To think lateness is the rudest thing?

[slatternlymother]

It says 'my time is more valuable than yours'.

I just don't understand this attitude where it is ok to be late. It's so flakey! And yet it seems that so many people think it's alright.

I feel like there's this perception that it's a little bit cool, and if you pick someone up for it, then you need to 'relax'.

Well, it's bloody not alright. It is RUDE.

Grr.

I agree laqueen.

I too take lateness very personally. That's why I won't tolerate it and why I ditch any friends that are persistently late. Generally if a person is always late they will have other traits that I dislike too, such as being self centred, selfish and thinking the world revolves around them. My SIL is always late. We see her as little as possible but obviously can't avoid her too much. She has a persecution complex. It's always always someone else's fault that she's late, it's always other people doing things to make her late. She will never admit 'actually I got up late, sat around watching This Morning, and couldn't be arsed to get in the shower til 12'

What is worse is when someone just doesn't turn up. They know you'll be waiting and planned things specifically to suit you. But something more exciting comes up... My mum and sister regularly pull no shows. Once when I'd been persuaded to rustle up a roast with pudding and everything. My mum turned up 2 days later and went rather grumpily "I suppose I'm in the bad books then?" You can't just fuck your mum off though.

There is that

Yes, it's procrastination. Something that as a mostly reformed latecomer I fight against constantly.

You'd better not still be here wol

Recovered late person here

I used to be late for everything. I remember once arranging to meet a friend for drinks, being an hour late and thinking that was ok. I was probably late for almost everything up until my mid-twenties, then I grew up a bit, realised being late for everything was an entirely selfish act, and tried to organise my time better.

This is why I just don't buy it when people say they can't help being late. I think it means they just can't be bothered to try and be on time!

Latesness drives me up the friggin wall. I honestly don't know why some people are late everytime. The only time I am ever late for anything is when it is socially acceptable lateness e.g. turning up 10-15 minutes late for a party because actually that is what the host tends to expect and wants (in my experience).

This weekend took the p1ss. I was meeting two friends who are notorious for being late EVERY time. The plan was to meet at theirs at 7pm for a girly night in. I walked there and when I arrived there was no answer at the door. I rang them and no answer. They were still out buying food. They are the only people who could be late at their own bloody house. I was stood in the cold and dark. I ended up walking home and got a message at 7.40pm to say they'd just got back. 40 bloody minutes late for something at their house. I was fuming as I'd been stood outside their house a while before they answered the phone. I nearly didn't go back and was in a bad mood all evening. I did tell them I was pissed off but as usual it was laughed off as it's their 'norm'. I just don't understand it. If you have a plan for 7pm you don't go food shopping at 7pm. Ahhhhhh!

Thank you worried, school obviously know as he ahs a statement and they ahd his 2 also- ASD siblings before him.

'One day I was in her house and we were due to leave. We had plenty of time. And about two minutes before she had to leave, she would suddenly decide to look for a missing flipflop (in January) , or have to make a non urgent phone call. ' From a different perspective, it sounds like a delaying tactic of the sort someone with some kind of anxiety issue might use? Procrastination but at expert level.

I suspect Wol that might apply to you as you have depression? In which case you have plenty of sympathy from me. That doesn;t mean you shouldn;t try and address it, but it's possibly stemming from something very different to expecting other people to wait around.

I am usually early for appointments, and with the boys we have a vast amount. My husband is usually late: it does not affect his work as he is self employed and self motivates very well, I'm not sure why he is always late but often he under estimates how much time it will take to do something, such as a journey. Which is odd given that he was a successful transport planner for a big multinational before changing careers. He just seems to lose track of time as well but he IS significantly busy- self employed, FT student on top and helping me with the boys often: still annoys me. Whilst I KNOW that he is usually trying to finish off that last job that came in fgive minutes ago, it FEELS like he thinks my time is less valuable than his.

I hate late

My ex husband is always late collecting the children on the weekends he has them. We have a competition to see who can guess just how late he will be. It is usually at least half an hour but can be up to one and a half hours late.

It really pisses me off. I'd like to see him get the kids to school every morning on time and to collect them on time every day like I do.

The message it gives me is that his children are bottom of his list of priorities. Of course, he would deny that!

What I hate even more than other people being late is people who make me late as well. I actually get really anxious about it, which I suspect goes back to my Mum's unpunctuality, which got me into trouble a fair bit.

I went to visit friends in Brussels one weekend, on Eurostar. Had a return ticket with a clear time on it - told the friends when I needed to be at the station etc. They were terribly breezy about it and when we got to the station 10 minutes late, they said "oh that's fine, we'll talk to the man, he'll let you on." Well he bloody didn't, did he. Luckily for me they had space on the next train, and my friends changed the ticket for me (can't remember if it cost anything, they would have paid for it if it did). I remember trying really hard to hold onto my temper/anxiety because I didn't know them all that well - but I was fizzing inside!

Wow thumb, that's REALLY rude!

There is very interesting psychology here.

There are some disorders, OCD, dysexecutive syndrome, which truly affect people's ability to plan and be punctual.

There is severe anxiety where somebody knows they could not cope with waiting alone so will always choose to arrive when they know someone will be waiting.

There are also personality disorders, where people really are deliberately late to draw attention to themselves, get the opportunity to talk about all the incredible things which happened to make them late etc.

Whether or not you want to be friends with any of these people is up to you, but the reasons for being friends with someone or not probably has a lot more to it than just their punctuality. (We don't interview friends in a recruitment process, we just click with people on different levels and for different reasons)

In my personal experience the people I know who are the worst timekeepers are actually some of the nicest people I know, and the chances are they will be late because they have stopped to help someone, or to do something else beyond the call of duty, or they didn't want to cut somebody short. They are the sort of people you could turn to in a crisis, and they would drop everything to be there for you when you need them, because they are less 'rigid'.

So I think there can be a bit of give and take and if someone's reasons for lateness appear to be always selfish and/or attention seeking, then ok - you're fired.

I think it's probably a difference between our definition of personal laqueen.

Someone recently kept me waiting almost two hours for an appointment. He blamed it on someone else turning up late for another meeting which I didn't believe. I was impotently angry but I couldn't take it personally because he would have done that to anyone because he's a bad organiser.

I once was kept waiting for an hour for a job interview and when I got in realised I'd seen my interviewer looking at me over the internal balcony a few times. That was personal - kind of, because I got the job and realised he played that sort of power trip on everyone. But that man was not like your run-of-the-mill late person. Thank God.

So when wol says this: 'I was not exercising power, or privilege, or anything like that' I believe her. I don't believe that people do it because they think their time is more valuable than anyone else's or that they're passive aggressive, as someone said ages ago.

They just don't think. So I either try not to be in a situation where I'm hanging around for them or if they do get me, I'm annoyed but don't take it personally because it's not. In fact feeling like that would piss me off even more.

Occasionally you can even turn it to your advantage because some people feel so guilty about being late they'll do anything to make you happy.

It did kind of spoil the weekend, I have to say, Peachy! Ended on a bit of a sour note. :(

My parents had a lot to answer for with this kind of thing though - picking me up from parties 2h after they'd finished (in my teens, not as a small child) because they'd "forgotten" about me; taking 5h to get to my house (15mins away) to bring me food/medicine when I was ill (in my twenties) because they "didn't want to drive alone so waited until my brother could bring them" - gah!

I've had that too Thumbwitch. I was at uni and my friend kindly said she'd give me a lift to the station as I had a heavy suitcase to carry home for Christmas.

Of course she was late despite me telling her several times that I had to be there by x time. I missed the train which I would have caught if I'd got a taxi. The resultant journey was a nightmare. A £55 penalty fee to get new train, 5 changes of train for a journey where there was normally 1 change. I was fuming as 5 rushed train changes with a heavy suitcase was an absolute nightmare.

Argh, that's awful, Ilove! I hope she apologised.

And that's reminded me of another one - a friend insisted on giving us a lift to the airport for a holiday, despite the flight being at 8am, so us needing to be there at 6am, leaving home at 5am. We were dubious, going to ask my BIL to do it, or DH's cousin - but she insisted.
So - I got a text message from her at 1am, saying she was just coming back from a night out, she was completely pissed but would "still be at yours to take you to the airport" - in 4h time. No fucking way! She wouldn't have got to us in time, AND she was utterly pissed - so I had to phone my blessed BIL who agreed to take us, at the last minute - he got us there on time.

lieinsarebetterthantigers put it so much better than me.

I get annoyed at some lateness. Generally any appointment where I've had to accommodate the latecomer, but end up waiting around for ages, gets me annoyed. And 'DS did a poo' is not really an excuse for my waiting around at a restaurant an hour's drive away from me for two hours, while latecomer lives five minutes away.

Where someone has had a long way to travel, or lets me know they're running late because of external problems ('taxi has only just turned up, I'm on my way' sort of thing), I really have no issue with it. Five minutes doesn't bother me much and I wouldn't read anything into it; an hour and I get annoyed.

I always take people arriving early at parties as being a sign that they're more than willing to help with any last-minute chores, like cleaning the loo..

If people are coming to my house it annoys me more if they are early to be honest. Over half an hour late is very rude but 10-15 minutes would not bother me if I am at home although would annoy me if I am standing outside a car park in the rain.

If I arrange to meet my friend one of us is always 10-15 minutes late - now if we want to get going by 10.00 we arrange to meet at 9.45ish its an understanding between us now.

If I were going to dinner at someone's house then I would always be on time.

There's an episode of Friends where it's Phoebe's birthday and all of them bar Joey are very late in getting there. I know its a tv show and not real but it really winds me up especially when Monica berates Phoebe for not being able to get a bigger table. I love when she freaks out at them and then gets her revenge by ditching them. The amount of times I've wanted to do "A Phoebe". :o

limitedperiodonly

As a manager I'd be angry with someone who was late for an appointment and missed it entirely but I wouldn't care if they were late and still got it done.

I'm more bothered by people who think the main priority is getting in on time. I'm very unhappy with people who can't grasp that - and there have been a few.

Obviously it's a dream it someone turns up on time, does the job well and stays until everything's done.

But most people can't do all three and in my job I'd value the last two over the first.

^^^

I'm astounded by this. I think your own poor timekeeping is leading you to have very low expectations of those around you. Most people can't do all three? Well actually I'd like to think most able bodied adults can, poor timekeeping isn't a disease, it isn't something you can't help, in the main (and I do grant there are some exceptions) it's bone idleness and lack of respect for those around you.

Hi _ I think I am a bit obessive about being early for things and worry about it IF I cant be early! - If I have to drop the kids at college etc, I insist we leave at least 15 minutes beforehand as cannot bear the idea of them thinking being late is 'OK' - but they both have a tardis mentality - ie we have to be somewhere at 12.30 so leaving at 12.29 is OK - very stressful for the 'taxi driver'.

Personally I think it is courteous and good manners to arrive on time and not keep people waiting. I have a cousin here who is ALWAYS late, whenever we organise something she is always 'too busy' to arrive on time, so meals, days out etc are always done on her time and not mine, I think it is a horrible reputation to have, and we have to reschedule our time to accommodate her lateness - it is kind of saying that she is more important/busy etc than we are - even the kids have noticed!

After having done a lot of interviewing in my career, people who arrived late did not get off to a good start, unless there were proper extenuating circumstances and genuine reasons. Plus there are mobiles now, so there really is no excuse for not telling people you are going to be late, in 'my day' one phone call had to suffice!!! ( From a landline I mean), :)

I also hate lateness- but what's worse is either lateness with a lie or with no communication at all. I once had a lift share (to work) tell me she was scraping ice off her car. It was +5 degrees and there was no ice on any of the cars. she lives 2 roads from me......

Lateness is acceptable if you communicate well- if I know I'm going to be late (rare) I make sure I let the person I'm meeting know- even if it's 5 minutes! I've had someone be so late that they left 20 minutes AFTER we were supposed to meet, and never bothered to send a text. Seriously- if you haven't left home until well after you're supposed to meet someone, you know that you're going to be late as it's physically impossible to be on time!

I'm annoyingly early in most situations and will always apologise for being early especially if I feel I've put someone out. However, I take a book everywhere so I'm happy to entertain myself!

I rely a lot on public transport, so leaving extra time is essential.

I used to be always late. I would like to issue a general apology. It is shit, and I don't do it any more.

Now you will tell me what an idiot I am: I went out with a man (for THREE YEARS!) who was 45 minutes late to our first date, and the rendez-vous was outside a tube station, and the weather was not good. I might as well have written "KICK ME" on my forehead to have still been there. Yes, his behaviour towards me was as you might expect from that. For three years. AGH! [goes back in time and talks sense into low-self-esteem 20-something Curry]

ON THE OTHER HAND:

we have a limited sort of flexi-time at work - you can count your hour hours arriving between 9am and 10am.
In management training - which turned into a sort of group therapy, where all the managers shared all their fears and anguishes - it turned out that some of the managers regarded any staff member who turned up later than 9, as late. And hated that they couldn't pull them up on it, because they were within the rules, and were going to work their full day on those rules.

That really fucked me off. I have no choice because of childcare but to be an early person, but deep down I am a 10 am person at heart (or later) and it has annoyed me all my life that some fuckwits can't see that night owls are no lazier, intrinsically, than early birds.
(Obviously, though, if you have arranged to do something in particular at 9 you bloody well show up at 9, that goes without saying)