Time is for wasting??
It inherently is restricted - by ‘outside forces’ like the limited number of hours in a day, days in a week, etc.
Time is given to us to accomplish things. Be it cruzing the SDMB or building a house. We only have so much of it.
Be it a boss, or needing to do laundry, we only have so much time in the day. Wasting other peoples time is beyond inconsiderate.
I generally have some sort of plan for my day (don’t you?). If it is to meet you at noon, that is part of the plan. I may need to meet someone else at 2. If you are late, it may very well screw up my day (and someone else’s, tends to snowball). Why is that so hard to understand? It’s not about being able to entertain oneself as we wait for the late comers, as it is about moving through the day.
Not being on time is akin to holding people hostage while you take care of your business. You are in fact wasting other folk’s time. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but it is a simple truth.
I’ve been thinking about this and realize that I’m not really as “late” a person as I thought I was. I have friends whose lateness makes me crazy, though, because while I might be 5 or sometimes even 10 minutes late, one friend can be up to an hour late, so I’m sitting there for an hour waiting for her. She calls periodically, though, while I’m waiting, to update me on her progress. And to be honest, I often don’t take her calls these days and have limited the time I spend with her because of this and other issues–she often cancels plans at the last minute, for example.
When I was teaching in the classroom and had 50 to 100 students sitting there waiting for me to start class, I took great effort to be on time and was late only a few times out of the hundreds of times I taught classes.
But what I don’t understand is how people can estimate how long it will take to drive somewhere. I live just north of Orlando and the traffic here is sometimes crazy. It might take me 30 minutes to drive somewhere 80 percent of the time, and an hour or more to get there 20 percent of the time. To always be on time, I’d have to leave 1.5 hours before I need to get there, which means I would often be an hour early–and if there’s one thing I hate, it’s getting somewhere early. It might take me 8 minutes to drive through my small town to get to I-4 to drive south to my destination, or it might take me 30 minutes to get to the interstate, depending on traffic, accidents, and trains. There’s just no way to tell.
For me, being early means possibly having to deal with awkwardness–being first at a party, for example, means having to make small talk with the hosts; being first at a bar to meet for drinks means sitting there alone; being first at a restaurant means having to make decisions about whether to sit indoors or out (again, Florida–outdoor seating is very common), and so on.
Arriving early at a location DOESN’T mean you have to go in right away. Keep a book in your car – being 15 minutes early just means knocking off another chapter. 
Or return a phone call. Or think through some decision you’re working on.
Just be careful not to get so caught up in whatever that you end up being late after all.
Being chronically late is pathetic, it’s an easily solvable problem.
OTOH, I’m a little overweight and have been most of my life. It wouldn’t be easy for me but the obvious solution is that I need to eat less/better and exercise more/at all.
I find tardiness irritating but we learn who the chronically late are and we learn to work around that flaw. I work with a few people who are always late and who frequently call in sick, it’s a well-known fact around the office and we know not to depend upon these people to be on time.
I have a friend who is always late. I love her anyway and I just expect her to be late. That means the punctual friends and I will have an appetizer and be one beer ahead. It means I might bring a book if I’m meeting her somewhere. Whatever, she’s still my friend and she puts up with all of my flaws so I reckon it evens out.
I’ve worked Salaried jobs (IT), and being flexible on start times was the norm. I occasionally got flack from other people because I tended to roll in around 8:30 or 9am when they came in at 7am, but this never flew past higher ups.
When I worked Security, you had to be there on time, period. Because you are relieving someone else who has finished their shift and wants to go home. One of the places I worked basically only paid you for your scheduled shift hours, so if someone kept you 10 minutes late waiting for them to show up, there was a solid chance that even if you fought for it, you weren’t going to get paid for it (illegal, I know, but what you going to do? Security companies are often corrupt.) I occasionally had co-workers who would regularly be late and be all upset that you even mentioned it to them (“A couple of minutes? Really? You’re buggin’ about a couple of minutes?” (for the record it was 20 minutes and I had to be somewhere.)) and sometimes, depending on whether or not they were the boss’s favorites, it would be difficult to do anything about it. When I worked third shift truck gate, the two day shift guys would regularly roll in 5-10 minutes late and then stand around talking (out of uniform) for another 5 or so. My boss told me to keep working until they were ready. I wasn’t getting paid for the time, which amounted to a good 2 hours every paycheck. I complained over his head and was told to depart the post the very minute they arrived, and keep a log of the times so it could be taken up with my boss if he didn’t start doing something about it.
Oh what a horrible guy I was made out to be for complaining. :rolleyes:
I work hourly tech support now, working for one company that contracts out to another company. As our employers pointed out a couple of weeks ago, having 30 people each show up 10 minutes late is 5 hours of time in one day that they are contracted to provide that isn’t getting provided or billed, and that makes our client very unhappy. Sure, one sick person takes away more than that, but being sick is excusable. Being late isn’t. It also means that the contracted N number of people to be on the phones at X time isn’t being fulfilled for that 10 minute gap because we have a ton of people not showing up on time.
Nobody gives us time–time simply is, and it passes just as indifferently whether we build a house or not. Personally, I’d rather build a house, but I don’t flatter myself that time somehow regards me any differently because I do.
Anyway, my advice to the OP:
Relax. You aren’t going to change your husband, though you might be able to improve him a bit. He has a different value system than you do in regards to time, and you need to work it out between the two of you just like you would if you two had different value systems in regards to religion, or spanking, or money, or any of the other important things that a loving married couple can disagree about.
Realize that you don’t actually have to be everywhere exactly on time. Some things, yeah, you do - but not all. Pick your battles, and for the actually important ones, don’t be afraid to remind him.
Time will pass whether you’re worrying or not, whether you’re enjoying yourself or not. Might as well not worry, eh?
Isn’t it ironic that you proved gaudere’s law AND misspelled it? Just kidding with ya.
I think this is way too understanding of her husband who is being a total jerk. He is letting his wife do ALL of the preparation, and doing the waiting in the car, so he can just shower and slap on some clothes…like a baby, not a husband.
It’s really unfair to tell the person doing more than their share to “relax” instead of expect the dead weight to straighten up and fly right. I empathize with the OP.
Question to the OP though, was your husband ALWAYS this lax about helping out and timeliness, or is it a new development? Is he depressed, or being passive aggressive?
Thanks for the kind words. I think he is being passive agressive as well.I think he is depressed about his job as he was promised a raise and has not received one still and it has been 2 1/2 years.
I do most of the work with the kids. When I ask him to do something he always makes me wait. When we get into an argument he gives me the silent treatment.
Again thanks for understnading. I appreciate it:)
Slowly-reforming member of the chronically late checking in. Way back when, I used to be punctual – very punctual. If I wasn’t right on the dot, I was early. To me, being on time has always represented some sense of organization – if you’re organized enough and prepare in advance, you get places on time. If you’re not and you don’t, you don’t get places on time. Then began the slippery slope:
It started when I began an extremely demanding job. Co-workers would ask for “just one more minute” of my time. That one more minute would turn into five, five to 15, 15 to 30… Anyway, you get the picture.
Finally, I learned that “just one more minute” would probably be 30, so I started to plan accordingly. I began the upward swing toward punctuality, at least in my personal life.
Then I had kids. Ye gods – children! Depending upon what age they are, you need to plan to leave up to a half hour earlier than you actually need to leave. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize how to do that until I was well into the third year of my son’s life. You see, when they’re newborns, they don’t have an opinion. You feed them, change them and they can’t throw a tantrum when you try to get their clothes on and shove them in the car. When they’re older, they can, and they keep doing it until at least pre-school (well…tantrums not so much, but dragging of the heels, which is what my son does now). Even the best planning sometimes results in lateness. Not that that’s an excuse.
Anyway, I started an upward swing again when I started getting up about an hour earlier than I had before to accommodate any issues. I also began negotiating with my husband to get help in the morning. Then I had kid #2. Same problems, only compounded by sibling jealousy on the pat of her brother, which means more dragging heels, more lateness.
We’re swinging toward punctuality again, but for a period of about 3 years, I was somewhat unreliable. It had nothing to do with not respecting others’ time and everything to do with learning to deal with transitions – I found that I need a schedule almost as much as my toddler and my preschooler do. If I don’t have the schedule, I get disorganized. When I get disorganized, I get late.
So consider, or at least try to, that maybe your friends need the benefit of the doubt. Very few of us who are late just don’t give a crap – most of us do. But being on time, especially when dealing with multiple individuals, requires a few things to happen: pre-planning, cooperation on the part of the others, motivation and some level of focus. If even one member of the group lacks the last three items, lateness is likely. I’m still late sometimes, and I hate every minute of it. It rarely happens when I’m the only person I have to get from A to B, but if I involve my kids and my husband, things can go downhill fast.
I used to be quite rigid about being on time and not having to wait for other people. As I got older though, I’ve learned to relax and pick my battles. I had the same reaction to other people who have a stick up their ass about punctuality. In my head, it basically boiled down to “I can’t believe they are keeping me waiting. What the hell is wrong with them? If they keep this up, I don’t want to be their friend anymore!”
And then… I grew up and realized, hey… there are other aspects of friendship other than punctuality, and it’s not a clean cut issue of “respect vs disrespect”. In fact, in observing other people’s behaviour and trying to understand them rather than getting upset right off the bat, I’ve learned a few methods of coping.
There are people like my mother, who just doesn’t have the brain to be organized. She is the type who will be getting dressed, but just as she’s changed her shirt and going to get pants on, realize that she has to look up directions to her destination and she goes to do it right then and there before she forgets. It baffles me, that she can’t take an extra ten seconds to pull her pants on before she does that, but that’s how she is. My father is often irritated by this, and harasses her to move quicker until she’s so hurried that she does indeed forget about the driving directions. And then she has to go back inside to get them, which makes them even later. Stuff like that, I just say to her “Why don’t you keep getting dressed and I’ll look up the directions?” Works most of the time.
The other kind is my friend who I’ve learned is always late, and it’s due to a) being from another culture that does not keep a tight schedule, b) likes to be the one joining a party, not start it and c) thinks he has more time than he really does. I’ve long since learned that it’s no use chiding him for being late, especially because most of the things we do together isn’t that time sensitive anyway. If he’s joining me at an event, what time he shows up doesn’t matter, as a gather can go on with or without him. It’s him who misses out on the food when it’s hot and fresh. If he doesn’t mind picking at the leftovers, why should I? And if we’re meeting one-on-one, I just get there half an hour later than he says he will. I’ve known him long enough to work around his lateness, and for me, friendship is more about knowing the other person and dealing with it than to berate them endlessly. There are times when I just say “don’t bother” when I know his “out the door” means another hour, but those times are rare.
And for me, I was someone who would routinely show up fifteen minutes early and wait. And then… I just decided that a few minutes either way wasn’t a big deal and the people who freak out when I say “I’ll be there 6ish” and show up at 6:15, I have to remind that I said “ish” and if that doesn’t satisfy them, too bad. Deal with it, indeed. Besides, those are the people who, even when everyone says they want pizza, will adamantly demand to have Chinese because they are inflexible to anything else other than their own desires and reasoning. I’d rather have a few latecomers who understand that when I say “I will leave without you if you’re not on time for this one” and mean it, than rigid timekeepers who freak the hell out when I’m a minute late.
If there are only two people involved, I can see your point. However, if 100 people are held up by the one late person, he or she is the SELFISH one.
Wait, what?? You LOVE someone who is chronically late???!!! How is that possible? :eek: Don’t you realize that’s a character flaw? Don’t you realize that person is a narcissist? And selfish and inconsiderate, with diminished value as a human being? Don’t you get it?
I’m in awe - you’re practically like Jesus! 
Huh? What does your last sentence mean? You do what? You think time treats people differently?
It does not. We spin and go around the Sun. Those are facts.
You think that people that can read a clock are flattering themselves? Is that it? Dear heart, the very human ability to schedule things goes way, way back. It is pretty basic knowledge for all of us that call Earth home.
This reminds me of a psychology class I took in college. The class officially started at 8:10am but the instructor would start early claiming it was an 8 o’clock class and then proceed to psycho analyze the “chronically tardy” people who showed up at 8:10am. All he taught me is that psychology teachers are douchebags and never again sign up for 8:10 am classes.
Late to the thread, but in general I am a pretty punctual person. I have noticed, however, that in business meetings with certain people, they seem to think they are really big stuff by arriving quite late. It never, ever, ever fails with a certain company who I deal with a lot. Whether it is an individual or a group of people I’m meeting, you can bank on them being at least 10 minutes late. It drives me crazy. Once, a really big shot at this company showed up three hours late. Three hours. We had to start the whole meeting over and, needless to say, I was pretty upset.
Living in Utah, constant tardiness used to drive me crazy. But then I adjusted to Mormon Standard Time and made peace with the fact that even if I showed up five minutes late, I’ll still be ten minutes early.
Only practically? Shit, now I have to return the robe and these bitchin’ sandals.