Hm, can you point that out to me? All I see NB saying is “a good excuse”.
I have a friend whom, I think, tries to be as late as possible. There was a BBQ. Pot luck. Supposed to start @ 2, she said she’d bring corn salsa. She didn’t start making it until 4:30. Not that she was busy. She was wasting time on FACEBOOK! By the time she finally got the ingredients and made it and showed up (4 blocks away), nobody wanted it. So, she wasted her time and solidified her status as “The Always REALLY Late One”.
At New Years Eve, we made bets on how close to midnight she’d arrive.
NB said:
*
Absolutely, by their very nature babies are unpredictable elements and so no reasonable person would think any less of you in those circumstance.*
It reallty comes down to the idea of commitment. Until you and the other party agree on a time, arriving at a place at any given time can’t be considered early, late, or exactly on time.
So, why doesn’t the need to assert yourself over ‘You time nazi! You can’t tell me what time to be there’ kick in while you’re making the commitment instead of afterwards?
Doesn’t the conversation go something along the lines of:
“Hey, Bob, want to see Spiderman Six on Thursday?”
“Sounds good!”
“Okay, let’s go to the 8 o’clock show. And maybe we could meet up at Pizza Palace for dinner first? Six thirty?”
Now, at this point Bob says something like “Sure” and but then he shows up at PP at 7:15 and unnamed friend is annoyed over waiting and now they don’t have time to relax and enjoy their pizza and talk and such without missing the start of the movie and so forth.
So why doesn’t Bob ‘rebel’ against having someone else’s time demands imposed on him right then? Say: “Naw. That’s too early for me, I got other things to do and I want to unwind for a while. Let’s go to the 10 o’clock show?”
And then negotiations can proceed.
It’s not like one side has some sort of power to FORCE a particular time on the other side. Simply don’t agree to a meeting time unless it suits you. (Barring stuff like job interviews and such, of course.)
And if some has to play games over faking the ‘due’ time, why can’t it be the ‘naturally’ tardy person? You and friend settle on meeting at 9 somewhere. Tell yourself you really agreed to 8:30. Then you can go aheat and be, oh, 40 minutes ‘late’ for your 8:30 commitment without seriously ticking off the other side. 
That was big of NB. It was after the post I replied to, but good on NB. I had a boss that wouldn’t consider a baby a good enough excuse, though.
I won’t fight over it, or angst over it, but I will drop chronically late acquaintances like hot potatoes if I can. I’d never marry one.
The worst is if it’s a coworker. You just have to grit your teeth and bear it.
I don’t know what you mean here.
Perhaps this answers it. It is an asymmetric relationship. The person who is late holds the power to screw up the plans of the many.
I just try to be pragmatic about it.
I don’t stand over people with a stopwatch. If my clients are late for appointments I don’t fixed them with a withering glare and say “glad you could make it”.
But I do have to adjust my dealings with people according to what degree I can trust their commitments to me. The more I can rely on them, the happier and more productive I can be.
I still stand by my contention that late without good reason, apology or smidge of contrition is rude.
Oh, here I thought we were sharing anecdotes and our personal opinions and experiences about punctuality. You can’t be that dense, since you relegated your own examples and false analogies about people’s attitudes on being late. See your own:
See, just like you, I am sharing my observations on the mentality of uptight timekeepers. Just in case you don’t have the mental capacity to work this out for yourself, let me spell it out for you. IN MY EXPERIENCE, people who are rigid about timekeeping down to the minute are often rigid about other things in life, and what they think others should do does not always conform with reality.
Well, lucky you. There are many in this thread who have said they drop friends because of their chronic lateness. I have to assume that there are no other redeeming qualities to their friendship for them to end a friendship over this. I, on the other hand, can’t stand people who are so obsessed with people showing up on time that they start harassing me with phone calls once they arrive with “Where are you?” and “What’s taking you so long? I’ve been WAITING!” I’ve had that happen, and after assessing other aspects of our friendship (see above on rigidity on other issues), and decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. Everyone has a certain threshold, and I don’t judge others for ceasing to be friends with someone whose company they don’t get pleasure from, but point is, these circumstances are different for everyone.
You would think that, but then we have a poster in this thread who actually said, for “lunch at noon”:
I point you to my first post where I describe my mother’s inability to get organized. Believe it or not, although the result is the same, the motivation is not as you point out that she lacks consideration. Oh, I’m sure with the right skills, she’ll “learn” to put her pants on before doing anything else, but when you cast such a wide net of condemnation, you don’t get to know their individual motivations and just like my dad, you don’t come to the right tools to prod these people on their way.
And pray tell, denial about what? That they are INCONSIDERATE and thus not worth the carbon molecules they are composed of because they tend to run late? For god’s sake, when you actually know a person, you know what you can deal with and what you can’t. What I understand is that everyone’s threshold is different. What I don’t understand is why you’re in denial of the fact that you can’t change others’ actions, just how you react to them.
This is where we draw the line on morality?? You’re punctual, I’m not so I am ipso facto ‘morally inferior’? :eek: Good grief. And to think that all this time I thought that I had high moral standards because I saved myself for marriage! Because I’m a law abiding citizen! Because I haven’t killed anyone, or even just punched them in the face! What a fool I was! :smack: None of that so called morality counts for anything next to this - its all about punctuality! Because of course, there is no other way for a person to be selfish, right? Or immoral? Or inconsiderate? At least I’m assuming that there must be no other way, because so many here seem to be throwing out accusations of selfishness, laziness, immorality and narcissism, as though none of these traits could possibly apply to them! How could they? After all, they’re punctual! And isn’t that all that really matters?
Well, you can bet that from now on, I am going to start making allowances for the time its going to take me to dump the litter of kittens into the trash can and pitch the puppies into the river, just to make sure I make my appointment on time! I have seen the error of my ways!
(But wait…can I avoid eternal damnation if I accept Jesus as my savior while still being chronically late? This is all so confusing… 
)
Oh I’m sorry Grapefruit, was I inconsiderate? Way to freak the fuck out about it.
Hey, I remember this thread!
Well… not exactly the same thread. And with different faces. Pretty much the same outcome, though.
LOL. I should have known. Someone who doesn’t bother to observe and understand latecomers’ motivations beyond OMG SO SELFISH! obviously won’t be assed to read my reply and attempt at discussion without jumping to wrongly assigned sentiments.
That, or it’s the typical response to what the internet people call PWNED.
Wait, can we go back a second. Because I still don’t understand the rationale here.
Someone says they will meet you at 1pm for lunch. They don’t show up till 1:30. All you people who are chroncially late would be totally fine with that? Even if you had places to be later in the afternoon? That person is not being rude? Why aren’t they? They said they would be at a certain place at 1pm. They were not. They basically lied.
I have a friend who is chronically late (well, I don’t see her much lately). She was a bridesmaid at my wedding. I was not really a “bridezilla” type, but I had one request. Please don’t be late for the rehersal, because the priest who married us was a real stickler and very uptight and he stressed that we all had to be on time.
My friend …was thirty minutes late. “Sorry,” she said, “There was a ton of traffic.” This was at a seaside resort town in the summer. There is *always *tons of traffic. It wasn’t like there was a totally unexpected 6 car pileup on the freeway.
I guess I should feel lucky though. She later missed another friend’s entire wedding. She should up right afterwards, as the reception was starting. Again, “traffic.”
The point is that they would never become friends with such people in the first place.
Heh. Inconsistent are we? “I have to assume there are no other redeeming qualities…”
Settle down there Grapefruit. No one here is being so hyperbolic but you. Being inconsiderate is being inconsiderate. And being inconsiderate chronically is generally not a good sign.
And again, I don’t think anyone here is calling your mother inconsiderate. We simply have never met her. As has been repeated over and over again here, there are in fact good excuses for being late. Those cases are not what anyone is referring to when calling tardiness inconsiderate.
Overreact much?
It does seem awfully familiar; same rationalizations, same excuses…
Heh. Would you please give some examples of said “latecomers’ motivations” please?
well…maybe. but that appears to be the least of my moral failings!
Well, I’m not sure I agree with that assessment - there seems to be a lot of hyperbole flying around this thread. Your statement that ‘being inconsiderate chronically is generally not a good sign’ seems pretty restrained and non judgmental in comparison.
