With no time sensitive activities and someone that normally is punctual, I’d wait and hour. Somebody that I know is always late, I don’t wait for and I do what I was going to with everybody else, and dismiss the person from my days plans.
As soon as I am aware that I will be late (even just 5 minutes late), I make the call or send a text. I don’t like to keep people waiting.
Additionally, if they are very close friends, I ask them to order their meals ahead of me. If possible, order mine too, so we can all still eat at the same time.
business merting - 5 minute maximum. daily I deal with international concalls across multiple time zones juggled between flights, cross town traffic and customer meetings. as soon as you know you’ll be late, let people know.
10 minutes late and I’ll call, if I have a number and a phone.
Depends on which doctor. My surgeon never gets me in on time anyway. I could easily be up to 45 minutes late and feel that he would still just be getting to me.
My regular doc is better at getting me in on time. I would call them if I were going to be more than 10 minutes late.
5 minutes is late if they’re waiting on you to start. 10 minutes is enough if they’re not waiting on you. I tend to be very punctual. Rationale for all the above: my Username.
- You’re meeting friends for dinner, and you realize you’re going to be late. (You don’t have reservations, and you’re not doing anything time-sensitive afterwards like a movie.) How late would you have to be before you felt obligated to call and tell them? If you’re the one waiting, at what point do you call them and ask where they are? **Five minutes. It’s a long time when you’re waiting. Take weather into consideration, too. If you’re meeting someone at an outdoor destination, you don’t want them to be standing in the rain or what have you. (If I’m going to someone’s home, the Miss Manners (or someone like her) rule is “never early and never more than 15 minutes late.”)
This is tough without cellphones, of course. You can borrow one easy enough, but if your friend doesn’t have one it doesn’t do much good.**
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Same questions, except that it’s a business meeting in the middle of the workday. It’s a meeting of equals, so no one is going to get fired over it. Five minutes or less. People are busy. Have a little respect for their time and your employer’s money. We are forever joining conference calls where the host doesn’t show. Even if it’s my BOSS (and it usually is), I hang up after five minutes.
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You have a doctor’s appointment. How late would you expect to be able to be and still have them honor your appointment? Five minutes or so. They sometimes schedule appointments every fifteen minutes, so they are losing money or a sick person could have been treated last minute had you bothered to call. Yes, I expect the same of them. No, I don’t realistically envision a doctor’s office calling me to tell me he’s runnig behind. Fuckers.
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For those of us aged enough to remember life before cell phones, what would you have said back then? I don’t have a cell phone and I’m almost never late for anything. These are my non-cell phone rules. If I had a cell phone, I’d call immediately on all scenarios.
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You’re meeting friends for dinner, and you realize you’re going to be late. (You don’t have reservations, and you’re not doing anything time-sensitive afterwards like a movie.) How late would you have to be before you felt obligated to call and tell them? If you’re the one waiting, at what point do you call them and ask where they are?
I would call them as soon as I realized I was going to be late. I call people when they are about 20 minutes late for an appointment. I spend a lot of my life dealing with chronically late people. -
Same questions, except that it’s a business meeting in the middle of the workday. It’s a meeting of equals, so no one is going to get fired over it.
**Same answer for me, probably for them also. Chronically late people get really pissed off when reminded that what they’re doing might be socially unacceptable–one doesn’t like to piss off business contacts. ** -
You have a doctor’s appointment. How late would you expect to be able to be and still have them honor your appointment?
No later than the arranged time of the appointment, given that one is usually expected to check in at least fifteen minutes beforehand. -
For those of us aged enough to remember life before cell phones, what would you have said back then?
I guess one just has to show up when one shows up and hope that apologies and re-schedules are accepted. I myself am not late unless there’s a catastrophic emergency.
I will call if I reasonably EXPECT to be 5 minutes or more late. That is, in your example, if dinner it as 7 and I realize, at 6:45, that it’s going to take another twenty minutes minimum to get to my destination because of traffic, I’m going to call at that point.
Depends on who it is. If it’s a social occasion and my putative companion is someone like my perpetually late sister, I don’t call at all; I wait 15 minutes past the time we were supposed to meet, then leave. (She’s routinely an hour or more late for family occasions that she herself scheduled and chose the location for.)
If it’s someone like my baby sister, who is very punctual, I call at 10 minutes–not because I’m impatient, but because I’m worried. My little sister is NEVER late unless something catastrophic has occurred.
Pretty much the same rules as above.
27 responses, and while most of us know plenty of people who are chronically and ridiculously late, no one is fessing up to being that person. Come on out! We won’t bite!
- If I know that I’ll be running late, I let them know immediately. I can’t think of a reason not to. If I’m waiting for a late friend, if alone I’ll order a cocktail and sip it slow, then call to see if my friend is all right. If I’m with a group, I’ll order appetizers, then call when they are almost gone.
- If it’s a business meeting, ten minutes, then call to see if they want to reschedule.
- Doctor’s appointment? I know how overbooked they already are, so I’ll call ahead and tell the receptionist how late I’ll be, and ask if they still want me to come in, or make a re-appointment.
- Before cell phones, there was still family emergencies, bad traffic and the like. Order nibblies, wait a half hour, order lunch and hope they were all right. If they made a habit of it, I’d find other ways to meet with them.
If I think I’m going to be more than 15 minutes late, I call them. I am, however, notoriously bad at estimating time.
I wouldn’t call them if they were late. I like my friends. If there’s nothing pressing (no movie, no time sensitive thing), why am I in such a rush?
I also probably don’t have my cell phone on me.
In my office? Meetings don’t tend to start on time, they tend to start near the appointed time. About 10 minutes or so is normal. If I’m not there at about 15 minutes, and I’m really needed at the meeting, I’ll probably be called. Same the other way.
About 15 minutes. I’d feel no guilt about later, though. Because- the past few doctors (for whom I’ve been on time, btw), have gotten into this lovely practice of getting me into the room within 10 minutes of the actual appointment time, sending in the nurse to take the initial information almost instantly, making me put on the paper gown or whatever, and then making me wait 45 minutes half naked in a freezing cold office for them to wander in for 30 seconds. I’m sure the time I waited in the dermatologist’s office for over an hour, there was some kind of skin emergency - but really, I would have preferred to have waited it out at home, or at least in the main office - clothed and warm.
I pretty much live without a cell phone, so - the same.
I have to say, as someone who was dumb enough to fess up to (and try to explain) chronic lateness in more than one trainwreck thread not long ago. . . You (the general ‘you’) will TOO bite. You bite so hard that it took me 15 minutes to compose this reply because I kept removing what I was typing after reminding myself that I actually don’t want to drag that mess up again.
Any chronic latester who saw those threads is probably fleeing for their lives at this one (and hiding in the closet occupied by picky eaters and all the people who let thier cats out).
Sorry, DoctorJ 
I am never late. If it would happen it would be due to a traffic accident or flat tire. I would then call.
Hell with doctors. My time means nothing to them. I arrive on time then spend an hour or more waiting. I read the newspaper, which I have to bring, do the crossword and the other puzzles ,then go in to get my blood pressure checked.