I’m one of those chronic latesters; even if I’m ready with time to spare, I’ll always manage to fart around or do something that causes me to be late. I’m talking about reasonably late - 5 mins or so, 10 at the max. I’ve gotten it under control for the most part, but it’s something that I could slip back into at any moment.
It’s always irritated me that people get their panties in such a twist over lateness. Employers love to hem and haw about how it shows a lack of consideration or dedication or some other “who moved my cheese?” new age holistic corpporate-speak, but I’ve just never understood that. If I come in to work and do incredible work while I’m there, and I’m always staying later than I’m supposed to, who are you to make little snippy comments if I come rolling in five minutes late?
I’ve just never understood the mentality. Lateness doesn’t mean anything other than for whatever reason, the person is there a few minutes past the arbitrary time that they “should have” been there. It’s not considered unprofessional and inconsiderate when management forces the employee to stay an hour+ later on a Friday!
Minor lateness in social settings doesn’t really bother me. Except this one friend that we quite literally have to tell to be there at least an hour earlier than we actually plan on meeting.
When it comes to work lateness, I have little tolerance. Mostly because a large part of my work involves phones and incoming calls. If I’m the only one here on time and we have a bunch of calls, it hurts our service levels, raises the phone abandonment rate and can impact my income. So yes, 5-10 minutes late to work everyday is a big deal, at least to me.
I think people who are habitually late have no consideration for anyone else’s schedule. There’s no reason for ANYONE to be habitually late (except pure selfishness). I don’t care in a work situation. None of my business unless you’re relieving me (which isn’t the case with my job). It’s the personal infractions that piss me off.
It all boils down to whom you are inconveniencing. If you are one of those 1 in a jillion workers whom NO ONE needs depend upon as far as being in a certain place in a certain time, then by all means be as late and sloppy as you want. The problem is that, even if you are not aware of it, not being responsible enough to show up when you ‘say’ you are going to (e.g. by being employed in a 9-5 job) always ends up meaning someone has to do work that you are missing out on, even if it is (as in the case of my job) only a few calls and clients missed.
In our office, we have a few people who are ALWAYS late, and never accountable. It sucks, because it shifts their job responsibilities onto others who are there. Isn’t that a simple concept?
In a work setting, it’s not something I really care about unless it directly affects me. I tend to walk in a few minutes “late” every day myself because, with the way my train schedules run and the time it takes me to grab breakfast after the train, I can get to the office anytime between 7:55 and 8:10. I’m salaried: some days I leave early, some days I work late. The job gets done, so no one cares about 5 minutes here or there. The exception would be if I’m scheduled to meet with someone, in which case, I’m never late.
In social situations, being late, or others being late, really drives me nuts. But I know that I’m hyper-anal about that far beyond most normal people. As far as I can tell, it has to do with some childhood trauma with my father’s visitations, but the long and short of it is that I’m chronically early to everything, and then I get anxious when other people don’t show up on time.
I don’t have a job where someone needs to “relieve” me, either - I am, however, often required to attend meetings and have noticed that my workplace seems to cultivate a culture of tardiness, because around here, the stated “start time” of the meeting is when people actually leave their desks to head to the meeting.
I am so not like that, so it makes me a little twirly when, for example, I’ve got a 1:00 meeting, and someone will stop me en route at, say, 12:55, as I’m leaving my desk, and ask if I have a minute to talk to them about something. I’ll say, “I’m sorry, I can’t right now - I’ve got a 1:00 meeting,” and the person will look at the clock and say, “Well, can I just talk to you for the next five minutes, then?”
NO! Then I’ll be late!
(Of course, what I’ve come to realize around here is that people sort of tacitly promote chronic tardiness as a sign of industriousness . . . is that a word?)
But usually, the tardiness of others only bothers me to the degree that it affects me.
It annoys me when people are late. Traffic? Every day? Hmmmm…looks like you need to leave earlier, doesn’t it? To me, being chronically late signals either a lack of respect for others, poor organization, or a need to prove “you’re not the boss of me.” None of those are particularly flattering.
I understand being late on occasion. I’m rarely late myself, rather just the opposite–I’m consistently fifteen to twenty minutes early for everything. But I also have friends who we give false times to because they are chronically late. I have a friend who consistently chooses to lay down “for a minute” and then falls asleep for several hours. In these situations, I can cope. It annoys me, but I can usually cope, as long as I’m not waiting on them for something specific. If somebody makes me late for the movies because they were late, then I get pissed. I’m a little high-strung about time issues, so I try to cut others some slack, but I do get annoyed. The only Absolute Sin with me is not showing up at all and not calling (mostly because one of my friends never showed up for her own birthday party because she had been killed in a car accident the night before and none of us knew yet), which makes me angry enough to actually say something.
Being late for work … well, five or ten minutes isn’t always a problem. Five or ten minutes every damn day when other people are expecting you to be there at nine to answer the phones or whatever is different. Our receptionist is about fifteen minutes late every day, and she usually makes up the time at the end of the day, but I just don’t understand it–if you get stuck in traffic, how 'bout you leave a little earlier?
That and… if you’re my relief, I think that whatever I want to do when my scheduled shift ends is, on the average, as important as whatever you wanted to do instead of show up at work on time so I could leave on time.
It’s not the actual lateness, it’s the wondering “gee, where is X, I wonder if they are coming in today, I wonder if I need to call someone else to come in, I wonder if I’ll make it to the store before they close” type stuff that gets me, most times.
Calling to say “Hey, I’ll be 5-10 minutes late” alleviates about 95% of the annoyance. But then, if you can call before shift every day, surely you can figure out how to get there on time, eventually?
Do you work at my law firm, by any chance? Our receptionist does the same thing, and she just claims that she can’t predict traffic, etc., etc. But it happens daily, which tells me she isn’t really trying. And since our phone service doesn’t get transferred from the answering service to our offices until she comes in and manually changes that, it really does matter.
Fortunately for her, there’s usually only one attorney in the office at 8am, and she’s far too absorbed in her own work to notice exactly what time the phones start ringing.
I am not a morning person. Having to get out of bed in the morning makes me want to cry. And once I do get out of bed, I find it very hard to force myself to do anything that isn’t drinking coffee and smoking.
As a result, I am often late for anything that happens in the morning that isn’t sufficiently exciting to make me *want * to get out of bed. I’m a few minutes late for work at least once a week. My friends have learned not to expect anything of me before noon on weekends.
I’m not proud of this, and I really do understand that there are occasions when my lateness causes other people hardship. I struggle with it daily, and I’m extra careful to set three alarms and schedule a wake up call when it really counts. But on behalf of people like me, let me tell you it’s hard to live in a 9 - 5 world, when you’re wired for 12 - 8.
There’s a couple chronically late people at the ambulance company I work for. It irritates the living hell out of me because it keeps other people out on the streets late. The way things work, we get called back into the station when our relief ambulance comes on the air, an hour before our scheduled off time. By the time we fuel the ambulance, get back to the station, restock, clean and do paperwork, we’ve eaten up pretty much that whole hour, so any extra time spent on the street means I’m punching out late and getting home late. Since I work nights and my wife works days getting home late means I probably won’t see her at all for the day. It’s extraordinarily irritatiing to just be sitting out at post waiting for someone else to get on the damn street.
It’s not the consequences of being late. It’s the being late itself. It’s a nose-thumb. It’s a “I don’t have to play by your rules.”
Here’s the thing with the kind of lateness VCO describes: if the boss said, “all right, VCO can’t make it in at 9:00 so, what the hell. . .let’s all start the workday at 9:10”, then VCO would roll in at 9:20.
That’s the way late people work.
You see it in late people all the time. I have a buddy who is late 75% of the time. Usually, it’s nothing major. It’s just like, “hey, the game starts at 7:00 so try to get to my place by 6:45 so we can make it to the bar by 7:00”.
He comes strutting in at 7:00. . .with his “fuck you” strut. With his “I know that pissed you off but if you say anything about it you’re just a bitch” strut.
Looking around like he’s got no idea what time it is because, you know, he’s just a coooool duuuude.
He ain’t constrained by my button down world.
He’s freakin’ out the squares, man.
Do you have to catch the game from the first pitch? Not really. But when you know the guy is at home just sitting on his couch, deciding to leave at 6:45 instead of getting here at 6:45, it’s just come across like a big ‘fuck you’.
When I’m in the field with a crew, our work day starts at 7:00 am when we meet at the truck(s). All of our work is budgeted by hours i.e. we budgeted 400 hours for the crew to get X accomplished, 60 hours for the report, 10 hours for meetings, etc., etc. If one of the tasks goes over then that extra time has to come from somewhere else.
I always explain it like this - if you show up at 7:15, we have just wasted 15 minutes x the # of people on the crew. With a six person crew it adds up to 1.5 hours for every 15 minutes someone is late. The first time it happens the crew member gets a stern talking to. The second time it happens they have just forfeited their ability to get re-hired with me.
If you’re “farting around,” as you put it, when you have time to spare, then you’re implicitly saying that your whims are more important than the other person’s time–and your COMMITMENT to the other person to do things at a given time. That is impertinent and selfish, particularly if you do so regularly.
And who defines what is “reasonably late”? In particular, what gives YOU the right to do so unilaterally? If I’m going to a movie, I don’t want to be reasonably late; I want to be in my seat, snacks in hand, before the opening credits roll, so I can watch the previews, so I don’t miss any of the plot, so I don’t have to inconvenience the other patrons unneccessarily by walking in front of them and lessening their movie-going experience by obstructing their view of the screen.
If other people are relying on your presence in the job, your lateness makes their jobs harder. Are you dealing with clients in person? Might they have to wait to be helped because of your lateness? Are you answering incoming phone calls? Are you relieving another person who wants to go home, or go to the movies, to pick her child up from school or his wife up from work?
Actually I would consider it unprofessional if management forces an employee to regularly stay later than scheduled on Friday afternoons. It is indicative of poor plannning and use of resources. If the nature of the work is such that closing up shop at 6 o’clock on Fridays is impractical, this needs to be taken into account in making the schedule, so that people can work their lives around it.
My sister Jane is one of those “chronic latesters,” and it bugs the hell out of me. If she says she’ll be someplace at 5, she won’t be there before 5:30. She’s late picking up her children, she’s late picking up people from the airport; I’ve seen her “farting around” when she was supposed to pick up a friend from an incoming flight when there was clearly no good reason.
Each year my family gets together on Christmas Eve at my parents house, so we can distribute presents to the grandchildren/nieces & nephews. We always agree to assemble at 6 p.m., and she’s always at least an hour late. One year she was over TWO HOURS late, meaning we couldn’t start dinner, much less start handing out presents, on time. This meant I had to choose between handing my nieces and nephews their presents in person (important to me, and the best part of Christmas) and going to the Christmas Eve service at church (also important, particularly as I was a speaker in the service that year). She got irritated when I started to leave half an hour after she arrived–but it was HER fault, her putting her own whims and inability to plan over every else’s lives, that was the issue.
By being late all the time, a person says that HIS whims and “farting around” are more important than EVERYONE ELSE’S schedule; he is violating his commitment to others; he’s being a selfish ass.
I guess I really don’t care as long as you aren’t on my team and you don’t affect my work. I usually get in at 8:30 (we start at 9:00) but occassionally I’ll breeze in a bit late. These kids though. We go out drinking and half of them live in walking distance of work at I still show up on time but they are like 2 hours late.
Thing is that chronic, excessive lateness shows a lack of respect and a lackadaisical attitude. It’s the same whether it’s work or social activities.
I, of course, am never late. If I’m late, time better slow the fuck down.
Chonically late people are selfish, inconsiderate fucking assholes. As someone said earlier in the thread, it’s like they are saying that their time is more valuable than mine. It is extremely disrespectful and should not be tolerated.
My ex-wife and I used to drive from Santa Barbara to the Bay Area and back. Often our friend Bill would ask to hitch a ride. He would never drive himself or pay for gas but that was cool because it really wasn’t costing us anything extra and he was entertaining company. The problem was that he was always late. My ex would go to get him at the agreed upon time and he’d be half packed and fucking off listening to music. She would spend half an hour frustrated, trying to herd his lazy ass out the fucking door. Then she’d get half way to our place to get me and he’d freak because he forgot his toothbrush and she’d have to go back.
I finally had enough. I told him that we were doing a huge favor by driving him and that I would be picking him up the next time. I made it clear that the bus left for good two minutes after the agreed upon time with or without him and that we would not go back under any circumstances. He knew me well enough to know that I meant business too. When I went to get him he was literally standing at the door with his packed suitcase in hand.
My point is that these dipshits who “try and try not to be late but just can’t” most certainly can if they have the right motivation. I find that stick works better than carrot with these characters.
A question for night people – Have you ever had a 2nd or 3rd shift job? Was it easier to be on time?
I’ve worked all shifts. It can be a battle to drag your ass out of bed regardless of when you start.
But you do it.
Other peoples tardiness at work does not affect me, or really the dept. So it doesn’t bother me personally. We each have our jobs, and get it done.
Social settings are different though. If I know that it takes 30 minutes to be somewhere to meet someone, I give myself 30 minutes to do so. If I’m not sure how long it might take, I’ll always give myself extra time.
Bingo.
And saying that their time is more important than everyone else’s.
Our receptionist does the same thing, and she just claims that she can’t predict traffic, etc., etc. But it happens daily, which tells me she isn’t really trying. And since our phone service doesn’t get transferred from the answering service to our offices until she comes in and manually changes that, it really does matter.