I used to despair about my wife’s complete lack of time sense. She really does not understand the concept of how much time is needed to do things, so she is usually late. It took me about a year to figure out that I need to multiply what ever she says by a factor of three. “I’ll be ready in ten minutes” means a half hour. I have a lot of faults, but I’ve always been punctual; early, even, especially to work. It’s probably the military training. Prior to 9/11, her tendency to arrive at airports twenty minutes or less before flight time drove me insane. I was finally able to break her of that habit.
As for other things, I don’t believe she’s inconsiderate, regardless of how the message is received.
they either don’t realize it or are perceiving it as not a big deal. As I said already and I’ll say it one more time, people tend not to change unless forced to by consequences. I mean, let me put it this way- If I’m habitually late to work, but nobody I work with says anything to me about it, and I’m never written up or disciplined for it, then where’s the incentive to be on time? Am I supposed to know that you’re giving me dirty looks behind my back?
Although I can agree that punctuality shows good time management skills, I fail to see how that constitutes ‘strength of character’. Do you really believe that all you need are good time management skills to qualify as a person of strong character - selfless, dependable and respectful?
I think that it just shows that you are a punctual person - and it tells me nothing else about your character at all. However, your willingness to make global moral judgments about others based on the fact that they lack a skill that is important to you, tells me a lot more…
I’m an occasional latecomer, and this about sums it up. I know that it CAN, on occasion, take an hour to get to work, but goddamit it SHOULDN’T take an hour to get six miles, so I tend to not allow for what is offensively unnecessary. And half the time when I’m late, I can blame the fucking slow walkers for it. Damn I hate slow walkers. Now THOSE people are selfish and inconsiderate.
As for the OPs opinion that being late is a character flaw, whatever. Yeah, I care more about my time and priorities than I do about yours. Clearly, we have that in common.
I am not the world’s most punctual person. Mostly it’s because I’m not good at judging how long it will take me to get places. I think I got this from my mom, who is NEVER on time to ANYTHING - I had to get over my upbringing to become the mildly punctual person I am today.
My best friend is chronically late. It drives me up the fucking wall. And we’re not talking five minutes - she’s been as much as 40 minutes late to stuff at times. She always has a good reason for why she’s late, but never has a good reason as to why she couldn’t send me a text message to let me know that something had come up. Her being incredibly late to something is the cause of the only argument we’ve ever had. She’s French and I think that has something to do with it, but it doesn’t make me like it any better.
I have an ex who was chronically late to everything, drove me mad- the worst time I remember was when we had to catch a train for a gig we were both really looking forward to.
I booked the train tickets and told him the train left 20 minutes before it really did; the rest of the trip ‘planning’ was left to him.
This took the form of coming downstairs literally 5 minutes before the train was ‘due’, so far as he believed, discovering his dad was in, and asking him if we could have a lift. As it happened, he wasn’t busy, and said sure. We get in the car nand drive casually to the other side of town, my ex is cheerfully talking about the great time we’re going to be having (by this time, by the clock, the train has ‘left’, which I point out to be told, 'Oh, it’ll be fine, they’re late all the time).
We get to the station exactly as the train does, and I literally have to drag him on before it goes, as he’s ‘just checking this is the right one,’ (this station had a grand total of 1 platform going in that direction and all intercity trains go to the same destination. I got the train from there every school day for 7 years.)
Once on the train, he notices the train is listed as being on time, and arrived 20 minutes later than I told him it would. And gets angry at me for lying to him.
I ask what would have happened if he’d known what time it was really due, and he says we ‘needn’t have been in such a rush if he’d known,’ then sulks at me for about an hour… twitch
This is why late people drive me insane. Partially because I’m normally about 10 minutes early for everything so spend a lot of time waiting for people and partially because anyone who is regularly late automatically reminds me of him.
This is also the way that I view it. Being chronically late is a form a passive narcissism.
Being on time is not a skill, it is an ethic. Like having a good work ethic.
The difference between "others are depending upon me, so I have an obligation to be on time’, vs “I feel no obligation to those that are waiting on me and I shall get there when I do, the others can deal with it. They always do.”
My mother (who is NEVER late) sucks at pronouncing non-English words and even pronouncing English words in ways other than she learned growing up in Iowa. For instance, it took her more than a decade of living in Washington state to stop pronouncing it “Warshington”. She is a professor and a consultant, interacting with people from all over the world every day, and butchers many of their names. When I was a teenager, she pronounced my first serious boyfriend’s name, Eric, as “Ear-ick”, which pissed me off every time. I thought she just didn’t care, or maybe was doing it out of disrespect for Eric and for my choice in boyfriends. In my thirties, though, she had an ongoing project in Costa Rica. I watched as she struggled to the point of tears in trying to take Spanish classes. She could memorize the vocabulary and grammar, but for the life of her she can barely manage to make herself understood, after years of classes now, because her pronunciation is so poor.
Is this a character failing? Is she showing disrespect for Spanish speakers and putting her ideas about pronunciation first? I don’t think so. I think pronunciation is a skill, one that for whatever reason is very, very hard for Mom. She could drop everything and spend all her time in immersion classes to avoid offending anyone, but … well, I don’t think that would be sensible. Or necessary.
You probably use more than your global fair share of resources. You probably use more energy and generate more waste than you should. You probably drive to places you could walk to, or bike to, or whatever, instead. You probably buy things you don’t need and fail to give all your disposable income to charities for worthy causes. Do you do this out of contempt for the poorer people of the planet?
I doubt it. Should you change your inconsiderate, morally suspect ways? Maybe. Will I condemn you for not doing so? No.
Sure, some people who are habitually late are rude and inconsiderate. Not all of them. For some people, it’s a skill that’s just very, very difficult to acquire. For some, other elements of their habits or value systems – elements that have nothing to do with disrespect – interfere.
I’ve noticed that people who are chronically late seem to make it to things like job interviews on time, so they are capable of making the effort, but most of the time they just can’t be bothered to make the effort.
I had a demonstration of how different people function differently a couple of years ago. My sister and I were starting from the same place and going to the same place; due to circumstances, we had to take two cars. I said it would take 25 minutes to get there, my sister insisted it would take ten. It took 25 minutes on the dot. I’m almost always on time, my sister has struggled with being late all her life.
I think there’s a lot of factors in play for people who are habitually late; they don’t estimate time well, they overload themselves (my sister tries to get ten things done before she goes out the door, instead of just putting on her shoes and going), they overschedule themselves, they have unrealistic ideas of how long things take. I wouldn’t say all late people do it to make anyone else miserable, though - that just seems to be the unfortunate fallout when the punctual come in contact with the tardy.
In the end, punctual people have to decide what to do about the tardy - some people (like my sister) I will make allowances for. Other people (casual acquaintances) get almost zero leeway - late once and I won’t make plans with you again. The tardy can also work on improving the things they don’t do well if they recognize that there is a problem; some tardy people really don’t care how they affect other people, so make no effort to change.
I learned from my father, who was the master of punctuality. Whenever he/we were going anywhere and had to be there at a specific time, Dad would be there on the dotevery single time. Whenever he was picking me up from somewhere, he’d show up at exactly the minute he was supposed to, without fail. And it’s not like he was showing up early and just waiting around the corner for the right time, he just had an almost supernatural ability to judge distance and traffic at any given time to determine when to leave the house to get somewhere at a specific time.
Perhaps I inherited it because I’m able to (mostly) do this without even thinking about it, although I occasionally show up somewhere crazy early. If I had to analyze it I suppose it’s mostly a matter of being ready to go whenever and knowing the area exceptionally well.
I have noticed thta most idealists are also late people. I think they plan for how long a trip should take, ratehr than for how long it does take.
Then there ar ethe utterly clueless. They are unable to think or plan ahead about anything. You can spot them on picnics, they are the ones who can’t sing “100 bottles of beer on the Wall” because they never think about what number will come up until they get to the actual word in the song. My friend S will reliably and dependably leave the house at the time that you give her, regardless of the length of the trip or the fact that she was actually supposed to arrive at that time.
I have also had one boss who kept people waiting purposefully, to prove that he was important enough that they’d do so. He also often took calls while others were in mid-sentence. If you are confusing all late people with the likes of him then you are making a huge mistake.
In all fairness, I don’t think that’s what she’s saying at all. More “What’s WRONG with people who can’t crawl out of their own ass for the 2 seconds it takes to realize that I got better shit to do than sit around waiting on them all the time?” Because, you know, it really shouldn’t take “silent seething” to make someone aware that constantly being a pain in someone’s ass is a Bad Thing and should be avoided when possible.
The fact that not being a constant pain in the ass isn’t enough incentive for someone to change is a moral failing. I’m sorry, it just is. Not a major one, obviously, but a moral failing nonetheless, because it means you don’t give a flying fuck about making someone’s life worse.
Well, that’s part of it - tardy people sometimes seem to think that other people’s time is worth nothing. I don’t agree with the idea that getting a job is important, but keeping me waiting is not.
Exactly, when it is important to their own goals, they are on time, but when negatively impacts others, they don’t care. It is the definition of narcissism.
My own experience has been that the chronically late people in my life are also the chronically selfish people in my life. They fall into two categories:
(1) People who think they are literally more important than other people, so other people can wait for them (they’ve told me so), and
(2) People who are so Zen-Buddhist that they’d rather end the friendship with you than work out any kind of friction or make an effort to hold up their end of a compromise.
That’s been my honest experience. I haven’t happened to meet a single chronically late person who just literally couldn’t estimate the time needed to do things (though I’ve met plenty who thought it was a waste of their energy to try to estimate) or who was late on “moral” grounds.
Well, if you valued your time as much as you expect others to, you wouldn’t be spending it sitting around waiting for someone who’s late. Especially if you’re waiting for someone that you had every reason to expect would be late, based on past experience. You are the one making the choice to wait.
And I didn’t say that your time wasn’t important, only that its a lot lower on the priority list than making a living. On my priority list, obviously, not yours.
I know my posts make it sound like I am one of those chronically late people, which I’m not. Not usually, anyway. But sometimes… Because time is not an important issue for me as a rule. I don’t like being a slave to the clock, and I will avoid that as much as I can. If you can’t deal with that, I understand. I don’t demand that you make allowances for my idiosyncrasies. But if you have reason to expect that I will probably be late, then don’t get on your moral high horse and hold me responsible for your time. “You knew damn well I was a snake before you brought me home!”
Isn’t it even more a part of cultural context? I personally don’t hold up punctuality as some kind of virtue or quality of character for its own sake, nor as a technical achievement. However, I can understand when lateness actually is a slight or indication of selfishness or narcissism, as opposed to when it is in fact just culturally indicated. I can be exceedingly punctual, if I wish, and when it’s culturally relevant; it’s not simply the manifestation of some immutable personality trait.
In the course of any given day I am constantly navigating across and between cultural differences–sometimes where they overlap, and sometimes where one or more are taking on new, syncretic agreement as to what “punctuality” means and how and to what degree it is valued. If I don’t keep this in mind, I’m likely to be offended or give offense a lot, unnecessarily. I can’t afford to make generalizations about “punctual people” and “late people”–only about one particular person in one type of situation over the span of repeated incidents.
I think there is a third category for people who make the same trip or commute every day, but don’t seem to be able to understand that regular delays often happen along the route and that one needs to account for these delays in their time budgeting. These people are clinically known as otnay ootay ightbray.
