That’s EXACTLY what I’m talking about. No one cares if a party starts at 8 and we show up before 10 OR we plan on getting on our road trip at 6am but it’s closer to 7. This whole thread is about times it is critical to be on time yet you (generic you, not necessarily @thorny_locust ) are
15 minutes late to the doctor’s appointment
just got to TSA and your flight leaves in 30 minutes
the kids have plans for dinner being served at 5pm and you are leaving the house at 5:12pm
get to your seat and the movie started 10 minutes ago
your friend has been waiting by the door at the agreed to 10:00. it’s 10:20, where are you?
your boss has verbally warned you a few times that your shift starts at 9. Looks like you’re running late again.
And furthermore, I am not talking about one-offs but the people that do these things ALL of the time and not seems to care how it affects others.
People who are habitually very late to time critical functions and therefore don’t follow though on commitments. This is not @thorny_locust who rarely makes such commitments and follows through when she does.
Another funny story about me. A good friend of mine is mostly on time and never more than ten minutes late to things. He owns a small business and sometimes things run over. We go to shows together a lot and I usually drive. Depending on where the show is, we will meet at my house or his. One time I was supposed to get him at his house and I was a little late. A five minutes past the meeting time he started to seriously worry.
“Were we supposed to meet at a later time and I’m mixed up? Were we supposed to meet at haj’s house? OMG did something happen?”
It never occurred to him that I was running late when he was going through scenarios.
In the military, everyone learns to be on time; the alternative is constant ass chewings and worse (extra duty, disciplinary action, etc.). I’ve seen chronic late people get over it with these sorts of consequences. So I’m strongly of the opinion that this is a skill that can be learned, no matter someone’s inborn tendencies.
Limiting the places you have to be at a particular time is just fine ; nothing wrong with that at all. I wish the consistently late people in my life would do that - or if they picked me up at home instead of putting me in the position of leaving my house to meet them somewhere at 10 and then standing around waiting for them until 10:30. Or if they called as soon as they realize they will be a few minutes late. But they don’t do that. They tell me that they made a dinner reservation for 6pm and when I call at 6:15 because they haven’t arrived , I find out they haven’t left home yet . When that happened , one person expressed surprise that you were expected to be at the restaurant at 6pm for a 6 pm reservation and the other was shocked that the table for 12 wasn’t held until they arrived at 6:45. Another person manages to be late to events at their own house - the last time I went there for lunch , I got lunch on the way and it was a good thing I did - I was invited for 1 , planned to get there at 1:30 (because these people are always late) and when I arrived, they were still at the store buying food and we didn’t eat until nearly six. No one lives in a culture or social circle where an invitation for lunch at 1pm is understood by everyone to mean that you in fact should expect dinner around 6 pm.
If anybody in the world gets upset because someone is ten minutes late to come over and watch the game , or is occasionally ten minutes late when they have asked for a ride , then that person is ridiculous. But occasionally ten minutes late when I’m giving you a ride is not the same thing as routinely being ten minutes late or the same as being an hour late (which TBH, no one can do to me twice) and I don’t understand why some people seem to be acting as if they’re all the same and people must be complaining about all three if they complain at all.
I would add to that, people who are habitually very late to time critical functions and make other people late with no care of how they impact them.
And I’ll add my only issue with @thorny_locust’s argument is that if there is a cultural misunderstanding as to what on time means, that the blame goes on the other person for not being clearer that they had to leave at 10am and here I am saying, “The agreed to time was 10am. How is that not clear? How is it the other person’s fault?” If she claims she didn’t know that when I said 10am I meant 10am, then why does she expect me to know that when I say 10am she interprets that as anytime between 10:15 and 10:30? At the very least the cultural miscommunication goes both ways and she is as much to blame for being late as the other person.
Of course in all honesty, I think the objective measurement of time should outweigh the subjective interpretation of time in that particular instance.
Mrs Cad is late to everything, but it is amazing she has been on time to every shore excursion on all of the cruises we have been on. Take that data for what you will.
The first time i was invited to a party at 8, showed up shortly after 8, and was the only person there, i learned that “this starts at x o’clock” is not an absolute, but needs interpretation. Heck, my college classes that were listed on the schedule as “9:00” actually started at 9:10, and if you read the fine print, this was explicit, and allowed for students to travel from class to class.
Out of curiosity, has she been on time, or early? Because early is easier than on-time, although in many circumstances you need to waste time to be early.
Both. We’ll walk into the theater at the scheduled time 7am knowing they don’t even start the call outs until 7:10 at the earliest so technically on time but knowing we’re early because what if we have to wait for the elevator? It’s a long walk. Can I snag a cup of coffee on the way?
In other words, leaving some slacktime in case something comes up that will cost us a couple of minutes AKA what I do all of the time and she never does.
But no amount of “on-time is subjective” works when the professor locks the door at 9:11 and won’t let you in. Yes, I had a professor that would do that at the beginning of class on presentation day.
I might have failed that class. If i had, i would resent that professor to this day. Even as a total outsider, i think that professor was unreasonable and unkind, and i have sympathy for their immediate family.
No, I have not. I have acknowledged, due to what you and others in this thread have said, that the burden of explaining that rests on both parties equally, unless I already know that the person in question is used to not going by precise times.
If you’re excluding people who aren’t late when it’s necessary to catch a plane, or the equivalent, why do you keep asking me these questions? And why did you make it clear, earlier in this thread, that you were also talking about people who are a few minutes late to give you a ride to the mall, when you’ll still have plenty of time to do what you wanted to do there?
Saint_Cad thinks showing up exactly on time to take him to the mall, when being late doesn’t interfere with what he needs to do there or later that day, is an important thing.
I’m not arguing with anybody who’d get mad that I made them miss their plane.
This appears to me to be in contradiction to some of your earlier posts, quoted below. I’ve said that I now agree that the burden of explaining whether exact time is meant should be on both parties, not only on the one who wants exact time. Are you saying that you now disagree with the quotes below?
Early is absolutely easier than exactly on time - but you are right about the need to waste time to be early. My problem is the people in my life who do not want to possibly waste their time by being early , but are perfectly willing to waste my time by being late. I know from earlier in this thread that you are not one of them but they exist. That’s who people get mad at and is much of the reason why people get mad - a person doesn’t want to waste 10 minutes by leaving a buffer in case they hit traffic but they don’t mind wasting an extra ten minutes of my time . And I say “extra” because I have absolutely left myself a ten minute buffer, so I was probably a bit early. Some of the few circumstances where my husband voluntarily leaves a buffer are shore excursions and being back onboard the ship - because he knows either might leave without him and best case is that he’s out the money paid for the excursion. He doesn’t lose any money if he’s an hour late picking me up.
Doctors are not immune from being rude and/or chronically tardy. I’ve had some myself…very briefly. Many overbook their schedules to maximize their income. But, I didn’t. I ran a tight ship and stayed pretty close to the schedule. If a patient was brought back more than ~30 minutes late, I apologized for the delay. I showed respect for my patient’s time, and I expected the same in return. I usually got it, but not always. When I didn’t, it was typically from repeat offenders.
We’ve had some experiences with timely doctors. The ones that do things on time make me very happy as we spend a LOT of time at doctor’s offices. When I was young we had a doctor in town who it was rumored scheduled all appointments at 2pm. Probably not true but it felt like it. I bet your patients were very happy.
/hijack/ Ironically, just before I posted this I was trying to get a hold of my new doctor’s office. The auto system keeps hanging up on me. My new insurance doesn’t par with my old doctor. sigh