Not to nitpick, or start a debate, but speaking for myself, I think it’s much, much more important that someone simply try to be their authentic self rather than impress me on a first and second date.
I’d say don’t call him. But not for the same reasons as everyone else.
Let me see if I’ve got this straight. He was supposed to call between six and seven. He called shortly after seven (7:03? 7:05? it wasn’t 11:32, was it?) to let you know he hadn’t forgotten. That’s a courtesy call. The polite thing to do.
He was obviously in the middle of something, stopped what he was doing to call you, and that wasn’t good enough. You snarked him for doing the right thing.
Sure, his lateness bothers you…but you haven’t said whether or not you’ve spoken to him about that.
But if you can’t cut him some slack for doing what is expected in polite society, give him a break and don’t call him back.
Thanks for the advice, everybody–I really appreciate it. 
I think I am going to give him a call back–he is a really nice guy, and I’ve had some great dates with him. I’m not sure how to bring up the lateness issue (confrontation makes me nervous and awkward and I’m always afraid I’ll say something stupid) but I’ll try to say something politely. keeps fingers crossed
Foxy40, Swampwolf, I probably overreacted and need to make amends for it–but it was just the casualness of the whole thing that irked me, like he’d just stop by whenever he felt like it, and the fact that he was almost always late for our meetings. But if he’s offended by it I’ll try to make it up to him.
I’m jumping in late here, but FWIW:
Talk to him. 'Splain how important things like timeliness, being reliable to do what he said, and your importance to him, are to you.
Give him the chance to start making you somewhat of a priority.
If things don’t improve though - move along, you can do better. And yeah, he’s all the things you say he is, but until/unless he’s going to make an effort in that direction NOW, once you let it be known that these are important values to you and he doesn’t give them an effort - he never will.
I love my wife. We’ve been married over 140 years (dog years), but the one single thing we will always always always go at it over is punctuality. I hate being late, I hate being told someone will do something at a certain time, or be somewhere and they don’t seem to make an effort.
I have friends that I don’t see anymore for just that reason. Someone’s not reliable, or doing what they promised isn’t important to them, that’s ok, I can spend my time with someone that does think the same way as I do about that.
You know, it’s not every day that you get asked for dating advice from the goddess of love herself.
It’s not even being late that bothers me. It’s when someone says, “Oh, we should hang out tonight; I’ll call you around 6” and then doesn’t. Or calls at 8. It really pisses me off. If you say you’re going to call me at 6, the least I expect is a call somewhere between 5:30-6:30. Not that hard. Something like that might end up being a dealbreaker for me. On the other hand, a lot of my friends weren’t aware that this was such an annoyance with me and would be bewildered when I got pissy at them after they finally did call. I hate confrontations more than anyone, but basically I would just say something like: “I’m sorry if I seemed so snippy on the phone last night. It just makes me antsy when people say they’re going to call and then don’t. Just humor me next time and call when you say you will, okay? Unless you’re dead or something. Then I might find it in my heart to forgive you.”
Good luck, Kyth. I hope it works for you. Personally lateness to that point is almost an instant dealbreaker for me, but maybe he really didn’t mean it.
If it had been this *one *time, I would say that you perhaps over reacted. But you said he is late for everything. This always sends me a clear signal that the other person feels his time is worth more than mine. People who wouldn’t steal money from me steal bits and pieces of my life away and don’t mind at all.
In my opinion he won’t change and will be late for the rest of your relationship. If you can adjust how you feel about that, call him. Otherwise wish him luck and look elsewhere.
This has been bothering me, Swampwolf. Your recital of the incident presents the situation as Kyth went postal over a single incident. Whereas I read the same OP, and got that this was not the first time he’d been late, nor the second. The impression I’d gotten was that this represented a chronic problem, and she finally let him know that she was upset about it, in no uncertain terms.
I do agree that she should have made it clear to him that tardiness bothered her - and there’s nothing in the OP for us to believe she had or hadn’t done that.
But your interpretation only works for me if it represented a one-time thing. Single incidents shouldn’t get the sort of nuking that he got, I’ll admit. But chronic patterns of behavior do, IMNSHO, deserve rather more response than simply the single incident might warrant on its own.
For that matter, the right thing to do would have been to call about, say 6:30, when he realized that his project, whatever it was, was running overtime.
Don’t call him. It looks like he’s not that much into you, if having to sort out something not better specified is more important than seeing you.
If I’m wrong and he is interested in you, he’ll call back and everyone will be happy. If I’m right, well, someone like this is better lost than found, as we say in Italy.
Kythereia you sound like a control freak so DON’T call him, he sounds like a nice guy and probably doesn’t need that. Or he’s doing it on purpose and he doesn’t care anyway.
My $.02: I am always late just because i hate sitting around and waiting for everyone else etc. etc. so this comes from someone for whom punctuality is a real problem.
Throw his number away, he will never, ever change and this is obvioulsy important to you as it would be to any normal person. You are not being uptight and it is hard to see how such a thoughtless, inconsiderate, passive-aggressive …err person could ever be thought of as a nice guy.
Or, you could call him.
My response to this was, “What the hell? This guy has a history of being disrespectful and thoughtless, and somehow Kythereia feels like SHE is the one who acted badly?”
Listen to your feelings about the latest incident of lateness - those are your true feelings right there. I’m slightly softening my original stance - do talk to him and tell him that the lateness has to stop, or the relationship is over, but don’t for a minute feel guilty for reacting properly to his thoughtlessness. If you’re supposed to call between 6 and 7 for directions, that means don’t start a task that will take until 8 before you finish it, call later than you said you would, and not be ready to go even when you call late.
Saintly Loser, your chronically tardy friend chooses not to be on time; it’s not a case of “can’t,” it’s a case of “won’t.” We’ve gone around on this topic on the Dope many times before, and there are very few people who have any kind of psychological/physiological condition that makes it impossible for them to show up to social events on time. If it’s good enough for you, I have no judgement to make on your friendship, but don’t kid yourself that she couldn’t be on time if her life really did depend on it.
Just for clarity, the way the OP made it sound was that she hadn’t mentioned the problem to him before. If she had done so and he was still being late, then dropping him is indicated.
Sitnam, being on time for things is common courtesy, as is calling when you say you will call. I don’t know where you come from such that expecting common courtesy constitutes being a “control freak,” but that is not the case on this particular planet.
Bolding added.
No, he is not thoughtful. Someone who is always late is not thoughtful.
Let us know how things went if you called him. Some people don’t realize how annoying habitual lateness is.
Sitnam, expecting that someone will do as they say they will do is not a sign of a control freak. We have some posters here who have dealt with real control freaks; I am sure they could give you some examples if you asked.
I don’t know what planet you are from, but over here if somebody says something along the lines of “I will call you when I get off work, around 6 or 7” (note, I don’t know if this was the actual phrase used) I’d say it is reasonable to expect a call from 4:30pm to 8:30pm. Around 9pm is when you’re actually breaking common courtesy.
I was in a very similar situation as the OP’s guy once. I guess I used the phrase “Yes, I’m leaving work now-ish” several times and it was interpreted as “I am in the process of walking out the door” causing major social doo-doo. When I was informed of this I quickly changed my phrasing to “Yes, I’m leaving work within an hour or two” and all confusion went away.
Four-thirty to eight-thirty is not “around six or seven.” If that is what you consider “around six or seven,” then you obviously don’t know how to tell time. If you plan to call someone, but don’t know when you will be able to, you say, “I’ll call you when I can, don’t wait by the phone.” If you plan to call by a certain time, say that you will call by that certain time. Why is that so difficult?
If I was going to call you between six and seven I’d say between six and seven exactly. There is 24 hours in a day. When I say “around” I’m implying a 5-10% margin, just like “$105” and “$95” are both “around a $100”.
+/-5-10% of 24 hours is +/- 1.2 - 2.4 hours. Makes perfect sense to me.
Edit: I think a lot of people have trouble with qualifiers such as “about”, “around” and “-ish”. If I say “I’ll call you at 7” I will call you at 7. If I say “I’ll call you before 7” I will call you before 7. If I say “I’ll call you before 7-ish” or “I’ll call you around 7” don’t wait by the damn phone – if I knew what time I would call you exactly I wouldn’t qualify it with a term like that.
And this is exactly why clear communication is important. If we had a real life relationship (friends, dating, whatever), I’d explain that, to me, “around” means 20 minutes before or after the time stated. So "around 6-7 means 5:40 to 7:20. So next time you told me you’d call me around 6 or 7, I’d laugh and say, “Your around or my around?” and we’d come to a clearer understanding. No harm, no foul, and neither of us is right or wrong. We just need to know whose definition we’re working from at the moment.
I don’t use such qualifiers, however. It’s just not the way I speak, and often a source of frustration when dealing with people who do speak that way, necessitating that I ask them exactly what they mean. I am a literal person when speaking of times.