To think that punctuality is important?

[Purplegirlie]

I have a couple of friends that are always late. For everything. Late taking their children to school each day, late if they have an appointment and late if they're meeting someone. The last time (and I do mean the last in both senses of the word) I met with one of them she was an hour late despite the fact that I drove an hour to get to her home town, and she only had a 5 minute journey. She was late as they were "having a lazy morning".

We all have times where things crop up as we're about to leave the house, or we are delayed in traffic or whatever, but I think being constantly late is disrespectful towards people you are meeting and also sets a bad example to your children if you are taking them late into school every day.

AIBU?

I hate lateness. One of our friends and his GF are constantly late. One year I cooked the Christmas meal for 9 of us. I said I was cooking for 7.30 but everyone was welcome round anytime beforehand. They turned up at 8.15 and had forgotten the extra chair they were supposed to bring. They only live 5 minutes away! The following year they cooked. We went over at 7.30 as invited and they were out. When another couple had a baby, they brought her out to their parents so we could all meet her as they lived 45 mins away. The late couple didn't even turn up and didn't let anyone know.

I'm not "highly strung" and I don't expect people to be there on-the-dot but being that late is just rude. I don't see why a social arrangement is less worthy than an appointment. I don't enjoy hanging around trying to entertain the baby just because someone can't be bothered to get their ass in gear.

I think with family, the thing that annoys me is the lack of awareness and the anger when you try and be logical.
So, relative is going on a daytrip with you, and they plan to leave at 10am. You know that they are unable to manage to leave the house before midday, never have been.
You say you'll meet them there, they fuss about wanting to travel together and how the children will enjoy it. You point out that they won't be ready until gone noon, and they protest. Of course they will.
The first couple of times, you wait and wait and wait, leave around one with no good reasons given.
Then you stick to the original plan and meet them there. Your children are happy, their children are happy and yet they are still grumpy that you didn't go as a group.
And they try the same reasoning every time you meet up.
At least when the zombie apocalypse comes us anal time-obsessives will escape whilst the rest are being consumed. Although I might save my nieces, they are lovely.

YA sooooo NBU

I would say dh and I are pretty much the only punctual pepes in our group of friends and family.

Very rude - drives me crazy. Just get ready earlier!

Also, kind of what Goblin says, the late ones seem to be under delusion/illusions that they are perfectly punctual and any comments or reaction is you being unreasonable. Why is that??

YANBU. I hate being late and I hate people being late. All my clocks are set 5 mins fast (bathroom clock 10 mins fast) just to be absolutely sure I'm on time. Can't stand it if someone makes me wait.

BUT some people have an issue with punctuality - basically, can't do it. Think word blindness, this is clock/time blindness. I tell my kids that lateness loses you points like nothing else, literally drains the tank by about 90% - and we all want to be popular, no? or at least liked. or keep our job. A lot of late people are lazy or disrespectful but a lot of an issue with it and would dearly like not to be late but can't help it. imo.

a lot have an issue not a lot of an issue

Drives me fecking crazy. The bit that really riles me is when you work out, from later conversation, that a late friend hadn't even left the house by the time they were supposed to be with you.

How would that happen, short of major disasters? And if it did, why no apologetic text/call before they left?

And yes, I have been caught by a shit-up-the back baby moment or lost my keys or had a last minute call. That accounts for ten minutes (and I build that into my getting ready time cos I'm anal) - not an hour.

That is all

We are the late family and I HATE it. I like to be early and hang around whereas my DH is the opposite. He can't bear hanging around, has no real concept of how long it takes him to do things, and is a massive dawdler.

As he is the driver in the family, this means I am usually late as well which drives me insane. We tend to make it to medical appointments on time but it is on the long journeys that our time keeping seems to fall down.

Basically my DH never factors in enough time to do everything. NEVER! So for example if we have a two hour journey to get to an appointment/interview or something, he will never consider any stopping time at all. I know that with kids we will need a toilet stop! He never factors in traffic either.

As a result I do all the 'time estimations' and run around after him before the journey nagging and keeping him on schedule. He's the type that two minutes before we leave, he'll announce that he can't find his Sat Nav, or that he needs to iron a shirt, or make a detour somewhere in the car. If I'm not behind him reminding him to get ready etc, he just winds down and I'll find him sat on the sofa on his Ipad or watching TV. I am pretty sure a lot of it is psychological because he doesn't want to go where he is supposed to be.

I am forever calling people up and apologising that we are running late. It makes car journeys very very tense. What infuriates me beyond reason is that he will make comments the night before about how he knows I'm going to get stressed and anxious and can I try to calm down.... grrr!

Learn to drive and stop having to organise him. You need a partner, not another child.

"would dearly like not to be late but can't help it"

Interesting point - but have they ever missed the flight to their dream, once in a lifetime holiday Or do you think they would be late if they had to claim a prize in person at a certain time? Or for an interview for the job that would get them out of their financial black hole? No? That's because they can do it, but only when it is important enough to them.

Dyslexics (and I have one) have additional difficulty, and therefore put in extra effort and learn coping skills to be able to function adequately. But it does take motivation as a first step - not "can't be arsed".

AliMcbooger, you think I'm being precious because I'd driven an hour to meet a friend, she had a 5 minute journey, yet she was still an hour late to meet me, leaving me waiting around in a town centre? Seriously??

Just seen your other post Alimcbooger that you think anyone who arrives on time for a social meeting is highly strung? I find that really odd. Do you ditch any friends that are on time when you meet up with them? What about if you're meeting friends to see a film? Or have a table booked at a restaurant? Is it acceptable to just randomly turn up at any time for those? IMO punctuality is fundamental good manners.

SuPurblyBilt, you have summed up exactly what I was annoyed; my so-called friend hadn't even left home by the time I'd arrived to meet her, despite the fact that my journey was an hour. I phoned her when I'd been waiting for 15 minutes or so and she hadn't left home. I was understanding at first as she didn't say why she was late just that "she'd be there soon". I waited and waited, and eventually went off with my 3 children to get a coffee.

She eventually phoned me one hour after we were meant to be meeting up, and said that they had arrived in town, and then got the hump that I wasn't waiting for her outside our agreed meeting place, but had instead gone to a cafe 10 minutes walk away. She didn't apologise and I said we'd been waiting an hour and she didn't see what the big deal was.

Needless to say, I have ditched her as a friend now, she is always late when we meet, but this took the biscuit. If she'd have been apologetic then I perhaps could have seen a future for our friendship but she takes the piss and I can't put up with someone like that.

YY, can't be doing with it at all - I just can't imagine what would be going through their minds at the agreed meeting time, when they look at the clock at home and picture you standing outside WH Smith or whatever.

So I figure I am not meant to be friends with these people and ditch

'and then got the hump that I wasn't waiting for her outside our agreed meeting place, but had instead gone to a cafe 10 minutes walk away.'

That attitude would have annoyed me, if we'd arranged to meet and they din't make it for no good reason, I'd have ambled off with my lot and started our day, leaving tardy mate to catch up. If they were irritated I hadn't waited, I'd have laughed at them.

WTF??

being on time is being 'highly strung'???

oh fuck the fuck off

My brother and sister in law were once TWO DAYS late, admittedly for a holiday, not a meet up, but my PIL's regularly are several hours late for things, it drives me absolutely insane.

Annoying thing is, they phone and say "we are on our way", they live less than two minutes drive away. And it is entirely possible that they will appear up to 6 hours later. "Oh, sorry, we got distracted by bla bla". Jeez.

When MIL (very kindly) offered to help out with childcare over a two week period when my usual childcare became unavailable at very short notice, she was still at least ten minutes late EVERY morning, and unfortunately, when you are catching a train, ten minutes late really screws up your getting to work. We had even told her an earlier time than we actually needed her, but she was still late. On about day 4 of this, she got the hint when we were kind of stomping around outside the house looking a bit twitchy. "Oh, am I late" she said. Transpired that she runs her watch deliberately about 15-20 minutes slow................ FFS. Hard to say anything though as she was doing US the favour, and for free!

I am naturally punctual and dislike lateness - it's just plain rude.
However, my SIL suffers from depression and acute anxiety, and can be late for things because she's flustered/plain terrified. i cut people like her slack because she suffers far more than me.
But for the vast majority of people. constant lateness is a sign of an inconsiderate nature IMO.

My MiL is constantly late for things.

It's almost as though she can't comprehend that tables are booked/tickets are booked/people are WAITING!

One of the first few times she met my parents, they were paying for dinner (posh dinner) and all we had to do was get there. She left getting ready until the last minute, kept needing to go and get things/have another fag/etc.

We were half an hour late (which my parents also couldn't comprehend being people who leave plenty of time for things and believe being late was rude). They assumed she didn't give a shite and never asked again.

I like to be on time, I'd hate to be late for someone. I'll even text/call if I'm held up by as little as 5 minutes.

I struggle to be on time. I always let the other person know, say sorry and it is only usually 5-10 mins.

I often try to fit to many things in to my day.

Also, i think it is in reaction to my mum who did 'the clocks set fast', thing and arrived everywhere stupidly early, so we had to wait around.

I don't understand the clock thing - you know your clocks are 5 mins fast so it's pointless.
I am usually on time and if running late I let people know. I don't get stressed if others are late unless we are talking really late.

I hate lateness- DH is very laid back about it, so I have often had to fib about what time we should be somewhere in order to get there on time. Being late for things makes me really anxious, I would rather be too early. I've always been the same.

Some people just don't see a problem in lateness, and I find that rude. I'll never forget at university, we had invited 2 exchange students for dinner. My friend made a lovely roast- they turned up over an hour late, we had waited half an hour then ate before it was ruined (this was in the dark ages before mobiles, so we couldn't contact them) - they really didn't see the problem at all, they had popped into the pub on the way!

Ok, the running clocks fast thing does seem pointless, but why oh WHY does MY MIL (refer post above) run hers slow????????? She is late enough without a deliberately late running watch!

MY BIL and SIL were even late for Christmas Dinner at ours a few years ago. Needless to say, we've never invited them for Christmas again. It's just plain rude, and there was on this particular occasion no excuse. They actually didn't leave home until after the time we said we were going to be eating. . And we weren't doing Turkey which could just stand around, it was a fairly closely timed meal and when we said "we are hoping to eat at 4", we actually meant more like 4.30 and they STILL weren't there until nearly 5 o'clock. So little respect.

My ex husband was always late. He is Irish and so I attributed his appalling timekeeping to an underdeveloped sense of urgency embedded in his celtic dna.

His go to response to my hysterical pointing to my watch and humming the countdown 30 second theme was to point out that when God made time, he made plenty of it.

His timekeeping has spoilt lots of days out and social events. He eventually understood how maddening his habits were when his friends stopped including him in plans or trusted him in anything where timing was crucial. He is now a lonely sad bastard with no wife and no friends......................

I don't think being on time makes you highly strung at all, that came across wrong sorry. Just that getting so worked up about is. If it irks you about someone, tell them- if they are still late all the time (or you can see no effort whatsoever on their part to change their habits when they are meeting up with you) then I agree that they are being very inconsiderate.

However I do find issue with the idea that just because punctuality is very imPortant to one person, another person should automatically know this. I come froma large family of folk who don't wear watches etc and most of my friends are similarly relaxed about it. (relaxed is maybe the wrong word, not trying to suggest that if you find it important it means you are not relaxed.) I honestly found it a bit of a surprise to realise that there are people for whom this is such a sticking point- but of course because everyone's different I just thought "well there's a thing" and resolved to make sure if I had a friend who I thought might find it annoying I'd check and amend my behaviour accordingly. Which i did- one of my very best friends admitted that she found it a bit rude, and so of course I make a special effort to make sure I'm on time for our get togethers. but that's what you do if you realise that a beloved person is irritated by sOmething you do that's easily changed.

I just don't get the thing about getting so upset by it- tell them ffs and if they are any sort of friend that'll be the end of the lateness.

Purple apologies your first example was of course rude of her. The effort required to meet was imbalanced she should have taken that into account.