over such a monumentally insignificant detail. Guess I know what friendship is worth to you people. Glad I don’t know any of you in real life, too.