I’m in IT working for a huge company. In fact I deal with automated service software so I’ve needed to coordinate processes at the partial-second level. My point is that I’m used to dealing with things ON TIME for my work, but also accustomed to the HUAW situation for my job and company.
But I gotta tell ya: The alternative is worse. Wait-then-hurry-up is a lot more irritating because it leaves the attendees, responsible contributors, et al scrambling because they were unprepared for Event X to arrive so early. And that unprepared → Scrambling situation can lead to some critical mistakes, even from professionals who otherwise manage their expertise quite thoroughly.
Be thankful you have time to prepare and relax.
Then prepare.
Then relax.
And things go a lot smoother.
Exactly. In a perfect world, everyone would work at a comfortable pace, neither hurrying nor waiting, and finish their job exactly on time. But that requires both perfect timing and no unplanned events - and when does that ever happen?
Word. Our Dell laptops would randomly lock up if you took them off the dock without shutting down, which made the delay even longer. We also had constant issues with projectors not connecting, conference phones screwing up, etc.
We spent hundreds of thousands on fancy telecom hardware that would track speakers and turn the camera towards them and all sorts of other cool stuff. Except it took a good fifteen minutes of fiddling before two sites could connect (when it worked at all) and get on with the meeting. We eventually just stopped using it.
And also, one should always try to have something else they can do. If you’re lucky, it could be knitting or a good book; if you have to pretend to patiently wait attentively, it will probably turn out to be mentally composing filthy limericks about your superiors.