Why are you always late?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
543

I do find it difficult to wake up earlier than usual - whether it’s half an hour earlier or two hours earlier. And for that reason, I don’t agree to plans that require me to wake up that early and be able to function - I might possibly take a flight that requires me to wake up two hours early, but only if I don’t need to function as soon as I arrive because chances are if I have to wake up at 4 am I didn’t really sleep at all.

I couldn’t time myself and take a shorter shower - but there are two reasons for that. One is because I can’t accurately tell how much time has passed while I’m in the shower. But the other reason is because I don’t take 40 minute showers in the first place. I think I remember reading that the average shower is about 10 minutes, and I guess mine are 10-15 minutes. But whether they are 8 minutes or 15, they take the minimum amount of time possible to wash and rinse my hair and soap and rinse my body. And that’s how someone who normally takes a 40 minute shower can cut their time in the shower in half without actually knowing how much time has passed. Or skip it entirely - which is what I would have to do, since my showers already take the minimum time possible.

I don’t know you or anyone else in this thread ,and therefore I am only speaking about the chronically late people I know - but none of them have had any TBIs or any other medical reasons that cause them to be late. They are late because of things that are totally within their control. My husband used to always be late because he didn’t want to wait for anyone, so he would wait until the kids and I were ready to walk out the door to start getting ready himself. He got mostly cured of that after a time where his sister wanted to meet for dinner at 8 and everyone else wanted to meet at 6 - so she agreed to 6 but went about her day as if we had agreed to meet at 8 and was surprised that we left when we found out at 6 that she was at home waiting for everyone to shower after a day at the beach. There are people at my job who arrive 30 minutes late for a meeting or training who clearly stopped to pick up breakfast when they were already late - not caring that the start of the meeting/training was delayed at least 15 minutes waiting for the latecomers.

Perhaps the worst instance was a group bowling trip - someone ( I’ll call him Jimmy) who was to go on the trip started calling two days before the trip looking for a ride. Sam, who really didn’t know Jimmy well agreed to give Jimmy and his girlfriend a ride. When Sam arrived at the agreed-upon time, his phone call to Jimmy woke the two of them up. OK, everyone oversleeps, and if they had gotten dressed and come down in 15 minutes , everything would have been fine since wasn’t any set time that they had to arrive at the hotel that day. But they hadn’t packed yet and they needed showers and Sam didn’t feel like he could just leave because if Jimmy didn’t arrive his teams would be short a bowler. So an hour and a half after Sam arrived, they were finally on their way. They may not have been able to control oversleeping - but they certainly did control their decision not to pack until that morning and their decision not to skip the showers while someone was waiting downstairs in a car. ( and they certainly could have showered when they got to the hotel). The next year, Jimmy didn’t understand why no one would give him a ride.

If you’re late constantly and don’t affect anyone else, I’m not sure you’re really late at all. After all, nobody would ever say that someone was late going to the mall by themself or even to meet a group of friends at the beach or to hang out at a bar. (meeting a single person at a bar is different). But if you really can’t keep track of time and have to screw up your entire day to be somewhere at 2 pm, then it seems you shouldn’t make plans to be somewhere at 2 pm unless it’s something that’s important enough to you to be worth screwing up your whole day. Which may mean that you never make plans that involve picking up/being picked up by/meeting other people at a specific time. Because while I won’t get annoyed if you are ten minutes late when one of us is picking up the other to go to the mall , if you’re thirty minutes late, I could have potentially done something other than waiting for you during that thirty minutes.

544

You seem to be making an assumption that everyone spends time just standing in the shower and can easily cut that out. It seemed like a strange assumption. If i have time pressure, of course i take a de minimus shower. As i usually do, even without time pressure. No, i can’t easily make it shorter. It just seemed like an incredibly bizarre suggestion for how one can easily be earlier. And i have no sense of time, and i certainly have no sense of how long i am taking in the shower. But I’m not an idiot and i don’t just stand there soaking when i might be running late.

You gave three “easy” suggestions. One was easy (pad Google’s drive-time estimate) one was hard (wake up half an hour early) and the other was impossible (cut your shower time in half.)

That suggests to me that you live in a different world than i do, and have different skills and capabilities. And also that it’s objectively easier for you to be on time than… probably the vast majority of human beings, if i had to guess.

545

My brother is much later than i am. I might be 5-15 minutes late. My brother is routinely 2-4 hours late. If he’s coming to Thanksgiving dinner, i ask him when he plans to arrive And make sure to plan dinner at least 3 hours later than that.

He’s not lazy, either. And he’s not indifferent. In many ways he’s an extremely caring and considerate human being. He puts a great deal of effort into doing stuff for his friends and family, and it’s good, helpful, appreciated stuff. (Well, mostly.)

I’m not really sure why he’s so incredibly bad at doing things on time. But it’s a disability. (I just have trouble with time, but I’m in the “normal” range, i think.) It’s not a moral failing.

His friends and family know not to depend on him for time-sensitive stuff. We also know we CAN depend on him for a lot of other things.

546

Come on now, you are just being silly. It is “impossible” for you to take a shorter shower if you were running late? Literally “impossible”?

547

Yes, I think that would be impossible. As I said above, if I didn’t have time to take a shower, I would skip it, not try to cut my shower time in half. I really can’t imagine how I would do that.

And if this is something you can do easily, you either take an extremely leisurely shower most of the time, or you have some magical power that i can’t even comprehend.

548

I really don’t think this is true at all. Most people have zero problems being on time. Everyone knows, generally, how long it takes to say, get ready and leave your home. We’ve all, every one of us, completed this ‘task’ a countless number of times.

If it where, as you say “probably the vast majority of human beings” I think we would understand why it’s impossible to set an alarm clock or stick to a schedule. The vast majority know how to do those things.

I think what you’re trying to say is that most people have a major difficulty being on time, and therefor, it’s ok to always be late so I don’t need to put effort into being on time. That’s not true at all.

549

Today my wife got a message from her friend. Turns out her son’s baseball team had a road game two hours away and her car broke down in the way there.

Fortunately, she was able to call another parent who was also on the way and got a ride from them.

Why was she able to get the ride? Turns out the other family is constantly late so she figured that they would still be behind her, and she was right.

550

I don’t think anyone is saying that you must have a schedule and adhere to it all the time.

For example, today, a very good friend of my Wife and I is probably coming over sometime late morning. She’s in the process of moving and her house is nearly empty. She needs a break. We are taking care of her dog.

Movers are coming to pack up her moving POD this morning. Have know idea how long that may take.

She just wants to decompress on our deck and have a drink. Maybe spend the night. Great, we have no plans for the day. I may do some work around the house. Come on over when ever you want. Doesn’t matter what time she arrives at all, we are home for the day with no real plans. We’ll probably play cribbage, whatever.

551

This thread is really not about being late IMO. It’s about being considerate of other people’s time. In my experience, having been married to a habitual latester (herself the spawn of parental latesters) it was a point of principle never to wait for anyone else. “THEY wait for ME” was the byword, a dictate that was followed as religiously as if received from on high. Much better I should stand around with my thumb up my ass for a half-hour, fully dressed and with the car running, than that she risk the possibility of waiting for me to tie my shoe.

552

I’m not saying that it’s impossible for most people to be “on time”. I am saying that someone who has so strong an internal clock that they can track the time while they are showering, and arbitrarily cut their shower short by some fixed amount, is FAR better equipped to keep track of time (and therefore be on time) than the vast majority of humanity. It is objectively easier for that person than it is for most of us.

553

I did not say that at all. You made it sound like you lose track of all time in the shower and can spend a long time in there because it is IMPOSSIBLE to tell time in the shower and how the hell are you expected to know the difference between 10 and 30 minutes? That’s IMPOSSIBLE!! All I said was that if you really wanted and needed to take a quicker shower, you have the ability to look at a clock. If your showers are already only 5-10 minutes than I don’t know why you brought it up in the first place.

554

I don’t think she did bring it up in the first place - I’m pretty sure someone else questioned what is so difficult about setting the alarm minutes earlier and taking a twenty minute shower instead of a ten minute shower and in later posts, “taking a twenty minute shower instead of a ten minute shower” turned into cutting the shower time in half without any specifics regarding how long the original shower is.

555

Yeah. My FIL taught my Wife that being late is just saying that you believe your own time is more important than others time. I mostly agree with this.

Sure, it’s easier for some than others. And there are plenty of real world problems that make it difficult. Especially so for parents with young children. Shit happens.

It seems to me in this thread, and a number of other threads on this subject many have suggested tools to help be on time. But there is always push back on these ideas, or they are simply ignored.

I admit that I have a very good sense of the passage of time. But I still set a timer for cooking, and an alarm to wake if I absolutely need to get up by X time. It allows me to relax.

Everyone here can obviously write, so we can all make lists. And I bet 99 percent of us have smart phones. There are countless free apps that have scheduled alarms, quick alarms, count down timers, calendars, list creation. Whatever.

I’m hard of hearing, so I use a countdown timer on my phone (also set to vibrate) for cooking more than anything else. I’ll never hear the buzzer going off in the kitchen. So I adopted a free tool to take care of that. Easy peasy. Like I said above, such a tool/app allows me to relax.

The push back will be “You don’t understand”. Since there are many, many ways to help to keep to a schedule, or mutually agreed upon plan, it would be correct that I don’t understand.

556

Do you cook? Boil an egg? Grill a hamburger? How do you manage that? I use a timer myself. While I do have a good internal clock, I don’t want to burn things. It lets me relax.

That idea of a timer for cooking can be expanded to - I need to leave at X travel Y distance to do Z. That’s an honest question. If a person is habitually late, have they tried tools to help not inconveniencing others?

Or, and this is an honest question too, or do they not care about inconveniencing others. This is the crux of the matter. And is why people that manage to do what they agreed to do get irritated when others don’t.

And hey, I was to have an electrician come by to finish up some work the other day. It just needs to be done before winter. I discovered that there was a bad accident on the road and traffic would be horrible. I texted the guy that he did not need to worry about it if it was a problem. We can hook up this week sometime. He was thankful. Easy peasy. Nobody stressed out, no foul, no error.

Plans can change, but communication is key.

557

I do cook. I have an egg timer, although it’s actually a temperature sensor. (It’s a thing you put in the water with the eggs, and it plays a tune when it gets to “soft”, “medium”, and “hard”. My boiled eggs have been much more consistent since i got it.) I watch burgers, i don’t think I’ve ever timed a burger or a steak.

I time baked goods, but i actually remove them when they smell done. But when the burger is done, or the egg is cooked, or the cake baked you just remove them from the heat. If an alarm went off saying “time to stop showering” I’d probably still have soap on something that needed to be rinsed, might not have washed some part that should be washed… Finishing a shower is a process, not just “remove from heat”.

Like, if you told me to just look at a clock so i could mix the cake and get it into the oven in half the time i usually take, I’d tell you i can’t do that, either.

And… While I’m a pretty good cook, I’m actually not very good at estimating how long it will take, or when it will be done. I’ve been late to a party (the kind of party you show up at any time between the start and the end) because the cake wasn’t done quite on time.

I didn’t bring it up. Saint Cad said something like, “if you need to be someplace in the morning, just wake up half an hour earlier and spend half as much time in the shower, anyone can do that.”
And i replied, “no, that’s not true. And if you can, either your typical shower is extremely leisurely or you have some super power.”

558

I am not sure why people are piling on @puzzlegal who is clearly not part of the problem. Taking her at her word, which of course I do, she isn’t always very late and she always let’s people know when she will be tardy and she is apologetic about it. She doesn’t have the same time management skills as the timely people and doesn’t need suggestions on how to “fix” things particularly on her shower techniques.

559

Perhaps we’ve been too harsh. But Puzzlegal does respond, and many of us are trying to understand.

560

The issue here is not that these things are equal, but it is not actually ok to be late picking up your friend for the mall. This isn’t because going to the mall at 10am is ‘important’ because we can all agree that it isn’t.

It’s because of what your friend will be doing at 10. Waiting. If your friend has consideration for your time, they will not be hopping in the shower at 10, waking up at 10, ironing sheets, putting a casserole in the oven, or any of a number of time consuming and unstoppable tasks that will absolutely prevent them from leaving to go to the mall when you arrive to pick them up. At 10, they will have dealt with all of those tasks, or have planned to do them some other time, and are now waiting for you to show up.

The point is that going to the mall at a certain time isn’t important, what’s important is to not make your friends sit around waiting for you. If there’s a person who doesn’t think waiting around is a problem … they should do the waiting. How does this work if they are the ones doing the picking up? By pausing their chores at 9 and waiting on their own couch until it’s time to go.

Interestingly enough, this is the sort of thing on time people do to be on time. We don’t just magically arrive on time without having to put effort into it, without sacrifice, we go to Google Maps to check how long the trip will take, backtrack the time, and stop doing things before the time we have to leave. Things we’re going to have to do later.

I’m going to call the following the Pizza Principle. People who are routinely and severely late to events can generally still make frozen pizza for dinner. They place the pizza in the oven and do not routinely remove a charred inedible husk. This is because, during that 20 minute period, they are task focused, the pizza is (within reason) the single most important thing going on in their lives. They do not start the 15 minute process of vacuuming the house (which really takes 30 minutes), they do not wander off to fold clothes, take a shower, or do any of the things that make them late for your dinner reservation.

What is the difference between making a 20 minute long commitment to opening the oven door on time, and a 20 minute long commitment to opening the front door on time? To those of us waiting, it seems the difference is that you value our time less than than you value a DiGiorno.

561

You know, if you tell me you will pick me up to go to the mall around 10 (which is a common way to make an approximate, rather than precise, time commitment) i will make sure I’m ready by 10, in case you show up then, and then i will plop myself on my couch and read the straight dope, or open up the jigsaw puzzle I’m working on, and i will relax and enjoy myself until you show up at 10:10, or at 10:20. And if we are going to the mall, i don’t expect you to make an exact time commitment. Why on earth should i put you through that stress when I’m perfectly happy chilling at home until you arrive.

(And yes, i can be ready “by 10”, because as mentioned above, i can be early. It’s just “on time” that’s hard. And so, when I’m ready at 9:50 i just begin my hanging out.)

I mean, if you aren’t going to make it by 10:30 I’d like to know, preferably in advance. But this is a great advantage to meeting at someone’s home, or in some other pleasant place – so that whoever waits can do so comfortably.

562

Thank you. No, I really don’t need to “fix” my showing habits. In fact, as a relatively successful person who has an unusually poor grasp of time, I’m happy to give suggestions to others who struggle to be on time. I use all sorts of hacks to meet time commitments.

But when people in this thread tell me, “It’s easy. You’re just lazy and don’t care about anyone else.”, and especially when they couple that opinion with suggestions that are impractical, or that i am physically incapable of following, I’m going to push back and say, “You have no idea what you are talking about. You are possessed of an internal clock that many of us simply don’t have. You are being uncharitable to a vast swath of humanity.”