I don’t know what you are talking about. The only thing chronically late people need to do is stop promising to be on time. That’s it. I’m not judging them for being late, I’m judging them for breaking a promise to me just like any other promise anyone repeatedly breaks.
You seem to be taking this personally for some reason.
The only thing I’m taking personally is the utter lack of understanding time zealots display toward the chronically late. Lack of empathy is the curse of humankind – everything else follows.
I’m not chronically or any other way late, except by extreme circumstances. But I am, and have been my whole life, maliciously misunderstood. It has caused me untold suffering. So, I’m extrapolating. Something people who have empathy do.
People who repeatedly break promises are either sociopaths or have mental/emotional encumbrances which prevent them from being the admirable respectable citizens everyone is under great social pressure to be.
But go ahead and damn them to hell, be my fucking guest.
My wife isn’t late, but I had to learn another language when I married her.
If we have to be there at 12, and it takes half an hour to get there, that means we have to leave at 11:15.
Because “we’re leaving at 11” means “at 11 we’ll start to get ready to leave”.
This caused us to be late until I worked it out. Also initially pretty irritating for me, because I was sitting in the car at 11, waiting for her after hearing “it’s time to go now”.
Not to mention the stress of “WTF? You said he could go with you and you were leaving at a 11, and you left without him@”
This more than any other reason, IMO. As well, I think people that are chronically late to things like dates, parties, trips together, etc… it’s an attention-seeking device. If you are the last one to show up, you get all the attention.
I had a good friend that was ALWAYS late (still makes me mad thinking about it) and even was an hour and 30 minutes late to arriving for us to leave on vacation. It messed up the entire schedule (which was tight) and also put me in a very foul mood for about the first 200 miles. As well, we had just bombed our house for insects (knowing we’d be gone for two weeks) and it was 85 degrees outside, so we couldn’t wait inside. An hour and thirty minutes waiting outside in the hot sun. Damn you, Kathy!!!
Why do you insist I am doing that? I have been very specific, the chronically late need to stop breaking their promises. That’s it. I certainly understand being maliciously misunderstood, but I am not doing that to chronically late people. If you think others are then address them with your concerns.
Why do you think they are also chronically late for everything else in their life as well then? Do you think people want the ‘attention’ of missing a doctor’s appointment and having to waste a lot of time coming back another day, or waiting around for a gap so they can be seen?
Well, from my experience, they CAN actually show up on time for certain things like air travel, Dr. appointments, etc. i.e. things that will not happen if they don’t show up on time. So this is sort of intriguing to me. You know, they can do it for some things but not anything that won’t result in a big hassle/expense for them. A lot of doctors won’t stand for people being late and they don’t have to. They’re usually running behind anyway and see it as an easy way to get back on track. My mom was a receptionist for a Dr. for years and I can’t tell you how many people she sent packing because they were 20 minutes late.
Do you think the punctual just magically arrive on time without planning? Without delaying tasks that may make us late? This is how to be on time.
When you have to leave in 5 minutes to be on time for lunch and spend 20 minutes folding laundry, those 15 extra minutes came from me, because I will be stuck doing nothing waiting for you to arrive. You may as well have brought your laundry with you, and demanded I fold it for you, it would eat up no more of my life than sitting idly at a restaurant, waiting.
Demanding others do something is not, I find, a happy way to live and regulate one’s own emotions. I get the sense people here get very angry when someone is late. I do find it somewhat frustrating myself, but I manage it by not demanding others do things the way I want them to be done, or regard it as a slight against me, or judge them as bad, bad, bad people simply because they are chronically late. They just suck at being on time – no need for that to inordinately stress me out and ruin my good time. Any anger I feel at that person is my choice and is due to my inflexible demands and irrational beliefs about that person. I can choose ways to work around it (some great managing methods have been mentioned before) or I can stop making plans that require rigid start times with this person without judging them as selfish assholes who ruin my day. Some of them very well may be selfish assholes, but why choose a set of beliefs and thoughts that make yourself feel shitty for the rest of the day? There’s better ways for me to get on with my life and be undisturbed.
On the other hand, if being angry at these people is working out for you, continue that thought process. I’ve done my best in my life to break free of this cycle. I would like for people to be on time. I would like for people to keep their promises. I don’t insist that they do, because down that path is unnecessary and unproductive stress. And, yes, you could say, why should I change when THEY’RE the ones with the problem? Because you can only control yourself, your thoughts, your emotions, your actions, not theirs.
If you are chronically late it’s not going to make me angry, it’s going to make me ignore you when making plans, and I will go ahead and do things without you if you aren’t available in a reasonable amount of time.
But I don’t find anything wrong with demanding that people keep their promises. I’m not making anybody promise anything, I’m not using any form of duress, I’m not demanding anyone be anywhere or do anything at a certain time. And I don’t demand absolute punctuality, be 10 minutes late if you have to. And even if you’re an hour late I’ll accept your phony excuse if it’s just a one time thing. But don’t tell me you’ll be there at 7 if you aren’t going to do what is necessary to get there by 7. Just tell me you don’t know when you’ll get there so I don’t waste my time getting there at 7, or sit around waiting for you before ordering dinner or whatever it is.
I don’t like people trying to make me fit into their schedule, and when they try to insist I be somewhere at some specific time when I don’t want to or have more important things to do then I tell them I can’t do it. It’s just that simple.
Yes, you do these things because you prioritize being on time. That’s perfectly reasonable for situations that involve just you.
But when you expect other people to be on time with you, you are demanding that they prioritize the thing you think is important ahead of the things they think are important.
I mean in the mental sense, as in having a rigid expectation of how somebody must act as opposed to a preference for how you’d like them to act. It’s what’s going on in your head, not making someone sign a contract or holding something hostage for them, etc. And with that demand often comes harsh inferences/judgments, like THEY are BAD people for not keeping their promises or promises made to me MUST be respected, how dare they do this to ME. I CAN’T STAND IT when people break promises. The language is simplified and direct there, but usually something of that sort of thoughts that flow through our heads when we place a mental demand on others.
Another way I think of it is suppose a have a group of friends. We all plan to meet somewhere at 7 p.m. Everyone agrees on this time and promises to be there. Everybody shows up on time, except for one guy who is 20 minutes late. A couple friends are annoyed, one is angry at Bob always showing up late, but a smattering are just fine and happily go along the rest of the day. I don’t think this is an unusual hypothetical, as I’ve observed this type of behavior in groups of friends. Some care about the lateness/inability to adhere to the agreement; some don’t. Now what’s the difference? The exact same event happened: Bob is late. But the reaction from the group wasn’t universal. Their individual thoughts and the flexibility of those thoughts are different, and you have a group of some pissed off people, and some who are ready to party on. I want to be in the latter group.
I find asking “why are you always late” not to be a particularly productive question. Is somehow understanding it going to make you feel better? Perhaps it may, but I find it easier to just accept it as is and figure out a way that I could control my own thoughts and reactions to it in a more productive manner. Perhaps knowing some of the psychology would help with that, but I don’t think it’s necessary at all.
Here’s one from this morning: my wife is running late for her dentist appointment. She’s tied up on the computer working (she’s a data scientist.) She suddenly realizes she has five minutes to get to the dentist. She’s scrambling around the house looking for her phone. She enlists my help. She needs her phone for the dentist. She says she’s running late. In my head, I have all sorts of solutions and questions, but I’ve been down this path before. Every day she is scrambling to look for her phone. I want to say “why don’t you put your phone in the same place every day so we don’t do this dance through the house all the time” and “if the phone was so important, why didn’t you have it ready?” and “why didn’t you set a reminder on your computer fifteen minutes out from getting to the dentist?” Yes, there are logical solutions to ALL of this, and my wife is a logical person with a high-paying job and excellent executive function otherwise. I can be angry or upset or aggravated every single time this happens, when she’s scrambling out the door and now I’m part of the solution and have to help her find the damned phone for the millionth time but, ya know, fuck it. I don’t have to choose to feel that way. She’s a wonderful person; I don’t have to know why she’s always late; I don’t have to offer unsolicited solutions (though I could have a talk about it, and I have – results slightly improved). I chose to think about it another way, accept it, and I just don’t get stressed about it anymore at all. It takes practice. It’s not easy undoing 40+ years of a way of thinking.
Looks to me like Delayed_Reflex does see the difference:
I don’t have the time to hunt through this thread for the quote; but at least one person was saying that it made no difference whether they were made to miss anything or not; the only thing that really mattered to them was that they felt that the other person was breaking the rules.
What it changes is that it makes it clear to me that it’s important to be there no later than 10.
So if I’m going to do this I’ll tell you that I’ll be there between 9:30 and 10, maybe even a bit earlier. And if you tell me that no, that won’t do, I’ve got to be there between two minutes of and three minutes past: then you should ask somebody else for a ride.
And I’m pretty sure I’ve said that before in this thread; maybe more than once.
And you need to stop assuming that the person who says ‘OK, I’ll take you to the mall, we can go at 10’ means ‘10 on the dot’. Check first. If you make it clear that what you’re saying is ‘Can you give me a ride to the mall and I’m going to be furious and conclude that you’re essentially a horrible selfish person if you’re late, and I won’t think much better of you if you’re early’ you may get fewer rides to the mall, of course; but at least everybody will know what’s going on.
I don’t think any of the people who’ve come into this thread saying that we run late are in denial about it. Kind of by definition.
No, you don’t. At least, not at any event I’ve ever shown up late to.
You have been determinedly insisting that no matter what the occasion or the situation, everyone understands '10:00" to mean exactly 10:00. It has been explained to you over and over again that there are many social groups in which that isn’t so. I think ‘malicious misunderstanding’ is a pretty good term for it, myself.
Again, it’s been explained over and over and over again in this thread that yes, we can do that, but only at the expense of putting so much energy and attention into being sure that we show up by the time that it screws up other things (and quite possibly other people) in our lives. So we’re only willing to do it for things that wlll otherwise result in a big hassle/expense for somebody. Not just for us; plenty of people have said they’ll go to those lengths if the other result is a big hassle/expense for the other person. But expecting us to do so if the result is trivial for the other person is another matter entirely.
In other words, they expect the other people to wait, but they’re not going to.
Because of the way a doctor’s practice works, that may be necessary in that context. The doctor can’t keep to a schedule because they have no way of telling how long any appointment will take; at least, if they’re doing a halfway decent job. But they’re not the only people whose lives are like that; and personal lives can be like that as well as professional lives.
Even if it’s a one time thing, you nevertheless appear absolutely confident that the excuse must be phony.
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– I’m getting tired of explaining the same thing over and over in this thread to people who seem determined not to hear it. But I did wake up this morning thinking of something that I don’t think has been addressed:
For those of you who say it’s no big deal to show up early, even if you’re left waiting out on the street, because you can always find something to do while you’re waiting for it to be time for whatever the event is: why don’t you see it as equally easy and also no big deal to find something to do while you’re waiting a similar length of time for a late person, probably in the comfort of your own home or office?
My time is literally my life. I cannot get any more. When you waste my time so that you can indulge whatever prevents you from synchronizing with the rest of the industrialized world (aka Time Zealots), you are literally frittering my life away. I am going to take a hard look at whether I need to engage with you, aka Curating My Social circle. I’m married to one of these “poly chronic people” and it’s simply one of those imperfections I’m willing to deal with because she has other admirable qualities as a wife and mother.
Hell I have been ready to change employers because the one I had was dominated by chronic latecomers who not only didn’t show up on time, but missed every deadline for anything else. But perversely relied on the Time Zealots to pick up the slack. Fortunately before I quit the company almost went bankrupt and was acquired by another that rapidly and mercilessly got rid of anyone who wasn’t a Schedule Nazi (AKA normal worker in any successful large scale corporate environment)
You misunderstand my point. The non-punctual seem to believe these sacrifices are burdens only they have to bear to be on time. They are the only ones stricken by having to keep an eye on the clock, or eschew tasks because of time constraints. Don’t the punctual understand their plight? Don’t we know how much effort it takes for them to be on time?
Yes, we do, because we do it. The difference is, we don’t complain about it unless we do all those things to be on time, and get still more of our time wasted because you didn’t think it was important enough.
The late person gets to maximize their productivity at home, squeeze every last bit of time for all it’s worth, then when they meet the punctual person for an event, not have to wait a single second. Must be nice.
I pretty much agree with what you are saying. It just doesn’t apply to me. You can say someone is late when they miss the start of a movie. They aren’t late as far as I’m concerned unless they promised to be their on time for some reason, like maybe they have my tickets. Otherwise, I don’t care if they missed the beginning of every movie they’ve ever seen as long as it doesn’t affect me. The only sense of ‘late’ that matters to me is not living up to a promise to me to meet at a particular time. A promise doesn’t have to be a written contract, but it also has to be something reasonable people consider a promise. Just saying “I’ll try to get there by then” is not a promise. A promise is when knowing someone is chronically late I will say “We are all meeting up at the bar at 7 and then heading out to the restaurant by 7:30”, and you say “Don’t leave without me I’ll definitely be there by 7:30”, and then you aren’t there by 7:30 then you have broken a promise. And even then it’s no big deal unless you do that repeatedly. I don’t why everybody is making so much about my view on this. I think I’m being very reasonable, I don’t care why you are chronically late, it doesn’t matter to me at all unless you are late after making a commitment to me to be on time. I am not going to demand people be on time to anything so don’t say you will be if you are not going to put the effort into being on time. That’s the long and short of it to me.
I don’t do that at all. I said quite the opposite, I don’t demand people do something on time and I don’t care why they aren’t on time. I care that they broke a promise because they did not put in the minimal effort necessary to fulfill that promise. And if they do that repeatedly then I don’t believe them about it in the future and don’t bother trying to include them in activities that require doing something on time. Again, that’s it, none of this other stuff people are imagining.
Again, it’s been explained over and over and over again that some people have a much harder time doing this than others.
Possibly there are some punctual people who manage this by consistently sacrificing the quality of their work and social lives to do so. But most seem to be saying things like ‘whyyyyy don’t you just know already exactly how long everything takes you?’
Maybe I’ll go back through this thread reading your earlier posts. Not right now though.
A non-punctual person is going to look at you and say “Yes, it is nice.”
They’re not going to applaud you for making sacrifices for something they don’t think is important.
And if you insist they make sacrifices for something they don’t think is important because you think it’s important, they’re going to get annoyed with you.
If somebody insisted on wearing a suit and tie every time they left the house, even if they were only going to the grocery store, you might shrug it off as a personal eccentricity. But if they started insisting that you wear a suit and tie to the grocery store, you would probably get annoyed at them. If they argued “I’m willing to make the extra effort it takes to wear a suit and tie, so why don’t you?” the argument would probably not persuade you.