Kiminy’s story is mine – only my Dad was chronically late. Any game as a kid I needed him to drive me to I arrived after it began. Same with any social function, play or event. Consequently (I Think) I am a nut about punctuality.
I always resented this and reviewed ALOT of literature on this subject (like Tom Cruise and Psych Meds! – only IANADr)
One thing, besides control, is that I think is that the late folk LOVE the rush-last minute deal. The nonchalance is a surface thing and underneath they are roiling.
From here
The motivations, rather, are often subconscious ones. Some people are drawn to the adrenaline rush of that last-minute sprint to the finish line, and others receive an ego boost from over-scheduling and filling each moment with an activity. Still others have difficulty conforming to rules and structure
Nah, I’m 22 and I’m always 5-15 minutes early. I have rarely been late to anything: work etc. The very few times I have been late it’s been because of a freak traffic jam (my city just doesn’t have them) and EVERYONE was late because something bizarre happened on the road and traffic was backed up.
On the other hand, when, I started college, I had a couple of friends who were chronically late to everything. If my party started at 10, they wouldn’t be there until midnight. Then it seemed like half my friends were late to everything. Finally, since I could never coordinate an event with all of them, I said:
“If you don’t call me to tell me you’re going to be late, I’m not letting you in the door when you finally get here.”
…all except one showed up on time. That one called to let me know he was going to be late.
Sometimes people have really important things to do in the morning which may not seem all that important to their boss who is only concerned about numbers and not about the welfare of their employees. There’s no reason to get all upset over…Crap… I gotta run!
I’ve always interpreted chronic lateness as “my time is more valuable than your time.” It is just as bad as receiving a phone call from someone and hearing “Hold for Mr. Smith, please” and being on hold for several minutes. Since this can make me mad enough to bite nails, it is good that it doesn’t happen often.
I am chronically early because I always allow 15% of my travel time for the “fuck factor.” I can’t understand why other people don’t do this.
Cub Hubby *hates * working overtime and will turn in a overtime sheet for 1 minute over. That caused some discussion with his higher ups, but when he pointed out that 1 minute late in the morning got a write-up and got one docked 15 minutes of pay, it ended the discussion and he got his 1 minute of overtime.
I agree this is a really bad idea, I am all for positive reinforcement of promtness, but this is a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Also let me temper my comments, if you are in a job that, for what ever reason, you must be there at a certain time - AS A FUNCTION of the business, and you can’t - you are in the wrong line of work.
Yes you made your point very clear, have a disorder (mental or physical) - just take drugs, after all you are nothing but a robot for us, we don’t care about your well being. We don’t want actual humans working here.
Again some jobs require promptness, some require releiving others, meetings require promptness, but some require productivity. If the ladder is the case, why fight people’s natural tendancies, why not work with them, it’s usually easier and you get more work out of them, a heck of a lot less resentment, and will have to micromanage them if you go with the flow? Find a win-win solution for all.
The people who are chronically late to work are NEVER the disabled people (in my experience…working in 5K+ facilities). They’re the people that just don’t give a fuck.
Chronically late people are the MINORITY, Kanicbird. The rest of the world does what they need to do and the chronically late are simply rude.
I’m crying a river for you. I think I’ll be late with your paycheck next time…Doesn’t matter if you get it this week or next…as long as you get it…right?
Hmmm. When I did shift work, I would stay up after getting off work just like on a normal 8-5 job. 2nd shift was the worse. I would get home at 11pm. Everyone else was asleep in my house at that time. Not much to do. So I started to teach myself how to cook. But yeah, that shift sucked. I would go to bed at say 3 or 4am get up late morning and do whatever shopping and stuff I needed to do before work. Then I would have 3 hours to kill before going to work. Sorta hard to have fun when you know that you have to go to work in a couple of hours.
3rd shift was better 11pm- 7am. Get home at 7:30 go work out, or just pop a beer. Watch the world wake up. Stay up till about 2pm, get my 8hours sleep and do it again.
This is not about that. It’s about the habitually late.
We are having a good snow year here. Last month, we received 82". I drive over the continental divide every day, 25 miles to work. Yet in 13 years at the same place, I can’t remember being late once. I have missed two days of work because there was simply no way to get out of the house. I took vacation time.
It just comes down to a little bit of planning and common sense.
In a job, it really depends on the type of job you have.
I am almost never late to meetings, because that delays everyone. But I am often “late” to my desk. My work hours start at “around 8:30” - but my team is two timezones away, few of them start work before 10:00 am my time. And I’ve taken 6:00am and 10:00 pm meetings at home - as well as the random phone call not in business hours in my time zone but in the middle of the day in Ireland or China. In other words, I’m always at work in some fashion, and there are only a few times when people care where I physically am.
But when you work retail or a call center, someone is expecting you there at a certain time so they can leave or go on break or handle the expected increase in volume. Even if there are 5 baristas that open the store at Starbucks, if all five consistantly run ten minutes late, the store doesn’t open on time (when I worked in retail, that was a violation of our mall lease and it was possible to get fined).
Likewise, its one thing to show up half an hour late to a party - its practically expected! Its another to show up half an hour after dinner is supposed to be on the table. Its one thing to show up in the middle of movie previews - as long as they are today, I try not to be “on time” for movies - I don’t have that much time in my life to dedicate to a long film PLUS advertising - its another to show up five minutes after the opening credits. If someone is expecting you to pick them up at 4:00, its inconsiderate to show up more than a few minutes before OR after 4:00 (depending on the friendship, before may be more acceptable) - 45 minutes late to an exam would be unforgivable!
If anyone doubts chronic latesters think their time is more important than everyone else’s…just watch their reaction when someone keeps THEM waiting.
I had a boss for a while who could never be on time for anything. He thought nothing of scheduling a meeting for 3-5 PM and actually running it from 3:30-quarter to 6 (on a Friday, with the security guard outside giving us the stinkeye because he had to wait until we left and then lock the conference room). He’d schedule appointments at 10 AM and stroll in at 10:30 or later.
After a while one of my boss’s research collaborators caught on; instead of showing up at 10 AM for a scheduled meeting, he would start calling and asking if my boss was in yet, and come over when he finally showed up. My boss would show up at 10:30 or so, the other guy was not there waiting for him…you could practically see his underwear bunch. “Where is he? Am I supposed to wait for him to come over here? That takes 10 or 15 minutes! This is really inconsiderate and unprofessional!” and so on.
Aside from keeping them waiting, another way to deal with the chronically late is to start desirable things without them. “Sorry, but we left for the concert/ ate dinner/ opened the presents at 6, like we arranged to do. You weren’t here, and you didn’t call, so…”
I think Rude is a little strong, as I posted above for some people despite good intentions, being late in the AM is not controllable. I am almost never late any other time of day. I have a mild sleep disorder that is getting exasperated with age. I use to be early almost all the time, but I use to be able to live on 4 hours sleep, now I need more and I still can’t go to sleep earlier consistently.
Hey…it’s a tough love situation. I used to carpool with a girl who was chronically late. We’d wait for 20 minutes at the entrance of her building, and she’d STILL come out in rollers, doing her whole look in the car on the way there.
When it was my turn to drive, I waited 5 minutes and left her there.
I have a co-worker who is always 5-10 minutes late every day. It honestly doesn’t bother me most of the time - I’m the one answering the phones usually. However, it DOES bother me when I’m late ONE time in a month (I couldn’t find my keys - ElzaHub had misplaced them) - and my boss, who’s usually a pretty easygoing woman, got snippy with me - because my co-worker was also late and we both walked in at the same time. I’m usually there 5 minutes before start time (and I’m not an easily punctual person - I’m always rushing to get out in the morning, but I do get to work on time).
So because of her habitual tardiness, the one time I was late, it looked a lot worse than it was. That’s the ONLY time it really pisses me off.
I’m definitely a 12-8 person as well, but when I took my job, I agreed to work from 8-5. That means I suck it up. I hate getting up early and dragging my ass to work, but I knew what I was in for when I signed on the dotted line.
kanicbird - So you’re saying that if someone chooses not to follow the same rules as their co-workers, they should be given special treatment, allowed to have a flexible schedule (please note the proper spelling - it’s like being on time). People who (as you put it) are “poor at judging time” need to grow up and learn. People who say they have sleep issues need to address the underlying issues and be into work, because, quite frankly, their co-workers don’t give a darned about their sleep problems or their judgment issues. And if the co-workers see this poor behaviour rewarded with flex-time and other special treatment, certainly there will be hard feelings. Why shouldn’t the workers who follow the rules get the perks?
I was being sarcastic. But if, in fact, you aren’t coming to work on time because your ADD keeps you from concentrating on getting there on time, then YES. Your responsibility is to go on drugs. Slacker.
I’m not a morning person. Whenever I’m off from work for a few days, I tend to sleep from 2-3am to 10-11am naturally; which made working 2nd shift the first couple summers while in college nice. I can get out of bed at 6, but I prefer to sleep every minute later that I can. It’s probably the fact that I think snooze alarms are inane, and that I put the alarm far enough from my bed that I have to get up to turn it off, that gets me to work on time rather than over-sleeping on a daily basis…I did miss-set my alarm Wed. and sleep 40 minutes late, but luckily I got to work on time anyway, because my definition of “sleep as late as I can” means getting up 1 hour before I need to leave the house.
My supervisor at work is like this. He has so many demands on his time, he can never do anything or be anywhere on time. He’s a totally OK person in my book, and he doesn’t suffer from any kind of personality disorder that I can discern. He is just late for everything all the freakin’ time. He has his assistant cover the morning shift from 6-10 for him, and he comes in to work sometime around then, maybe, and is gone before I get in at 12. He’s at home attending to his other business endeavour. Then he’s gotta stop that to pick up his daughter from school. Then it’s back home to do more of what he left behind. Then, possibly, he’ll show up at work and start doing his tasks, and fall asleep at his desk. If he can wake up long enough to finish, he will, but usually he goes home to have a nap, and comes back to work from about 10 until 4 or 5 in the morning.
He’ll be engrossed with something at work, and his daughter will be waiting and waiting for him to pick her up. Sometimes an hour or more. I feel sorry for her, but she’s used to it by now. I asked her one time if she introduces her dad to people by saying, “This is my late father.” On Friday, he was at work from 6-11 AM. I missed him. He called and said he would be in by 2. At 3, he called and said he couldn’t stay awake anymore, and was going to have a nap. He would be in before 6. I never saw him. Today, I was supposed to go to his house and reinstall Windows for him. 11 hours after our appointed time, he called to say he wasn’t going to make it. Now I’m supposed to go to his house tomorrow. I’m not counting on it.
Despite my high regard for him professionally and personally, I try never, ever to rely on him to be at a place at any given time, and I do my job and some of his, too, so he doesn’t have to spend even more time at work in the middle of the night. That’s because I do like him. If I didn’t, he’d be digging his own hole. But we who have to deal with him know the clock by two names: Regular Time and Tim Time. The twain shall never meet.