I read the first line of the OP “Hurry the Fuck UP”, and I thought yeah, well, you should try living here in New Mexico, then I finished reading. At least Santa Fe is one of them thar big cities, try living down in the south. If I had a nickel for every shitty little import pickup I pass on the way into work doing 30 in a 55, I’d be rich. My favorite is when the farm vehicles are passing the actual real traffic. now when I’m riding my bike(pedal power) do I pass a vehicle in a 55mph zone on the outside, like a car or on the inside, like a pedestrian?
No the OP is not lame, 2 people in the McDonalds and you still have to wait for 20 minutes. Getting change, forget it, its quicker in Florida waiting for Gramps to pull the exact change out of his rubber pinch purse(what the fuck do you call those anyway). Today I got behind a school bus and at the stop it took the fricken kid 4 minutes to get off the bus, ONE FUCKING KID!!! then it took the bus driver another minute to pull in the stop sign, UH OH now this brings me to the absolute lack of New Mexican knowledge of the gas pedal, I’ve been the second car at a stop light, and by the time I was half way through the intersection the light is yellow, and by the time I hit the other side of the intersection, the light was red. Seriously, they do not ever accelerate, their beer might spill. I can understand not wanting to spill the beer, but WTF I drank half of mine following you through the intersection. I was going to wait until I got home, but by then I would be dead of dehydration. I’m done for now, but I still haven’t scratched the surface of New Mexican expediance (is that a word).
Heh. Sounds like my profesor de español. He’s Argentinian, and he’s always late and sometimes missing. He says it’s because they live on tiempo latino in Argentina. However, he has lived in the US for 12 years, and he needs to realize that he’s paid to be there on time and that he needs to start living on tiempo americano. It can be so frustrating, at times.
Also, I’m crossing NM off my places to go be. When I’m supposed to be somewhere, I’m usually there 15 minutes beforehand. Gives me time to get settled in and ready for whatever’s going on – even if it’s just dinner with friends, I’ll usually be there early and get the table, get my drink and those of my companions, so it’s all ready when they get there. I make exceptions to this on occasion, but only with people who make me wait all the time.
I hate this too. Especially if I have a busy schedule that day. Luckily I hang out with friends who are punctual. But group work drives me insane. There’s always one who doesn’t think they need to turn up to meetings on time.
I lived in Oregon for two years before moving back east.
My best advice is. . .if you can’t beat 'em, join 'em.
You just got to chill. You’re not changing the population. Here, when someone says, “I’ll be over at 7:00” that means I’m showered, dressed and ready to go at 7:00. Out there, it meant, shower at 6:45, dress at 7:00, grab a beer, turn on the tube, wait a little. You just gotta tap into that vibe.
What I learned that there’s just a different meaning for times. . .
9:00 AM meant before noon.
Noon meant sometime in the early afternoon.
3:00 meant before supper.
5:00 meant before 8:00.
7:00 meant “the evening”. If someone was coming over at 7:00, that just meant, “let’s go out sometime tonight.”
Being from Iowa, I have yer basic Midwest news-anchor accent. When I lived in New Mexico, store clerks would ask me to repeat myself because they said I talked too fast and was hard to understand.
Well, at the risk of incurring the wrath, I’m from a town near Toronto, we vacation in Mexico and I loooove the pace. I wish people up here would be more like down there and truly enjoy life rather than rushing through it to get somewhere else. I agree, work - you are paid for the hours to show up, you better show up and on time. But everything else, I really wish it would slow down.
I talk fast. I usually walk fast. I like to be early for things. I am very impatient. What this means is that usually I end up waiting for people. Now I’m perfectly all right with it if I’m waiting because I was the early one. That’s only right. But if I’m waiting because whomever I’m waiting for is late, I’m perfectly within my rights to get a bit testy. It would figure that I am in Louisiana, where the only things people don’t do slowly are driving and eating!
I used to listen to a Jamaican radio program in Toronto. They would have typical music, guests, event announcements of interest to Jamaicans. For certain events, the DJ would stress that it was to start at say, 8:00pm “American time, not Jamaican time”.
There were two kinds of time there, too. One you stressed. If we were going to a movie, we’d say, “we need to leave at 7:00, 7:00 real time. We need to make the movie, so let’s be moving at 7:00”.
And then, “we’re meeting So-and-so at the bar at 7:00 to play some pool and get a burger”. That meant “whenever”.
Difference is, you were on vacation and it would seem like the pace suited your vacation style. The people in this thread are talking about living in that environment. I think if the people where you live started living like NM, you’d be surprised by how quickly it’d get old.
NinjaChick, whaddaya think about the 6-lane (each direction) freeway that STILL gets clogged up, with 1/16th the traffic of a major city?
The problem is, if someone says 9am, and means before noon, they (or possibly I) are going to be out of luck if I have something else to do at 10am. Should we have to ask “Do you really mean 9am?”
It’s just plain rude and inconsiderate. No question about it. No one is forcing them to ‘adapt’. They said 9am. If they meant sometime before noon, they should say “sometime before noon”. Really, how hard is it to be honest about your plans? :rolleyes:
However, people who are always in a hurry and act like everyone else in the world is an inconvenience to them because they’re too slow annoy the living shit out of me. Who says your time is any more important than anyone else’s? Trust me, it isn’t. So why not just chill the fuck out?
I leave you with this: “People who are late are always more relaxed than the people who wait for them.”
I disagree. From what I see, those that are on time, are more relaxed overall. Oh, I will be come frustrated with people that don’t have the consideration to do what they say they are going to do, but since I can schedule things, I don’t need to rush to get places etc.
It’s not petty. Time is one’s most precious commodity. Once it is gone, one never gets it back.
Nor is expecting people to make their commitments unreasonable.
Last weekend, I hired some movers to take a piece of furniture to storage. They were running 10 minutes late and called to let me know - I appreciated this. A friend of mine recently hired other movers to move a refrigerator. The appointment was for 10am; they showed up at 5:30pm. I’ll hire mine again; she plans to use mine in the future.
My wife is from Brazil where 9:00 AM also means before noon. This is how things work there:
If you have something else to do at 10AM you are free to go ahead and do it. If you’re not there anymore when I finally show up at 11:30AM it’s not a problem. I have some other friends who live in the same neighborhood, so I might just drop by unannounced and see if we can have lunch together. But first I’ll go to that nice little bar on the corner and have a cold beer (it’s never too early for beer in Brazil).
After about two hours of shamelessly flirting with the waitress and having some drinks, I check in on my other friends, but they’re out also. I remember that there is that nice shoe store on the beach that I wanted to check out, so I go there (and decide to catch some rays also). Since it’s the rainy season, there is a downpour around 3PM which gives me a reason to go to the bar on the corner and have another beer. By the time it’s stopped raining I realize I should be getting home soon, but I decide to drop by your place just to say Hi. You’re now back, so you invite me in, and we have some beer and snacks on the porch. Since I’m now here, we decide we should go out for dinner together. But it’s only 6PM now, so that’s much too early. We decide to go into town and stroll around the market a little. There we meet some mutual friends and they invite us to their place for some drinks.
After another two hours of chit chat we finally decide to head for the restaurant. The meal takes a good two hours but it’s great, and we have a lot of fun during that time. Since it’s a Friday, and it’s early (11PM) we decide to go to a nice club for some live music and dancing. I finally get to bed around 5 or 6AM (it’s just starting to get light), and we decide to get together again at 9 that morning. Just don’t expect me before 4 or 5PM
This sort of thing holds a lighter to my privates too. An ex-girlfriend of mine was particularly bad. Arranging to meet in a pub at 8pm does not mean you begin thinking about what to wear at 8pm.
Shuffles in at something like 8:30 and says ‘I had to feed the cat.’ Would that be a new cat that arrived out of the blue or your existing cat that you’ve had for years and could have been fed at any time?
‘I don’t want to sit in a pub on my own.’
I’m a punctuality freak - you know I’ll be there on time and anyway how much fun is it for me sitting on my own, looking like a sad loser for half an hour?
I would go batshit crazy within a week. I’m a wild-eyed “outta my way!” Type-A New Yorker; when I say “I’ll be there at 11:00,” it means I’ll be there at 10:55, and have to be somewhere else at 11:05.
