Yeah, you’re in my first group, above.
I wonder if there are regional differences within the US of “normal degree of lateness”. I’m shocked that there are people in this thread who claim they haven’t carefully curated their friends for punctuality but that everyone they interact with is always on time. That just seems bizarre to me.
I also wonder if all these people talking about how stressed they always feel about being punctual live in areas with a high degree of punctuality, and if that sort of culture is stressful to a large fraction of the population.
I have no problem waiting 15 minutes. At 30 minutes though, I go up and explain that my appointment was for thirty minutes ago and therefore I’m leaving and considering finding a punctual practice. I’ve had to say that twice, once following through and once I was told the doctor was ready for me.
I’ve had punctual doctors and doctors who run late. I have found that punctual doctors rush me, and are less sensitive to my health and concerns than doctors who run late. I’ve decided to suck it up, and accept that doctors are pushed to schedule more appointments in a day than they actually have time for, and if I need to get through the office in a reasonable amount of time, I need to schedule one of the first two appointments of the day.
I know for me it’s hard to tell, as I don’t really have a strong sense of who is habitually late and who is not as I so rarely do events where an exact start time (plus or minus a few minutes) is mandatory. I would say most of my friends arrive within about 10-15 minutes of when they say they would if we say “let’s meet at XYZ bar at 7 for a few drinks.” I really can’t think of anyone who would arrive a half hour late regularly (and those who are running late would send a text.) Perhaps I’m just not keeping score.
My wife, with whom I have many more opportunities to gauge lateness, will run behind schedule for certain things, sometimes for an hour or more. On our second date, she was a half hour late, and I honestly thought I was being stood up, but the beer was cold, so I was fine. She’s fine for hard deadlines, but more fluid ones, you can add an hour or so to the schedule. Like, she’ll ask me when we’re leaving for a trip, “what time do you want to leave?” and I have learned that I can usually add an hour, sometimes two, to whatever time I give. (This is for, like, a road trip.) If I do stress the importance of leaving on time, she will generally accommodate it. Most of the time, it’s not that time-sensitive, it’s just my preference, and it’s better if I don’t stress about leaving exactly at 5 p.m. when even 7 p.m. will do just fine.
So, despite being punctual, I’ve never curated anyone out of my life for lateness, at least not intentionally, but I either don’t know that many people who run habitually late, or I simply don’t notice because I don’t have very many “hard start time” type of meet-ups.
(Meanwhile, I, the punctual person, was once abandoned when I arrived 20 minutes late because work ran over time and I was unable to call/text the woman I was meeting with for just a fun stroll through the city. I can’t remember what happened, but I wasn’t able to ring or text her. I was pissed off at myself missing the time and ran to the tram and subway to get to our meeting point, and she was gone. She was PISSED when I heard from her later. We remained friends, but, fuck was she pissed. And I’m punctual, and she knows this, so should have known there was an extenuating circumstance.)
I think some people have the issue of being late all of the time because there isn’t much organization in their lives. I know how long it takes to fix my hair and do my makeup because my routine is basically the same every day. All of my makeup etc. is in the exact same spot at all times. If I need a headband, I know exactly where all of my headbands are. On weekdays, I get my clothes ready for the next day the night before. The dog has his routine too. He knows when I say - let’s go outside and go potty and get a treat - that means just that. He goes out and goes potty. Then he comes in and goes directly to his kennel and gets a treat. Sure, sometimes he won’t want to come in, but it doesn’t take more than another minute for me to wave a piece of cheese around and get him back in the house.
If you haven’t guessed, I’m a Type A. 
My PCP (Internal Medicine) and my daughters (Pediatrics) both have segregated times for routine check-ups/annual physicals and for sick patients. Each doctor/PA/NP only sees one type of patients per day.
If I or my daughter are going in for a sick visit, we often have delays of 0-30 minutes. I don’t think I have ever had a wait of more than 30 minutes in the last 20 years. Excluding an emergency room visit where we waited more than an hour.
But for routine visits, we are almost always seen within 5 minutes of the appointment time, sometimes even early if we arrive 5-10 minutes early. “Seen” in this context means a nurse is taking readings (height, weight, blood pressure) and then the doctor shows up a few minutes later.
The practice my wife goes to on the other hand seems to have a chronic problem with lateness. She find this very annoying, because if she is 15 minutes late (she’s often late) they will charge her for a missed appointment.
Thanks. I wasn’t expecting that.
However – the issue isn’t actually that you ‘hurt my feelings’. For one thing, I wasn’t hurt, I was annoyed. For another, it isn’t only me you’ve been demanding medical information from. For a third, you weren’t just asking questions, you’ve been making inaccurate statements.
I think that’s a pretty good summary of the thread; though, as you yourself are illustrating, there are some punctual people who recognize that there are genuine differences both between people and between types of situations.
There are certainly differences between different social groups. I am also astonished that there are people in whose lives even the doctors and the contractors are always on time. Maybe there are regional differences? Maybe there are financial differences? I doubt billionaires have to wait to see the doctor, and I expect it’s somebody they hired who has to wait for the contractor. But for all I know the people who say they never have to wait are at the lower end of the income range.
Several people have mentioned variations of “Being there early is on time. Being there on time is late.” and cited it as a virtue.
Is it really? Let’s say you’re a business owner. You have the normal amount of staff meetings. You have one employee who shows up in the conference room ten minutes early in order to ensure they will be there at the scheduled time without any last minute interruptions and waits in a chair for the meeting to start. You have another employee who spends those ten minutes working at their desk and then goes to the conference at the time the meeting is scheduled to start. Which one do you regard as a better employee?
I have no fucking idea. I would need a lot more information about them. What a ridiculous scenario. Usually people who say that mean a minute or two early. Does the person who shows up right on time walk in at the exact meeting time and then spend the next five minutes pulling their laptop out of their bag and waiting for it to boot up or scrambling around looking for a pen?
If I am running a meeting I don’t give a shit about before the meeting. I just want everyone ready when I am starting on time. Whatever it takes to do that. If that means showing up ten minutes early and then working ten minutes later in the day or maybe they are efficient enough that they are way better than the other guy or maybe they are working on emails in the meeting room while they are waiting or…
@Ulfreida, I’m a punctual person, but I don’t guilt-trip or berate others. And I’m all about understanding, acceptance…and yes, even adapting! I don’t see that as “capitulation to grievous sin.” In fact, I don’t view the unpunctual as necessarily having moral shortcomings. It’s simply a different way of being. I can’t judge anyone for their neurology, any more than I would want them to judge me for mine.
In my view, it’s simply a matter of compatibility or incompatibility. If two habitually late people want to meet up and say, “Let’s meet sometime between 3 and 6 PM”…well, that wouldn’t work at all for someone like me, but I say to them, “Go in good health and be happy!”
You are far too close to being jerkish and insulting. No warning issued, but be mindful of your language outside the Pit. This has been a civil discussion and must remain so.
RickJay
Moderator
Mod note: Don’t be a jerk. No warning.
I think you may be making some assumptions that may or may not be true.
Do you know for a fact that your wife is not, internally, struggling to be on time? Also, it may be easy for you to prioritize when and how early to start doing a load of dishes, but I don’t think you can project your way of doing things onto your wife. For example, to someone with OCD, leaving the dishes for later might be a near-impossibility. And for someone with timing difficulties, it may be just as difficult to start doing the dishes earlier.
I don’t know your wife. I don’t know if she has OCD. That was just an example of how we can’t presume to know what’s going on in someone else’s head…or to know their true motivation without asking them–in a non-threatening way. I think this is where a neutral, third-party mediator could be useful in deepening safe communication and mutual understanding.
To crib from Dostoevsky, Punctual people are all alike; each unpunctual person is unpunctual in his own way.
@DesertDog, “There are two types of people in this world: those who divide everyone into groups of two, and those who don’t.” 
(Sorry, don’t know the attribution.)
You left out the “extreme” part, which matters. The majority of human beings show up on time when it matters, and the majority of people don’t feel personally insulted if someone is habitually late, in cases where it is not of any particular importance and even, often, when it is.
The extreme ends are the judgmental time zealots, of which there is a fair sampling in this thread, and the people who just can’t seem to get places on time even if they try quite hard.
I’ve been a time zealot and it’s not a happy place. I can get places on time when I need to but if it isn’t a true need, I rarely show up on the dot any more.
Well, yeah. I was thinking of punctual and unpunctual if that was their main characteristic – to the point of excluding all others.
Well, @hajario responded to your hypothesis as I would, but I’ll fight the hypothetical and point out that staff meetings are unnecessary and a waste of time. The normal amount (number) of staff meetings is zero.
/pet-peeve
The quote investigator.com has this to say: “The earliest instance of this joke located by QI was published in “Vanity Fair” magazine in February 1920. The humorist and actor Robert Benchley wrote “an extremely literary review” of an unlikely book, a massive tome with densely printed type: The New York City Telephone Directory”. So 1920, Robert Benchley, then a whole bunch more after him.