Wwyd about friend who is always late?

[ColourfulOnesie]

I have a friend who is absolutely amazing in every way, I love her for so many different things except…
She is always late
And I mean always
I’m not talking 5 or 10 minutes either, I’m talking, if you arrange to meet at 6 she’ll text you at 7:15 to say she’s just drying her hair

I’ve known her for years and have always just laughed it off and made funny little comments about living in her own time zone etc

However for some reason now it is really starting to irritate me
I will literally be sat dressed and ready for an hour waiting for her to say she’s ready and recently by the time it rolls around I’m usually over it and have to really muster up some enthusiasm to even meet up with her
When we’re together we always have a fabulous time though

Wwyd about this? Accept it as a quirk or … what?

I have a very close friend who is ALWAYS late. We have known each other for 40 years and she has always been the same. And yes, she is generally late for everything. I don't believe it's anything intentional or selfish-I think she has really poor time management. I have got upset with her in the past over it (my hen do) but it hasn't really changed anything. You could have a chat with her and tell her how it makes you feel but she may not change. I wouldn't cut her out of your life though for it though if the friendship is otherwise good.

Have a friend who does similar. Constantly cancelling or forgetting to text back to confirm.
When she does eventually meet she then often leaves after an hour. This used to happen on a night out and she'd suddenly announce that she had to be up early the next morning.
I no longer see her in an evening just during the day. Even then she looks like she's ready to go. I'm fed up with it.
Like you say, she values her time more than mine. I'm always aware that the time is limited and feel like I'm being fitted into her schedule. I'm seriously thinking of not bothering anymore but don't know how to tell her.

She is totally disrespectful - what she is doing is far more important to her than any arrangement she has made with you

If it was me I would arrange to meet and not show up

When she \arrives an hour late I would say I waited but moved on and am now busy doing something else

She's a good friend?

Then tell her that it really bothers you.

You always keep me waiting for an hour or more and it upsets me because it feels like my time isn't important to you and I'm just someone who must wait around for you.

Does she work? Is she always an hour late for work?

Being on time matters. Everyone has times when something unexpected happens and they're late - road closure, flat tyre, etc but habitually late? By an hour or more? No. That's not ok. It shows a complete lack of courtesy.

No way. She's stealing your time because she has no respect or consideration for you.

Re my earlier post: it's not okay to be consistently late. It's discourteous and indicates that the person who's late "doesn't care" about the person/people they're meant to be meeting. Having a medical excuse doesn't excuse consistently being tardy. Ask your friend to arrive on time and warn her that if she's more than ten minutes late, you'll leave. Suggest setting up alerts on her phone, as I do. If she seems genuinely interested in arriving on time, support and help her. If not, don't make any more plans to see her.

I have a friend like this. She's also just not turned up at all a few times. I now just leave after 15 minutes and explain that I assumed she had had an emergency and wasn't no longer coming. I like her so won't cut her off completely but I also won't hang around waiting for her like a puppy.

was no longer coming

I couldn't stand that. I have a friend who is always 15 minutes late and it makes me seethe because it feels like a status game: my time is mor eimportant than yours. I get around it by adding 15 mins to our meet up time, so if she says 7.15 I put in my diary 7.30. I f she;s calling for me, I tease her that I play a game of how many jobs I can get done between the meet up time and her actually turning up. I also stopped worrying about keeping her waiting a few times and said, 'Oh I know you are very relaxed about timekeeping so I didn't think you'd mind' when she asked about it, so she got a sense of how frustrating and rude it is.

If you are meeting in town, arrange to meet someone else too, never just her. If you are meeting at yours, make plans to do something else for an hour at least. E.g. meeting at 6pm - you do an hour's online workout starting at 6om then take a shower, dry hyour hair, get ready etc,

How does being late make your friend feel? Is she sorry?

I’m finding this thread really upsetting. I have ADHD and time management problems. I am almost always late no matter how hard I try not to be, and I DEFINITELY don’t think my time is more important than anyone else’s.

You’ve said that she’s lovely in every other way so perhaps she does have ADHD or this is just her flaw. Is everyone else commenting here perfect? I’d suggest that bad time management isn’t the worst quality in a person and that people could definitely be more understanding.

I do understand that it must be frustrating and I don’t know your friend to say how she’s feeling, but if you haven’t said anything before I would be feeling (as your friend) relief that I had a non-judgemental friend who didn’t make me feel like a failure of a human being at every social arrangement.

Why she is late is probably important.

and to the other people commenting here please can you give some consideration to the real difficulties that people with ADHD have and realise that it mostly isn’t about you… they’re struggling.

Also please don’t tease people about timekeeping unless you’re really sure that they don’t care.

jokes like these aren’t really jokes, they’re barbed digs and they hurt.

We have a friend who was exactly the same. 4 of us were meeting up to discuss an upcoming trip. The rest of us had work the next day so we never planned on staying late, she arrived all glammed up an hour and a half later than the planned meet up clearly planning a bender. We left about 30 minutes after her arrival with a holiday plan in place and still ready for work for the next morning. She was really really not happy and sulked a bit as we were leaving. She never did it again.

I too have a problem with timekeeping because of ADHD. Thanks to my phone, I am now able to arrive at appointments on time as I have alerts to prompt me! This feature is a game changer.

This is the thing. Once we realise we have a timekeeping issue due to ADHD, or due to anything really, nice people will put measures in place to offset the issue.

Being continually late for everything just shows massive disregard for others, whatever the reason behind it might be.

I know that my brain is programmed to think I don't need to leave the house until the time I'm supposed to arrive somewhere. I have to outwit this. Every single appointment I make, I now work out - in writing - backwards from arrival time: time I need to leave, time I need to have breakfast, time I need to be in the shower, time I need to wake up etc.

I stopped meeting up with a friend because her lateness caused such issues. Three of us would arrange to meet up at a particular place with our babies in toe and she'd turn up 1–1.5 hours late. Often by the time we started whatever activity we'd met to do, the kids who'd already been there for over an hour were past it.

@CafeNervosa I appreciate that for some it genuinely is a struggle. But unfortunately that is for them to manage, not expect others to just put up with it.

Personally I think it is even more selfish if you know you have an issue with it and don't bother to do anything about it.

My husband had an appointment at a Market Town 20 minutes drive away from us. It was a Saturday so I knew we'd have difficulty parking. The appointment was at 11am. At 10 past 10 he put the grill on to make a Bacon Sandwich. Now in the past I have pulled him up on it, this time I just left him to it. Course when we eventually got there he was late and couldn't find a parking spot. He wanted me to sit in the car in a car park - not in a space, cos there wasn't one, and make sure he didn't get a ticket. I refused. Since then he has been a lot more punctual. His whole family are like that though. It's not an appointment time, it's a suggestion of when they'd like to arrive!

@restedbutexhausted Saying if you’re aware and don’t do anything about it is even more selfish shows a bit of a lack of understanding about neuro-divergence. It’s not the awareness that’s the problem, it’s the lack of executive functioning required to perform in certain ways on a regular basis.

of course there are things that people with ADHD can do to help make things work more easily but the fundamental point is that it’s a lot harder in the first place. Like complaining someone hasn’t kept up with you in a race when they are always starting 100m behind.

by nature of ADHD all the workarounds seem to be temporary anyway because I don’t have the executive function to build routines.

I know it’s annoying when people are late but for me, I promise, that being late itself feels a lot worse.

@INeedNewShoes really nice people will try really hard to have regular systems in place to try to offset the issue.

I think I read from your post that you have ADHD so I think you’ll know that it’s not easy to be consistent.

I would like to add here that I’m never 1.5 hours late to meet with friends. So I do think OP needs to talk to her friend about the reasons - perhaps ADHD is a factor but maybe not.

My main contention is with those posters who are unfailingly confident in their contention that if you’re late it’s because you don’t care and are a fundamentally not good person worth knowing. There are worse crimes.

Didn't said that makes a person not worth knowing. But unless you have regularly been let down by lateness you don't know what it's like to constantly have to wait on people with no idea if or when they'll show up. In most cases, it's a lack of respect. What do these people do when it comes to work?

Everyone is responsible for themselves. As PPs have said, they are ND and still manage to get to places on time using strategies.

Tell her "be here for 6 otherwise I'm going without you" and mean it. Show her that you're serious, she either sticks to agreed time or you don't go/go without her

@restedbutexhausted I know you didn’t say that. I was replying more generally to the post, and can of course only speak for myself!

when it comes to work, I am always a few minutes late and always end up working much longer at the end of the day through guilt to make up for it. I do think it’s a bit strange that in jobs (where opening/changeover time isn’t critical) that arriving 5mins late is considered terrible, but staying 30mins late never quite seems to make up for it. My work now know about my diagnosis and it has made it much better because I can now explain why it doesn’t mean I’m not committed to my work.

Everyone is responsible for themselves but it is also nice to make accommodations for people who find certain things more difficult. I’m also tall and help shorter people with things from high shelves. I suppose shorter people could utilise the strategy of taking a stool to the supermarket. But the lovely thing about society is that we each have strengths to offer others when they’re needed.

I wouldn't put up with that. It's rude. I wait for around 15 mins then leave. Building in a buffer time is just pandering to it IMO.

That's why I stopped waiting for her. We had too many ruined dinners from her bowling up 90 mins after I said we'd be eating, we'd wait as she was "on her way" and my hours of labour over dinner were served stodgy and inedible. We just ate when I said we would, and if she was lucky, there would be leftovers she could scrape together. Otherwise, she went hungry and all my efforts were not ruined by "bloody Tina, late again". Stuff that, she ruined way too much before I snapped.

But if it's constant, you need to put something in place to ensure you're not constantly late. You shouldn't expect others to put with it.

I assume you do the same with doctor appointments, etc too?

Or, if it’s entirely impossible for you to take any measures to ensure you are there at the agreed time, communicate correctly. So when your friend says ‘shall we see that new film at 8’ you reply ‘well you know because of my ADHD it’s not possible for me to commit to a time. There’s nothing I can do about it but I’ll probably be late. Shall we meet around eight, maybe twenty minutes either way? Or you could arrive at 8 and wait outside until I arrive?’

That’s the issue really. If people didn’t set a time it wouldn’t be a problem. It’s when you say ‘yes I’ll meet you at 8’ which communicates to the other person that you’ll be there at 8, rather than being honest that it’s either entirely impossible for you to arrive at the agreed time or that you don’t want to put the necessary effort in to arrive at that time.