Not always. There are plenty of instances of people in the same culture or family where some are punctual and some are always late. It’s not that one is from Brazil and the other from Switzerland. Certainly a person’s culture may dictate which is considered normal, but not everyone in their culture will naturally follow that.
One thing I’ve noticed with some of the always late people in my life is that they have a hard time paring down what needs to be done. For example, if they have a meeting at 9, they first read the paper, go for a walk, listen to a podcast, cook breakfast, take a shower, etc. etc. etc. before the meeting. They resist eliminating things from the list or abbreviating the time they spend on each task to ensure they can easily make it to the meeting. Packing for a weekend trip means multiple suitcases with multiple outfits for each day to cover all possibilities of what may possibly be needed. And then they’re late leaving for the airport because they spent so much time deciding what to pack. It’s like their mind fills with X things that are needed and those X things become written in stone. Maybe they feel compelled to get them done the same way an OCD person feels compelled to check the locks X times before they leave the house.
Still doesn’t make it right. 10 = 10, not 10.5.
Do you ever feel bad making someone wait 20 minutes when they said they’d be ready at 10 and they were but you roll up 20 minutes later. Do you ever feel responsible when someone else is late because of you?
It’s context dependent. Even in science, 10 does not necessarily mean 10.0, but something from 9.5-10.4 perhaps. For a party, 10 means show up at 11 in the circles I ran in. For a doctor’s appt, it means show up at 10 sharp, even though you probably won’t be seen until 10:30 anyway.
That is why I followed it up. If I say please pick me up at 10 and I am ready at 10 and you pick me at 10:20 because 10 doesn’t really mean 10 to you and even if we make it to the movie before the feature starts (thank you previews), you’ve wasted my time and stressed me out because YOU couldn’t be on time and your reply is it’s social groups and culture changes. Do you not see how you (all laters, not necessarily @pulykamell) are really saying, “Go fuck yourself. My desire to do my laundry after a 50 minute shower is more important than being on time.”
Let’s go at it this way laters. You say you’ll pick me up at 10am and we have established that YOU don’t consider 10:20am to be late.
Is 10:21 late?
Is 10:22 late?
Is 10:25 late?
Is 11am late?
In other words, if it is after 10am, at what point does “after 10am but on-time” become late? And what standard do you use to arrive at that figure?
I just choose not to get aggravated at late people, because most of the time, it doesn’t fucking matter. And if it does, then I just go about my business and not wait for the late person.
I know it seems like pure argument but those are honest questions
If you are late, do you feel any empathy for the people that were on time that had to wait for you?
If you do not have a hard line for what it means to be on-time, then what is your definition of “late”?
Do you consider me the ahole for expecting you to be here/there at the agreed (meaning stated) time and not buying in to your social/culture construct that on-time means whenever?
This. I used to be obsessively early or exactly on time. Slowly I realized that in many cases being virtuously on time was its own punishment, because I had to wait around impatiently for all the people who had realized that this wasn’t a particularly time-important thing to show up for. Some people run their lives by a clock and find this congenial and cannot understand how others don’t, or don’t always. I now find myself steering clear of this kind of person, as they are often just as judgmental about other divergences from their standards.
I’m not Thorny but, your animosity towards her seems unreasonable. She said this is how the people in her group of friends view time. You don’t know them, she does. You seem so personally angry at her. Has she offered you a ride somewhere and showed up late?
I don’t see that at all. The legitimate criticism I can see is that, after having been informed of this particular cultural difference, if I’m dealing with somebody I don’t know I’d better check whether they mean “pick me up at 10” for some culture other than either the one I grew up in, or the ones in which most people I now know are living in. I shouldn’t rely entirely on the other person to make this communication clear, unless I already know their attitude about this for this particular type of occasion.
And you’re leaping to assumptions about the 50 minute shower. Some people may be late for such reasons, yes. Others may be late because a child or friend suddenly decided to open up about an issue crucial to them; or because a customer showed up on farm at the last minute; or because at the last moment they spilled something all over the shirt they were going to wear; or because traffic did something weird; or because they stopped to tell the neighbor that their sheep were out; or – there are a whole lot of possible reasons to be late, and not all of them are at all predictable. Some people genuinely have more of them in their lives than others. Some people, of course, don’t give a shit about the child or the friend or the neighbor; all they care about is their reputation for Always Showing Up On Time. But when somebody does always (or more likely almost always) show up on time, I don’t assume that’s their reason for doing so. I really wish you’d stop assuming that whenever somebody’s late they’re somehow being late At You.
You want a precise instant? There isn’t a precise instant; that’s the whole point.
Depends on whether I actually screwed them up or not; including whether I expected them to be horribly anxious about it. If I were worried about screwing them up, I’d call.
Depends on the occasion and the people.
I don’t consider you an asshole for expecting me to be there by a precise time if we’ve established that you need me to do that, for whatever reason, including just that it upsets you. Depending on what we were proposing to do, I may just decline to do whatever the thing is with you. Or I may tell you that I’ll probably be there early.
– – – Refusing to acknowledge that not all cultures run like that, and refusing to acknowledge that people who are late aren’t all doing it because we don’t give a shit about anybody else – that’s another matter entirely.
Me too. And at the vet’s.
Things come up unexpectedly for both sorts of health care people. (The frequency may depend on the specialty.) And if they scheduled their time so that almost nobody ever had to wait, then they’d have to schedule a lot fewer clients each day, and there’d be a lot of wasted time between appointments.
I am obsessively punctual and I don’t mind waiting around (especially in the age of smart phones) for ten or fifteen minutes if we are meeting for a hike or whatever. Much more late than that and on a regular basis and we won’t be meeting for hikes anymore.
If it’s a thing with a start time, and especially if I have being kind enough to be the driver, you damn well better be on time or no more than a few minutes late nearly always or you can get your own fucking ride. I have noticed that after I tell them that if they aren’t on time they can drive themselves from now on, they somehow are able to fix their issues. I am very often the driver to concerts and such because I don’t drink. I am happy to do so but you better respect my time. One very good friend of mine and I have agreed to disagree on this so we both don’t end up stressed. I love being at shows with her but not going with her. I am there half an hour or more early so I can socialize before the show and she misses part of the first set.
As for the executive function thing, well you know you have it so you need to figure out how to account for it, no different than any other cognitive dysfunction (for want of a better word). There are things that I struggle with and I account for them. I have such a bad sense of direction that I literally can get lost in my own neighborhood. I don’t just set forth and hope it works out. I make sure that I have my gps ready to go. Before that, I would hand write directions in large letters that I could follow.
I often give people rides. And I’m often a little later than the agreed upon time.
no, unless we end up late to the event, i don’t feel very bad about making you wait. I’ll try not to make it too long, and I’ll make sure to meet you at a place that’s not physically uncomfortable, but I’m not feeling really guilty if I’m five or ten minutes later than agreed, and you are waiting in your home. I will text you as i pull out of the driveway with google’s ETA so you have a decent idea when to expect me.
I’m probably going 20 minutes out of my way to give you a ride, and I’ll do that again to take you home. You probably can’t get where we are going without someone going out of their way to pick you up. I don’t expect you to feel guilty about that, either.
i usually warn prospective riders that I’m not great with time. If that’s going to bother you, i suggest you hit up someone else for that ride.
And that was never the issue. If everyone in the group agrees that “10am” means anytime before 10:30am then that’s their thing. My issue is if we agree to 10, I’m ready at 10 but TL arrives 20 minutes, wasting my time and making us 10 minutes late to the movie. The question for her and others is: don’t you care about the impact on me? Am I the unreasonable one saying 10 = 10 and not 10 = That’s just, you know, your opinion, man.
And like I said, the questions sound argumentative but they are real question because I seriously don’t understand how people can be late all of the time when it adversely affects others and it’s no big deal to them. Call it cognitive blindness if you want.
Do they care or not care if other are affected? Do they believe everyone else has to adjust to their definition of on time? How do you function when you HAVE to be somewhere on time like a flight or a concert? Do you manage to make it on time OR do you hope God miracles you there on time OR is there really no plan for getting there on time and whatever - I’ll deal with it if I miss my plane / can’t get into the hall until intermission?
And one way I account for it is to limit as much as possible the number of things in my life for which I need to be somewhere at an exact time.
That’s been answered, again, more than once in this thread. I get there early.
And I don’t plan on getting anything else done for a sizeable chunk of time before I have to leave. Which, obviously, limits what I can get done overall; including things likely to be useful to others.
I don’t think anyone is concerned if someone is occasionally late or “late” to a thing like a party when you can show up whenever. Any anger is at people who are regularly very late to a thing where the timing matters like a show or doctor’s appointment.
Funny story. A buddy of mine invited me to a party at his house which happens to be in my neighborhood. I know that his parties always start past the stated starting time. On the morning of the party I was riding my bike by his house and ran into him. I was like, “you know me, bro. What is the actual starting time?” I think that the starting time was supposed to be 7:00 and he said, “people will start to show up at 7:30”. I got there at 7:45 and I was the first one there and he wasn’t even dressed yet. No big deal. I helped his girlfriend make the charcuterie board and the next guest showed up fifteen minutes later.
Yes, you have established already that it is the other person’s fault for merely saying, “Pick me up at 10.” and not, “Pick me up at 10. That’s 10am. I really mean 10. 10:01 is too late. It is OK to pick me up at 9:59am because I have to be out the door by 10.”
Complete strawman to this thread. Has everyone been late because of something unforeseen? Yes, of course. This thread is about people late ALL of the time. And I doubt people are habitually late because every time they walk out the door on time but something out of their control occurs.
OR about their kids, friends, family, work because all they care about is showing up when they want and not to any objective standard. Hey my kid should know that when he says that his school concert starts at 5:00, that means 5:20 in my culture so they should adjust to me.
Which is completely reasonable. I don’t make commitments that I can’t accommodate either. I imagine that you aren’t the problem that people are complaining about here because you aren’t habitually and always late to important things. That’s because you have empathy for people you would otherwise be upsetting and aren’t entitled.