This. Good luck.
And no, I don’t think you’re being OCD. It’s inconsiderate what he’s doing to you.
Good luck!
I never understand how people can be so passive. You know, its alright to lose your temper once in a while. Getting angry and giving the guy an earful won’t stop you getting into heaven you know, you won’t get a reputation as a maniac, people won’t stop coming to your christmas parties.
Man up and tell the guy to get his act together. Raise your voice even, it won’t be the end of the world.
I think you may need to accept that he may not be capable of being on time even with effort on his part to do so. Yes you can tell him how you feel and he may make extra effort , but that would usually only be temporary and the old pattern would reemerge.
If you can restructure the car pool in a way that would be advantageous to helping your differing needs be met that may be a good way to go. Things like having him txt when he starts his car, and possibly relocating the meeting spot may go a long way to giving you advanced notice of his timing.
The other thing you can try is the my way or the hiway approach, this would take agreement first with the 3rd person you car pool with. While waiting for this late person discuss how you feel and see if it’s mutual, if so the 3 of you can talk when the late person arrives and simply state that the cronic lateness is causing you a lot of anguish and that they will need to leave the car pool spot at 6:30 with or without him, and 6:30 is not the meet time it is the departure time.
Good Luck
This morning.
Me: 6:29 (And I had to stop for gas and money)
2nd guy: 6:31
3rd guy: 6:33
I sent a text message at 6:30 “Are guys coming today?” I mentioned to guy 2 that I’m starting to get pissed off waiting around, but did say anything to guy 3. He’s an engineer with an MBA and is the manager of business planning, and he can’t plan to get to the car pool on time. Three minutes wasn’t too bad today.
I feel like a jerk complaining to him about a few minutes. The consensus here seems to be that I have every right to complain.
“I’ll be there in 2 minutes!”
“We’ll be leaving in 3, whether you’re here or not!”
And then leave in 3 minutes.
Had to do that to a friend who was consistently late for everything and would frequently lie to me/us about it. On several occasions he tried to claim that he was just pulling off the freeway 1 mile from my apartment while I could clearly hear his work customers in the background.
So on one occasion when he claimed he was just waiting to turn left at a light we could see from a friend’s apartment and we could easily see that he wasn’t there, I told him that we were leaving in 3 minutes. And we did. When he complained about it, I straight out told him that we could see that he wasn’t at the light when he claimed he was, that I was really tired of him lying to me, and that from that point on, if he wasn’t on-time, he lost out. I wouldn’t accept any more “I’ll be there in 2 minutes” calls from him.
Got one other story about a co-worker who consistently delayed and dallied while we were at lunch when he wasn’t the one driving, but I’ve told that story before and this isn’t a pit thread.
This is an issue of power and control. The consistently late person is claiming power and being an ass. The only way to stop it is to stop rewarding it. Because “Behavior that is rewarded, is repeated”.
Oh yes, reminded of another co-worker who was consistently 7-9 minutes late every day.
As I told him;
“The fact that you make it to work in the same time window every day tells me that you are consciously deciding to leave at the time that gets you here in that window (just under the ‘10 minutes = docked pay’ window). The solution is for you to decide to leave 10 minutes earlier every day.”
If the guy is an engineer, then you might want to try a similar argument, emphasising the “deciding/planning on leaving at a specific time that gets you here at X time” and attacking it from that angle. “I need you to leave at X time so that you get here by Y time, so that two other people aren’t being adversely affected by your delay”
I think you should handle this by making this a group thing. Rather than pulling an individual aside and giving him an earful, how about addressing both guys at the same time in the car with something like “Hey, can we all do a better job of getting here at no later than 6:30? A few minutes here and there might not seem like a big deal, but it sucks having to wait longer than necessary.”
For your part, it’ll probably help your own sanity if you stop looking at the clock so much. The difference between 6:30 and 6:33 is so minuscule in the grand scheme, and it’s really not worth the energy to keep track of time to such a degree. This morning you could have easily spend those 3 extra minutes listening to music, resting your eyes, daydreaming, reading a news story, or checking your email rather than counting down wasted seconds and getting irritated.
They need to tighten up their time management skills and you probably need to chillax a little.
First, make an ally of the other guy who’s waiting with you. If he’s wiht you, then the two of you have to sit down and explain to the late guy what the NEW RULES OF CARPOOLING DECIDED BY MAJORITY VOTE are going to be. I’d make them money-related, since the extra five minutes doesn’t actually seem to do much other than piss you off. (I.e., no missed ferries.) If you’re all there at 6:30 then you split the gas three ways. If one guy is even a minute late, and running full-tilt towards the car at 6:31, then he pays gas for the week. If two guys are late then they pay gas and the other guy gets off scot-free.
If the other guy is okay with the late guy’s pattern, you need to adjust your feelings. Or you can just consider it a 6:35 departure and time your arrival accordingly. YOU become late guy and see how he likes it.
You are being WAY too circumspect in your instructions to your passengers. I’ll bet you $50 that they have no idea you are so pissed off about this. For one thing, do not make your wishes known by asking a question. You need to completely change your approach. The problem is that you are a hard-ass about promptness but hesitant and embarrassed to OWN that about yourself. Don’t be.
“New rules. I’m driving away at 6:30 sharp. So be in the car with your seatbelt on by then, and all will be well.”
You don’t have to scold the guy or defend yourself. Just state the rules and stick to them.
Right now, you’re wimping out and not coming clean with how much this bugs you. Stop hinting.
BTW, I am the Queen of Promptness and never keep anyone waiting. I’m usually early.
ETA: The car is not a democracy. It is a dictatorship and you get to make the rules. The fact that they pay some doesn’t give them voting rights as to the schedule. It’s your car. Take charge. Whether the other guy is bothered is 100% irrelevant.
That’s what I’m afraid of. That I’m getting way too worked up over a few minutes.
We all take turns driving. We don’t pay one another. We each supply the transportation every 3 days, more or less. Guy 2 isn’t in on Mondays or Fridays since he’s finishing up his degree.
One reason you might be getting worked up is because you aren’t expressing your concerns to them, so all this resentment and tension is silently building up in you day after day. What’s further compounding your frustration is their obliviousness to your feelings, which you interpretation as a blatant disregard for your feelings.
I guarrantee you’ll feel better if you just be direct with them. Once you get out your feelings, perhaps keeping score will lose its attraction to you.
Since it’s clear that guy 3 thinks 3-8 minutes is not a problem, I really doubt your going to be able to enforce anything on the days he’s driving. And 3 mins once in a while I would not sweat, but 3-8 mins consistantly would be a problem for me too.
This. I’d go with 6:20 based on his typical lateness, but essentially this. Then when you leave at 6:31, he’s not 1 minute late, he’s 11 or 16 minutes late.
I say go with 6:20 as well, that way if he is inexplicitly earlier than usual for some reason, then the drive is that much smoother due to even less traffic than if you left “on time” (either arriving or going back.) You can even use that as an excuse, saying “If we leave 10 minutes earlier, the traffic is so much faster and less stressful.”
You have a long drive. I’d get in the car and pull out and say, “We need to talk about our departure time. It’s slipping later and later. LateGuy, you’re really making things difficult for all of us. We all need to agree that at 6:30, we will be here and in the car. Not driving here, not parking our cars, not gathering our things. Here. In the car. If we need to start our days 10 minutes earlier, that’s what we need to do.”
Your not directly telling him that his behavior is unacceptable. The way you’re phrasing it now is like saying “Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!”, “See you tomorrow!”, “Later, Dude!”. He’s taking it as a goodbye, not as an instruction.
StG
What’s wrong with telling him his behavior is unacceptable? Not a rhetorical question; I’d like an answer. My experience is that people don’t get a message unless is it EXPLICIT. If I’m doing something that is sending someone to a message board to ask total strangers how to handle me, I want to know about it! All this hinting, “We need to do this,” and “How about if we do that” is masking the one thing that needs to come out, namely, that the OP is angry about his passenger being late every day. What is so wrong with telling him that right out?
I would try to get some consensus from the other waiters to see if they feel the same way you do. Perhaps they don’t because as you said, they are often a few minutes late themselves, but if you mention this on the long drive in, you don’t want to hear crickets from the rest of the car when you tell this guy you’re pissed off. You want them to back you up.
I would be nice but firm about it and tell him your reasons why you feel this way. If the reason is that because he’s 8-10 minutes lates, that causes you to leave 8-10 minutes later, which in turn makes the parking lot, freeway entrance, etc. a backed up nightmare that ultimately adds 45 minutes to your already long commute, then state it that way as in “You’re being late effectively makes us spend an extra hour in our commute time every day”. He may not realize it or care because he may not have much of a life waiting for him at home, but any reasonable person, when you phrase it that way, should understand the issue.
Anyone who is texting like he does is obviously aware that what they are doing is wrong, and doesn’t want you to get pissed and leave him, so don’t validate his bad behavior by just blowing it off if it really is bugging you.
I used to be chronically late, and I still am sometimes, but I got better. I found this article (too late to help me) http://lesswrong.com/lw/c5o/punctuality_arriving_on_time_and_math/ but I found it described very well what I’d realised.
What I needed spelled out to me – that you’d THINK everyone would know, but they don’t – is that if you arrange to meet someone at 6.30, and it takes 10 minutes to get there, it takes 10 minutes only if everything goes perfectly, but MOST of the time, SOMETHING will delay you for a few minutes. So ALWAYS leave at 6.10.
Other tricks that help: if you or someone else is already late, they’re almost always going to get MORE late. “Making up the time” never happens unless the delay was truly exceptional, what usually happens is that if someone’s a little bit late, they’ve ALREADY used up all their slack, so they’re going to get MORE late.
Another one is not to give a time, but to give a range. Many people hear 6.30 and think “oh, give or take 5 min”, but it’s always later. Try saying “6.25-6.30”. Not everyone will care, but some people will then understand that 6.30 is not a target, but is the latest possible time. And it gives them an excuse to aim for 6.25, and sometimes get there at 6.29, but that’s fine.
Lots of good stuff and food for thought in here: thank you. Guy 2 and I discussed this today, and he’s just as pissed as I am. Again, he’s pretty good and might be a minute or two late sometimes, but he’s never stretched it out by 8 minutes.
It gets really important for the drive home. If we have to put in the extra 8 minutes at the end of the day then we’re leaving at the same time as probably 2/3 of the population and it backs up considerably on the two lane departure road and the two lane highway.
Tomorrow it’s just guy 3 and me. I’ll feel uncomfortable mentioning anything if he’s 2 or 3 minutes late, but if I’m waiting till 6:38, he’s going to hear about it.
Oh, and while moving the departure time to 6:20 sounds good, that means I will need to be there at 6:20, and I’ll still wait 8 minutes in the car in a seething fit of rage. No, there’s no reason why he can predict his drive through the same lights and traffic every morning like I do. He’s never on time, ever, and that just bugs the hell out of me. It would be fantastic to pull into the parking lot once at 6:29 and see him waiting, like he sees me waiting every day. How can you honestly do this? It’s baffling.
Leaffan, I still vote for tough love. Draw a line in the sand, anywhere, be it 6:30 or 6:20 or what have you, and hold people to it. A once-in-a-while lateness is forgiveable, for all parties including you, but a systemic problem will be solved with tough love. Keep accommodating Guy 3’s lateness, and you continue to encourage and accept it.
Good luck with this. Let us know what is done and how it turns out.