This may come across as a pitting but I honestly want to know the thinking process behind being late all of the time.
This is one of the sticking points between Mrs. Cad and me. She is always late. ALWAYS. She says we are leaving at 12:15 to make an appointment at 1:00. So of course she gets up at 11:55, takes a leisurely shower and we may wander out the door at :12:30 if lucky and end up 10 minutes late to the appointment.
EVERY F’ING TIME.
How is it that people can’t figure out how to walk out the door at a certain time? My stepmom would do this as well. We’re running 20 minutes late so no, you don’t need to handwash the 3 glasses by the sink. She putters more the later she is. With Mrs. Cad it is horrible time management - but every time?
And do people that are always late not care how it affects others? I took the effort to be ready on-time and now I have to sit around waiting for you? Every time? And when we’d get in the car she would tell me to hurry up and I should speed to get there on time. This got to the point that I told her flat out I was tired of that shit and that I was ready on-time as always and she needed to get off my ass when SHE is running late.
So yeah this is a rant, but I’m being honest when I say I’m curious about the mindset and thought-process about being late all of the time. Why? Why can’t the perpetual lateness walk out the door on time?
People who are late usually have some kind of excuse but in reality they just don’t care about being on time. It’s not important enough to them to make realistic schedules or stop doing something else in order to do something on time.
OTOH I knew someone who freaked out if anyone was even a minute late and that’s just stupid.
My wife is more likely now to be running late in leaving the house than she used to be. From what I can see, it’s that it takes her longer to get ready to go now – “I just need to go to the bathroom quickly” isn’t usually just a 2-minute stop in the bathroom anymore, and she just moves more slowly, generally, now that she’s in her late 50s, and not as physically mobile as she used to be. And, I don’t think she’s really internalized that she needs to give herself 10-15 minutes to be ready to leave the house now.
On the other hand, I have a friend who is perpetually running late. From what I’ve gathered, over the years:
He truly doesn’t grasp that he’s wound up spending 20 minutes doing something that he thought would only take 5 minutes
He will get distracted by something as he’s getting ready to leave the house, and not realize how long it’ll take to get that distracting thing taken care of
He’s sort of self-centered, generally, and doesn’t have a lot of respect for other people’s time, particularly if it’s “just getting together to hang out”
At the risk of being pitted myself, is this a female thing? BC every SO I’ve had in the past, I found myself lying to them about what time we had to be at the “thing”: Movies, dinner reservations, doctors appointments, etc… If our dinner reservation was at 8:00 I’d tell them it was at 7:30.
Punctuality is important to me. I leave early enough to arrive on time even if I get a flat and need to change the tire, that kind of punctuality. My gf is the opposite. We are ready to walk out the door and she’ll remember she wanted to give the horses an apple, then next thing you know she’s brushing a horse.
My gf is so laid back, I should try to be more like her.
No. I’m female and if I’m not in the parking lot 10 minutes early, I am late. My mother, OTOH, has become much more relaxed about time since she retired. She’s the one who taught me to always arrive early and she lived the life for over 70 years before slowing down, so I guess she has an excuse now.
No it’s not a “female thing.” My dad is the exact same as in the OP. If my family is supposed to be somewhere at 1pm and it takes 30 mins to get there, my mother & myself will be dressed and ready to go at 12:30. My dad will only start to get dressed at 12:40 and maybe we’ll actually get in the car by 1. His father was the exact same way.
I’ve wanted to start a similar thread asking people who are consistently late how they function in the real world. How do they manage to ever travel on an airplane, train, or bus?
How do they manage to see plays or shows that won’t seat you once it starts?
Where do they work that allows you to be late for work or meetings?
I had one job, many years back, that I was always late to. It started because I had to trek across town to get there, and occasionally, there was really bad traffic that would put me a half hour or more behind. It wasn’t really all that predictable, it was once every couple of weeks, so I couldn’t just leave early to make up for it.
When one of my managers suggested that I do so, I got a bit annoyed, and told him that that meant that most days, I’d be showing up 45 minutes early, and I wasn’t going to do that for a MW job.
So when one of my managers asked me, “What can we do to get you to show up on time?” I considered it for a few seconds, and said, “I really can’t think of anything.”
At that point, I became chronically late. Some days I would wake up half hour after I was supposed to be at work.
The point was, I didn’t respect the job, or the people. Every other job I’ve ever had, except for major unpredictable events, I am on time and usually a bit early. But not that one.
So, that’s what I take from people that are chronically late, that they don’t respect the people that are waiting on them.
The only reason that my brother in law was on time for his wedding (to my sister) is because my brother and I essentially kidnapped him, forcing him into the car, while he wanted to putter about and take care of some trivialities. This wasn’t just for the wedding, he was always an hour or two late for everything.
That sort of response doesn’t exactly encourage us to come into the thread.
To #1 and #2: by dedicating a huge amount of my time and attention that day to showing up extra early for whatever it is; thereby, basically, by killing the rest of the day for any other useful purpose.
To #3: I’m self-employed. That helps. For some (not all) work I just make up the time at the other end of the job.
That’s probably most of it. Basically, there is nothing in my head giving me a clear idea of how long anything is taking; so that, unless I’m looking at a clock right at a given moment, I have only the vaguest idea what time it is. If I absolutely have to be somewhere at a given time, I can spend all day looking at clocks; but, again, I’m not going to get a hell of a lot else done. Yes, I can set an alarm, and if necessary I do; but, for one thing, depending on what else I’m doing I may not hear it; and, for another, some chunk of my attention is always on whether the alarm’s about to go off, and it gets in the way of paying attention to other things.
I actually described myself as being chronically late, and explained why I was. So, one of the responses you say would prevent responses the OP is looking for was actually one of the responses that the OP is looking for.
So, you have bad time management skills. Is that something that you think that you could not improve upon with some effort? It sounds like it causes you a great deal of disturbance in your life, what with having to set aside an entire day in order to accomplish a single thing that needs to be done at a specific time.
I’m self employed as well. Which means that I need to be at work to unlock the doors every morning before anyone else can work. If I am late, there are a number of very negative consequences.
Procrastination and being late are usually two different problems. I procrastinate about every little thing, yet I’m usually early. Of course, now that I’m older it takes me forever to get ready to do anything, so I have to start getting ready hours in advance. But I still get there early.
Then don’t commit to being someplace on time. Tell people you don’t know if you can get there on time, and expect that they may not wait for you. The problem for everybody else isn’t what else you are doing, it’s that you said you’d do something at a certain time but you know you can’t do that.
No, I do not. It reads to me as if I said I had no sensation in my feet, and you asked whether I couldn’t just create it by learning to manage something that’s not there.
I work where I live. As the saying goes, I don’t go to work, I just get up in the morning and there it is all around me.
For things for which it’s applicable, yes, that’s what I do.
Not really. You didn’t describe yourself as being chronically late in general and, in fact, specified that you aren’t. You explained why you were late for one specific job at which you had no respect for either the job or the people, and then concluded that everyone else who was late must be late for the same reason.
My dad is the exact same as in the OP. If my family is supposed to be somewhere at 1pm and it takes 30 mins to get there, my mother & myself will be dressed and ready to go at 12:30. My dad will only start to get dressed at 12:40 and maybe we’ll actually get in the car by 1. His father was the exact same way.