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?

Punctuality is a fundamental good manner AliMcBooger. There is no point in arranging times to meet up with people if neither party will stick to it. I think you must be quite odd and ill mannered if you place no importance at all on keeping to a time that you have agreed to meet someone.

I disagree that it's nothing to get upset over; I was very upset to have to wait for a whole hour, in a town an hour away from home, when I'd made a one hour drive to meet the friend and she had originally suggested the meeting time. Whilst she was sat at her house, 5 minutes drive away, because she couldn't be bothered to get dressed or get a move on. like others have said, it's passive aggressive and disrespectful.

And yes, I did tell my friend what I thought of her lateness, and her attitude, and she is now an ex friend, we are still speaking but I won't be making any effort at all with her now as I'm not prepared to put up with that amount of blatent rudeness.

Oh God my sil is like this and to a certain extent il's. I grew up in a family where being late just seems to happen - this is because of my dad's work, he was always packing things into short spaces of time, or rather his PA was so he would have a meeting in London at 11am and one in York for example at 2pm. Not possible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anyway by the by because of this I am very very very aware of lateness and really dislike it!

SIL can't be on time for anything, on the last 3 occasions of meeting up as a family - 12 for meet time she has turned up at 2-2.30 for lunch. On one occasion I had said to MIL that I was feeding the children regardless and she thought I was incredibly selfish not to wait - they hadn't even left when they were over an hour late at this point. All to do with her timing and nap time, on the occasion I was referring to it was a birthday party and we had several other people here, even on this occasion MIL although defensive grudgingly admitted she didn't know why the baby didn't have a nap in the car on the way over. If it was such a problem they should have either arrrived earlier so baby napped here or they should have declined the invite. Others with routines (which sil DOESN'T have) managed to work it all out to arrive on time so I don't get why she didn't. This is not new and this is not her first child, this also used to occur when we had travelled for an hour + to visit the il and they live 2 mins away and pre children too. She once missed a meeting with her director at work as she didn't realise it was important ffs.

Rant over. She won't be invited here again unless under duress.
And she never ever apologises for it.

I think that's the most irritating part isn't it, Figgyrolls? The lack of apology and the assumption that everyone will wait for them. If ever I am late to meet or visit someone I'll make sure I phone them or text them, and I would be mortified if I was an hour late and they were waiting for me all of that time. Then when they have the attitude "it's no big deal" it makes it even more annoying.

YANBU. It's selfish, arrogant, rude, thoughtless. I have stopped making individual arrangements with people like this. Will meet them as part of a group, or in a place where I can wait without DS going spare. I know that I am guilty of getting too upset about this, but why are my feelings and my time less important than anyone elses?

My SIL is impossible. Cannot be on time ever. I am constantly helping her out (lifts, lending her stuff, putting her up). She is constantly begging to see DS. So we make a plan where she has DS and I can go and do stuff without him. Like a hair cut. She's an hour late. I miss my hair cut. She lives less than a minute away. etc Also conveniently doesn't answer her phone. Recently we were meant to be giving her a lift to a family event. We told her 7pm when we wanted to leave at 7.15, and told her we would be leaving promptly. She was not at ours by 7.15. called her to say she had 5 mins to get to ours or we were leaving without her. No answer so left voicemail. She didn't come over. Later it turned out she had made other arrangements to get to the event and didn't tell us. She also was very angry "after all she had done for us" (baby sat occasionally) that we wouldn't wait for her. No more favours for her me thinks!

I did say that your example was rude IMO also, Purple.

I think maybe that I agree in the main with this is just a scale issue- most of these examples are quite clearly out of order, but for informal social stuff where you have both agreed an "ish" and there isnt a table booking/ cinema showing to get to, 20 mins isn't going to kill anyone.
maybe I'm just being a bit obtuse as the friend I mentioned earlier- who obviously had a different definition of ish- does a cats bum mouth if I am just two minutes past the arranged hour of meeting. this makes me want to shake her and shout ffs it's two minutes we have driven 1 hr you have walked 10 mms I can't be any more accurate than that.

Out of interest, how late is late? 5 mins? 10? 30?

Up to 15 minutes I wouldn't bat an eyelid at, but anymore than that, with no apology or contact, is taking the pee. An hour is ludicrous, unfair, and disrespectful. That was the sort of lateness I was referring to in my OP. I don't think anyone would get huffy about someone being a couple of minutes late.

No a couple of minutes late is not rude - after all I think most people don't have the exact same time on their watches I don't think any of my clocks have the same time at all but some of them I have no idea of changing (car, fucking blueberry that changes it back regardless and is always WRONG, microwave!) there is leaway however 15 -20 mins is okish, later than that I would go spare again!

God I hate beng late and hate it when people are late. MIL is a serial offender and it's never less than 30 minutes. DH has inherited the attitude and it causes alot of rows. He always leaves when he should actually be there, regadless of the distance to travel. He missed a connecting flight from Dubai to Gatwick because he was wimbling around!!!

Lara, I love that expression "wimbling around". I'm going to use it regularly from now on!

Oh, I would not wait an hour for anyone!!!

I leave after 20 minutes max.

Agree, up to 15 minutes is OK, even if no phone call / txt to explain, but would expect some kind of excuse or apology if more than 10 mins (sorry I'm a bit late, just got waylaid faffing about). After that, would expect a call or text by way of explanation. DH is prone to lateness (see my prev post about his sister), but now tries very very hard to be on time, and gets irritated too by others' lateness.

YAsoNBU. am currently steaming due to a friends lateness. First she cancelled plans for today / tonight but was still doing me a favour about something. She was supposed to be here 30mins ago to do said favour. Am still waiting - no call or text. Still, her time is clearly more important....

I hate people being late. As a kid I consistently had to wait at least an hour to get picked up, longest I was ever left for was 3 hours. I absolutely detest people being late - I explain to people, when it gets down to it one of the most important things we have is time, there is only a limited amount of it and you can't get it back - as such it is extremely to another person disrespectful to waste it. YANBU.

*extremely disrespectful to another person! That's what I meant, annoyance was getting in the way of my being able to form sentences properly!

Gawd, we have friends like this. Bloody well irritates me.

If I have been kind enough to ask them for dinner, then I expect them to turn up on time.

They were 1.5 hours late once and her excuse was she found her book too interesting to put down and there wasn't even a phone call!

I remember a few years back I had invited them just before Xmas, we have Santa around the village on the last weekend before and I thought it would be nice for their children to join ours to go out and see him. I had cooked, we sat there and sat there, Santa came and went, our boys went out to see him and they never turned up. They forgot!

I had an (ex) friend who was a horror for being late. Several times I'd get the bus from Nottingham to Manchester where she was supposed to pick me up in the car to go back to hers. She was never there when the bus arrived. Id have to wait and wait, sometimes an hour or more. In the days before mobiles, this was. Eventually I'd leave the stop and go and find a pay phone to call her. She'd answer and the excuse would be: "sorry, I was just chatting with dad. I'll come now" then she'd be another 45 minutes getting there.

When we lived in the same town, I'd have to agree with all other friends etc a time half an hour later than the one I told her. She would still be late.

I hate lateness but will tolerate a bit, say 15 mins or so.... However I draw the line at being so late for a wedding you don't even turn up! It was my wedding and 2 of my (now ex) DH's so called friends never appeared. And these were 2 separate people not 2 travelling together. I never got an explanation from one of them but the other did say "oh sorry...I woke up late and missed the train!" aggghhhhhh! Dear god, he might have missed the service but could have been there for the meal!

15 mins is bearable if there's a reason, half an hour max - after that its too late to row back from unless its an emergency. In the case of my former colleague (and ex-friend) I think it was that she would set the time aside to do something e.g. a meeting, or night out and the time allocated to that started at the relevant time - so if a meeting was at 10am, she would set off for that at 10am, because the time before that was allocated to something else iyswim. If a night out was planned from 7.30, that's the time she would start getting ready. I can't think of any other explanation .

I was always driven mad by my mother's attempts to shrink time. She commuted to London and every single morning assured me that the walk to the station took seven and a half minutes, tops. However, even the fastest walker in the land couldn't realistically, have made the journey in less than 10 minutes. She was also a great one for being "absolutely ready" to leave the house. This, in reality meaning "after I've made, poured and drunk an entire pot of tea, fed the dogs, changed handbags and generally found it impossible to walk straight from kitchen to front door and out the other side".

I also find it incredibly insulting when the late person has the gall to say, for example, that they were having a lazy morning. An airy sort of non-excuse that is intended to make you come across as neurotic about time-keeping.

But I do think there are some people who are genuinely deluded about what can be fitted into a certain time frame. DP's ex-wife would, at very nearly the time they were due to leave the house, suddenly decide to bake a cake or finish wallpapering the kitchen.

This said, I'm not very bothered by anyone arriving 10-15 minutes later than arranged since I do think that "3'ish", say, is a perfectly acceptable concept. But I do expect people to recognise that there's only 15 minutes to an "ish" (tops).

On the other hand, and having suffered from this for many tiresome years, can I just say that arriving repeatedly early is also very poor timekeeping and is definitely not a virtue. I have a friend who really couldn't (and still cannot) understand that 3'ish means 3 o'clock onwards. It does not mean fetching up at 2.15 and wondering why you aren't ready or that it is hugely inconvenient to have her following you around the house hindering you even further.

i blame mobile phones

quite the opposite nailak. A mobile has a clock on it, and often a reminder / alarm / diary function. And can be used to warn someone you'll be late, or won't be coming.

pandemoniaa, yes too early is not great either. I am an early arriver. I wait round corners / in the car etc to avoid looking like a prat. I probably just end up looking like a hiding prat.

My dad was always late. Late for his wedding, for our christenings, for business meetings... Anything and everything. As I got older it made me really angry. He would make me late for parties and for days out etc. As a result, I am painfully aware of time and panic if I think I'm going to be late now! I try very hard to be early and have been known just to sit in my car killing time because I have been so early

well thats it sprinkles, before mobile phones you had to arrange to meet up before you left the house, and there was no way to let the other person know if you were going to be late, or there was no way to contact the other person if you were waiting for them.

you just had to be on time.

people did have watches to tell the time and paper diaries to write in appts...

Some people are just always late...For our wedding we specially hand printed wedding inviations for my DH's family with a time 30 minutes earlier than the scheduled time,....and they still missed the ceremony!!!

I hate lateness with a passion.
My sil used the fact that she had two children as an excuse for being late for EVERY family occasion. I did not have children at the time and therefore felt that i could not comment on her tardiness. I now have three young children and i am NEVER late for anything. It is called organisation.
I always believe that people who are always late are mere attention seekers, they want everyone to say 'Where is X.....?' The strange thing is that people who are always late, hate it when anyone else is late.