Theater people say the same thing!
Communication is important. And if I said I’ll take you to catch your plane, I’ll tell you that the only way I can be absolutely certain to be there on time is to plan to be there way early, so you’d better be ready to let me in. And if you say no, you need me to be there precisely between 2:55 and 3:00, I’m going to tell you to get your ride with somebody else.
But if you’re going to throw a fit because I was five or ten minutes late to something for which the only reason that the time mattered was because you didn’t want to wait five or ten minutes for me – then we’ll both be a whole lot happier if we hang out with other people. But bear in mind that you were willing to put a whole lot less work into keeping the relationship going than you were expecting me to perform, because in order to make sure you didn’t have to wait ten minutes you were expecting me to screw up my entire afternoon; and, therefore, that I’m likely to conclude that you don’t care all that much about me.
The people who appear to think that everyone should plan to get to things twenty minutes early and drive around the block or wait in the parking lot in order to make sure that nobody will ever be even five minutes late – isn’t that wasting even more of everybody’s accumulated time? And if it takes ten minutes to get everyone to sit down and otherwise set up for a meeting, then call the meeting for ten minutes earlier. Or more. I’ve been to a number of meetings that started at X and allowed the first half hour for “registration”.
– in terms of people who manage to show up on time for work but not for other things: it’s occured to me that a lot of people who work set hours have an equally or nearly equally set routine of things that they do before work: get out of bed (probably with the aid of an alarm), do A, B, C, D, E, head for work via usual method of transport. And doing A, B, C, D, E and then getting to work via usual method of transport really does take about the same amount of time every time they do it; so once they’ve figured out when to set the alarm for, they don’t need to have a sense of how long any one of those steps is taking; only a sense of whether something significantly unusual has intervened.
But for those other things, there is no set routine of exactly what needs to be done between getting out of bed and arriving at whatever the event is. So those people who don’t know how long things are taking unless they’re staring at the clock are either going to have to spend that time staring at the clock, or risk being late to the event.
It’s nothing compared to the amount of time people waste waiting for people who are chronically late.
Unless it’s a court order you are the one obligating yourself to be somewhere or do something at a particular time and place. Just don’t do that if you can’t meet the schedule. The problem isn’t that people are late, it’s that they promise to be on time and don’t bother to what is necessary to fulfill that promise.
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Because other people don’t attach the same importance to punctuality that you do.
You come across as somebody who feels you are holding people to a universally agreed upon standard. That everyone wants to be punctual and you resent the fact that you’re the one who has to make the extra effort required for everyone else’s sake.
You need to consider this may not be the case. Perhaps other people don’t care as much about being punctual. They resent the fact that you’re trying to make everyone else comply to a standard that only you care about.
It may help for you to imagine this as a different issue; something you personally don’t have a priority over. Imagine, for example, the problem was over spending money. (I have no idea what your position or your wife’s position on that issue actually is so substitute a different issue if that one doesn’t work.) Imagine that one of you placed a high priority on saving money and not spending any money unless it was absolutely necessary. And the other person has a more casual attitude over spending money.
It wouldn’t be an issue of one of you being right and the other one being wrong. And the wrong person needing to stop being wrong. It would be an issue of the two of you having different opinions about an issue and the conflict that is causing.
Stop looking at being late as your wife’s problem and trying to figure out how to fix her. Start looking at this as a relationship problem. You have one way of wanting to do things and she has a different way of wanting to do things. The two different ways are causing a conflict between you. You two need to communicate over this issue and figure something out that works for both of you. And that may involve both of you having to make some changes.
Until of course, that second person is always trying to “borrow” money from you because they are short on rent again.
It’s one thing to show up late to social engagements. I actually had to break myself of this, and learn to be a bit late. Someone would say, “We’re having friends over at 6”, and I would show up at 5:50-5:55, and they would still be getting themselves ready. I learned that for some events, to be late is to be on time.
But that’s a minority of events. For instance, right now, it is 11:02, and I am waiting on a client scheduled at 11:00. I have an employee, that I am paying, waiting on them to show up before she can get to work. Being late isn’t just a state of mind, it is something that affects other people.
11:08 now… still haven’t shown up…
Cite, please?
I’d be genuinely interested to see a study working out the amount of time people spend waiting for those who are late versus the amount of time people spend showing up early and waiting (whether or not in the parking lot) for things to get started. I expect the results would vary for different types of events and for different areas/cultures.
Did you extract a specific promise, “I want you to promise to be here for dinner exactly between 5:55 and 6:00” or “definitely by 6 even if that means you show up at 4:57 and I was in the shower”? Or are you simply assuming that everyone’s made that exact promise and that ‘come to dinner at 6’ means to everybody ‘we’re going to sit down at 6 and be served a soufflé’ instead of ‘I’ll be ready for guests by 6, we’ll probably sit down sometime between 6:30 and 7:00’? (Or even, among almost everybody I was around before I was in my late 30’s, ‘I’ll probably be ready for guests by about 6:15, it’s mildly rude to show up at the first exact instant and almost nobody does that without warning the host first.’)
In some cases, the promise is implicit – ‘here’s the time clock, clock in at 8AM or you’ll be docked’; ‘I need to catch the 3:00 plane and you need to be at the airport by 1:00 these days to do that and it takes between half an hour and 40 minutes to get there from my place, depending on whether there’s a train at the crossing.’ But in other cases it really isn’t. As @Little_Nemo says, some people assume that this exact punctuality is the universally agreed upon standard; but it really isn’t.
Also, don’t push people to make an appointment they don’t want to commit to. Don’t wheedle and whine about them being late all the time. If you know they have a habit of being late what is the point of pushing them to promise to be on time knowing they won’t make it. If you think you can then get mad at them for not fulfilling a promise you forced them into then you may be the big jerk and not them.
Just communicate people.
Exactly, which is why I have terminated a number of employees and clients because they were unwilling to commit to being on time. I found it did no good to try to get them to show up when they were scheduled, they just didn’t care. So I severed connection with them so that their indifference to following through on their commitments no longer caused harm to myself and those others who I actually can count on.
Or don’t, and stop giving them opportunities. Cut them out of your life so you don’t have to listen to their excuses.
In a situation where somebody else spends their money too freely and wants to borrow money from you on a regular basis, you’re probably better off separated yourself from the issue and not give this person any money.
But there’s a different set of circumstances when you’re half of a couple. The two of you need to work together and reach agreements on issues like this.
I agree it’s a situational thing. There are situations like when you’re taking a flight where being someplace by a specific time is a critical issue and being late is a significant problem.
But for some people, all situations are like this. And they should learn to tell the difference between situations where being late is a real problem and situations where it’s just an annoyance.
When my nieces were younger, they would ask my brother or me to drive them to the mall. It was around an hour drive. We would tell them something like “Okay, I’ll be there at ten to pick you up.” But we would show up and they wouldn’t be ready for another hour.
My brother would get really upset about how they weren’t ready on time. But if I was the one who showed up and they weren’t ready, I wouldn’t worry about it. It was just a trip to the mall. It’s not like the mall was going to close before we got there. If we left an hour late, they would just have an hour less time to shop.
I am very punctual. In fact, I am always early. However, that doesn’t mean I expect to be let into someone’s house early. I know better than that. I will stop at a store near said friend’s house and pick up an additional bottle of wine or booze, or maybe some posies if I’m that early.
However, I really, really resent people who are habitually late. I mean LATE. Like an hour or more. I used to have a friend who was so late to every social outing that we’d tell him to get there an hour and a half early because we knew he’d still show up “late”. We lost dinner reservations due to his habitual lateness and almost missed a flight because of him. He was very self-centered and narcissistic, to the point that he became jealous if someone in the group received more attention than him and could be very petty. He’s no longer a friend. He actually told us that he didn’t care about being on time.
I also had a relative who pulled the same stuff; we quit inviting him to hang out with us.
Neither of these individuals respected us or our time enough to make an effort. I really don’t care about five, ten, even fifteen minutes. But an hour or two is ridiculous which was common with both of these individuals. Considering we saw the former friend most every weekend, his habitual lateness really, really started to grate on me.
If even after asking someone to make an effort, they don’t change, I can change my reaction by not including them anymore. It saves me stress, and it saves them having to commit to something they obviously don’t care about.
One of the other things that I’m gleaning from this thread is: if you and your spouse, for example, don’t agree about punctuality, and the only person affected is you, then it’s a matter of negotiation between the two of you.
But at some point, if habitual tardiness on the part of a single person continually costs the time of numerous other people (as is often the case), it really does start to look like a different issue.
I wonder how much these things go hand in hand. My brother in law (I should say ex, as they did get divorced a number of years ago), the one that I had to physically push into my car in order to him to (barely) show up at his wedding on time, also spent all their money on stupid shit, leaving them scrambling (and begging from me) when rent, car payment, or utilities came due.
You do need to reach a compromise if you want to stay together. But it will always be the person who wants to be late who is the one who is causing the friction in the relationship, just as it is the person who spends the rent money at the strip club is the one at fault when you get an eviction notice. At a certain point, it’s not compromise, it’s capitulation. They are the ones in control, and nothing you do to try to meet them halfway will actually solve the issue.
Just because it’s “just an annoyance” doesn’t make it okay. You are annoying other people who were counting on you.’
Dog grooming isn’t exactly a critical issue, but I am still quite annoyed when people show up late for an appointment that they made.
Now, OTOH, I had another client who was scheduled at 12 today. But they called at 10:30 to tell me that their son’s soccer game ran late, and they would probably be 15-20 minutes late. They are still late, but I don’t feel nearly as annoyed as though they have no respect for my time as I did the people that I had to call because they were late for their 11 this morning.
Yes, but that’s still disrespecting you or your brother’s time. He could have slept for another hour, or done something else with that time. Instead, he is forced to wait on them.
It might be situational on both ends - I would not have been annoyed if my own kids did this to me when they were living with me and I would have been annoyed if anyone who I had to pick up did it. It’s not critical to get to the mall at a certain time ,but when the kids living in my house aren’t ready to leave for the mall until 11 even though we planned for 10 , I am at home and can do something while I am waiting. If I go to pick up my niece at 10 and she’s not ready until 11, I’m waiting somewhere other than my house and can’t do much of anything while I’m waiting. I mean I can watch tv, or play a game on my phone, but I can’t unload/load my dishwasher or sort the laundry and throw a load in or a million other things I could have done had I been waiting for that hour at home. And it’s especially annoying when it’s someone asking me for a ride.
People who get annoyed at people who show up 10 minutes late to hang out at a bar are a bit crazy - but so are people who show up at 7:30 when they were specifically told “Dinner will be served at 6:30” and think everyone will be fine with that or my personal favorite , people who invite me to a BBQ at noon who don’t arrive home from buying the food until after 1:00 and don’t actually have anything ready to eat until nearly 4:00.
I have an ex who definitely fits both of these categories- I had to tell him the wrong time for things like trains or appointments (which he would then get all pissy at me about for ‘lying to him’ even if we definitely would have been late otherwise. He even once claimed that I couldn’t know we would have missed the train we caught by seconds- which would have meant missing a trip we’d both been saving for for months- due to the sodding butterfly effect caused by my dishonesty of telling him it was due 15 minutes earlier. I did say ‘ex’ right?).
Random pissiness aside, he’s normally a lovely guy and would give you his last £10 if you needed it… even if he had bills due and would be begging that £10 off someone else the next day. Just no grasp of time or money and the value that the rest of society gives to either.
I think I have been somewhat obsessively on time during my life because I valued others more than myself, and I had internalized even the potential criticism of being late to such an extent that the prospect of my own possible lateness gave me considerable anxiety. That’s probably not healthy, but I doubt it’s going to change completely at my time of life.
I have managed to ameliorate the negative effects somewhat: I trained myself not to transfer that anxiety into my driving behavior, for example, and that in turn has helped me to relax more about it overall. Not to the extent of being casual and just not caring, just to the extent of not eating myself up about it.
If I were completely emotionally healthy I would be able to consider some of the issues raised here dispassionately and make proper, rational choices. But I’m not and I know it, so I mostly just try not to make myself miserable.
If I am the only one kept waiting I don’t fuss about someone else being 5 or 10 minutes late. After that, I start setting deadlines in my head about how long I’m going to give them (without a call or text from them) before I just leave. Fortunately, it’s so easy to call or text these days that almost everyone does so.
Fascinating subject, so interesting that I went back and read the lengthy threads on it from a decade ago.
For you latesters, what are your experiences and your feelings about being late to events that start promptly with or without you? Sports events, movies, weddings, etc.
I had a cow-orker ages ago who was habitually late. Our manager agreed to allow her a later start time (like 30 mins later), and she said fine. And she habitually was late at that time, too. She was terminated.
How did I miss that Golden Retriever video all these years??? My dog is extremely food motivated, so he’d definitely be doing the same things. I’d have had to pick him up and carry him to the finish line. But he’s a 15 lb dachshund, so it’d be easier done than with a GR.
My older sister is the the habitually late one in my family. I just don’t socialize with her as much anymore.
Until I had a baby I was always on time or early. While she was a small child I simply had to give that up, my time was not my own, and planning didn’t seem to help. Then I went back to being prompt, but with more relaxation about it. I finally realized that for many situations for which I was always prompt to the minute, I could have been late and inconvenienced no one.
My husband was the late one. We had screaming fights about it. Like, meeting some people at a restaurant, he would start to get ready, not even when we were supposed to leave, but when we were supposed to be there. It was as though he could not hold in his mind the concept of planning for even a very close future event. I believe it was due to a phobia about planning which he still has – although he’s long since learned to get places on time. It is a true phobia, he practically has a panic attack when asked to think about the future, and I do not know why – like many of his idiosyncrasies, he has no idea why he does it and doesn’t care to explore the reasons.
I have had friends who were regularly, stupendously late. Like an hour late for a lunch date, or in one case, over twelve hours late for a kids’ campout. She said she’d be there in the morning and didn’t get there until after dark. In each case, they had other problems. They were not inconsiderate jerks, they were each (differently) mentally incapable of certain executive functions we tend to take for granted.
In two cases I stopped being angry and just adapted. For example I would tell them to call me just before they left home and I would leave then too. Or I’d figure I’d spend some time by myself waiting so I would bring a book. As if you would allow extra time for a friend who was in a wheelchair. Another case, we had to part ways.
A neighbor is now dealing with just this issue. she called me yesterday asking for a ride to the vet with her dog. i agreed and reminded her that i would want to leave on time. when i got there to pick them up, she wasn’t ready. we were half an hour late to the vet appointment, so missed that slot and they are going to work her in when they have time.
i left them there, so she can wait until the vet can see them and then she can call me and wait 45 minutes until i get there because i am not leaving home until she is finished at the vet. she’s in her fifty’s so i doubt she will learn anything, but at least im not sitting in the parking lot waiting with her.
*please forgive my typing, my keyboard is having issues.
My wife just has a terrible sense of how long it takes to do things. In her mind, everything takes five minutes. We used to have to sprint for airplane gates because she waited until the last minute. It’s the only good thing about TSA security, IMO, that you have to arrive reasonably early. She’ll wait until the eggs are in the pan before deciding to make OJ for breakfast, saying “It’ll only take a minute.” It’s not a catalyst for spats, as I have learned over the years to accommodate this quirk, and she knows that when I’m cooking I expect her to be at the table to eat it before the food is below room temperature.
On the other side of the coin, I was always a time Nazi, probably because of a career in the military. If a party was supposed to start at 6:00, by god we’d better be there at 6:00. I’ve gotten over that and am now fine with arriving at events whenever we get there, partly because she is really not happy when rushed, but mainly because it’s just not important and nobody really cares when you arrive.