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.

Murphy, do you know what, much as it pains me I think you are probably right. Find it v hard to be on time so I try to justify it and fail to acknowledge how irritating my behavoiur is. You win. Re; the boyfriend....he just wasn't that into me. Not that it hurt or anything it was only 25 yrs ago.....

Greenleaf - do you think you have more of a bad habit of thinking something will only take 10 minutes because you only have 10 minutes and you want to do it? You want to get this thing off your list regardless of if you actually have enough time. Like the popping to the shops before nursery pick up, you have 10 minutes so you are trying to think which of your 'to do' list you can squeeze into that spare 10 minutes, rather than accepting there's nothing on your to do list you can do in that time and pick your DCs up 10 minutes early, you decide instead to try to pick the one that takes the least time and pretend to yourself you can get it done in time.

Perhaps saying to yourself "It's ok to be early or to do nothing in a spare 10 minutes rather than trying to do a 20 minute job in that time". Perhaps thinking that your priority shouldn't be 'trying to do as much as possible' but trying to do the things you have to do. (And while nursery might be ok to your face, do you not think it might be a little upsetting for your DCs to see all the other mummies and daddies arrive, but not theres until it's late?)

BTW - I was hideously late for meeting a friend today, however, I checked on my sat nav last night to her new house and it said average journey time 45 minutes. I decided I had to leave at 9:30am to be there for 10:30am (thinking that would allow me to be held up/find a parking space if her new road was a busy one, and still be there on time - and we were all in the car and backing off the drive at 9:30am) then horrible traffic meant I was delayed until 11:15am. but as I'm now not normally late, she was fine about it. If you are always 5 minutes late, being a lot more late makes your excuse look unbelievable, if you are normally on time then people cut you more slack on the rare occasion you really are unavoidably late. For a lot of the 'late' people on here, they would have in the best case, have planned to leave at 9:45am, possibly that meaning to them walking downstairs, but not allowing for coats, shoes, checking they had everything they needed for the journey, putting DCs in car seats, making sure htey had petrol etc.

Also, I've noticed a lot of late people see deadlines as a target, not a limit. So if you need to pick up from nursery or hand in a piece of coursework, or be at an airport for a set time, they plan to arrive at that time at the earliest , never thinking about being 'on time' is the latest they should arrive. The aim for the exact time, not aiming for 10minutes before. The idea that arriving early is also arriving on time doesn't go in. That if it's a 10 minute walk, you can leave 15 minutes before if you are ready, not leave 10 minutes before you need to be somewhere so having 5 minutes to fill (usually filling with something that takes just over the 5 minutes so now are a little late). That giving themselves an extra 5 minutes to walk there isn't a 'waste' of time.

Doesn't anyone else just leave if someone is late?? I do - it doesn't happen often now..... You have 15 min maximum beyond allotted time to get there , if not I eat/go into the film/carry on with my day.....

I am an awkward git, I know, I also refuse to have a mobile phone - so it takes effort to let me know if they will be late - so people generally turn up on time - if not, no great loss, I either won't be there, or will have started without them.

What I don't understand are the parents who are habitually late getting their children to school.

There are a number of the same parents I see day after day coming to school with children in tow when I'm on my way home having dropped mine off.

Now I know there are some who do it with agreement with school because of special needs etc, but this can't be so for all I see.

It must be so distressing for the children to be always late.

I agree, PigeonPie; there are some parents at my DC's school that are late day after day, week after week, looking frazzled as if it's just so much harder for them than for anyone else.

I hate lateness but seem to have a few friends who I allow to get away with it. I adjust my plans to account for them but even then they sometimes shock me with their thoughtlessness.

It just means I see less of them then I would like because I can't stand to be let down too often!

There's one here who makes a nervous laugh and says 'late again' as she passes me, but she doesn't appear to be in any hurry and is never telling her DC to hurry up as I would be. Her mother has said she's just very laid back.

Murphy you have said exactly what i want to say.

Yes that friend is very selfish and self absorbed. Her lateness has always annoyed me but I suppose I was more tolerant years ago and never said anything. She has also recently got into hot water at work for being late or even not turning up on occasion. But she won't change. She just thinks her boss is being mean and horrible for pulling her up on her lateness and absence.

Am wondering now why I was ever friends with her at all.....

As LaQueen mentioned upthread, there was an excellent thread on this last year which I found really useful, as it went right into what the Unpunctual People (UP) thought when they are getting ready for things, so you could see where the differences were to the way Punctual People think.

One of the interesting things stated on that thread was about self-sabotage. There is usually a point in your getting ready for things where an UP unconsciously decides to be late for something. If you keep this in mind, it really helps your efforts to be on time. When you are doing that extra thing that isn't actually necessary to get you out the door, you are deciding that this thing is more important than the person waiting for you at the other end.

It is unconscious, so the UP will swear that they were rushing to get there, but for some reason they don't actually WANT to get there in time enough to do what it takes to get there on time. Even if they are one of those people who can't tell how much time is passing, that shouldn't matter if they allow enough time for the things necessary to get out the door then just do those things.

I dont think that the people who try to cram a quart of jobs into a pint pot of time are always self-sabotaging to be deliberately late. Sometimes I think that there is an element of being demonstrably busy.

My DM used to do this. A trip (30 minutes) to see us would contain many detours and diversions on the way. She would then arrive breathless and very late having just had to do this and that on the way. I think she found this busyness validating.

Strangely in the last couple of years she has slowed down a lot though declining health and at the same time has become more punctual!

I hear you, Greenleaf, not quite the thought process I had in mind (ie my friend's). But, it sounds to me like you don't fall into the "chronically and habitually late" category, more like a few minutes late for this or that, which I personally don't have a problem with.

Not referencing Greenleaf here now, there are other posters on this thread who pull the 'my life is so busy' card to justify their lateness, including somewhere a reference to voluntary work being the reason for the busy life. I'm afraid this is what really, really gets to me.

If your life is so full and busy that you prevent other people from doing what they need to do (in their busy and full lives) by wasting their time by being late, YOU ARE TAKING ON TOO MUCH. And just because it's voluntary work, doesn't make it any better. You decided to devote your time to the cause, I did not decide to devote my time to your cause.

We would all like to pack 25 hours worth of life into 24 hours, but that extra hour has to come from somewhere. Late people force other people to give them that extra hour. That is what is so completely disrespectful about lateness.

I agree, TravelinColour.

Nothing annoys me more than reaching the meet venue, only to get a text at the time we'd arranged to meet, to say they are 'running late and will be another hour or so'. This happened to me once when meeting up with my SIL, so I just went home and text her to say I wasn't prepared to sit alone in a restaurant for an hour!

This is actually quite interesting. I wanted to say I'm not a horrible self-absorbed person but I have a tendency to over-think things and make things more complicated than they have to be. I noticed when my husband was off work recently that he just focuses on one task and does it whereas I'm always trying to do 6 things at once then forgetting things and getting confused and in a way it isn't easier. I think I'm just a bit disorganized really and it is true that other people manage so I should be able to too. Even though I'm constantly trying to be organized. I'm one of those people that if I have to study for an exam I spend so long planning and organizing my study time and writing colour coordinated charts that I never actually get any studying done.

In the case of my mil because she was always so early so if we were supposed to meet at 2pm she would be there at 1.20pm so by the time 2 o'clock came around she had already been waiting 40 minutes so she would call me at 2pm on the dot to ask where I was. I would literally just be around the corner so I found her logic really strange. I hadn't kept her waiting 40 minutes, but in her mind I was so rude. Every time I met her I would be slapping my forehead thinking you have to subtract half an hour off the meeting time. I always forgot. Now my sil is really really late though my mil has eased up a lot on me.

I had another friend who never wanted to agree a meeting time so would just text me when she left her house. I would then have to rush around like crazy getting the kids ready and out the door and end up being late. She would then give me a hard time about being rude but I found it so stressful meeting her because I would be on edge all morning waiting for the text and one time she texted me at 7am. I wasn't even up yet and never checked my phone until later so I was really late and she was mad but what can you do? I tried explaining to her how stressful it was for me but I felt she was very self-absorbed and always wanted to meet on her terms so actually I dropped her as a friend. She didnt have kids by the way so I don't think she understood how you can't just go the second she texted, have to check nappie, take toddler for a wee, get coats on etc.

No, WorriedTeenMum, UPs aren't always self-sabotaging, when cramming in "just one more thing", but a large number of those who are surprised that they are late and can't understand how that happened as they were "really trying to be on time seemed to be (on the basis of that thread). If they tried to do that one thing, they would have been on time, but they did it anyway, thus choosing to be late.

If they hadn't tried ...

This thread is so interesting.

My UP friend always moaned about another mutual friend. She said the friend would always constantly call her beforehand if they were due to meet and she found it really annoying. But the other friend knew that UP was going to be late so she was trying to put pressure on her to be on time which UP didn't like.

I think my UP friend simply does not like the constraint of having to be somewhere on time and sort of 'rebels' by subconsciously refusing to be on time. She always has an excuse for being late, always blaming some unforseen event (why do these things always happen to her, never to me or other PP?)

This friend has also not married because she doesn't want to lose her freedom and I think she also thinks she has the freedom to turn up to a meet whenever it suits her instead of at the agreed time (so she can pop into a few shops along the way while I have decided not to do such things in order to be on time).

I can see now that I enabled her by not complaining about her lateness for many years. But I think if I did she would have got annoyed with me for getting 'stressed' about her lateness. I should just chill out while she wastes my time while she does other more important things before she turns up to meet me.

bumping out the spam

Green leaf, your meeting you mil story illustrates my point earlier, you agreed to meet at 2pm, on your mind you were aiming to be there at 2pm itself, that getting there earlier would be a 'waste' of time, but mil, as a punctual / early person saw 2pm as the latest time to arrive, that was the deadline. Perhaps start aiming for 10minutes early...

I think that there are different types of lateness.

• There are the people who are late to retain control. They dont want other people telling them when to arrive.
• There are people who are late to dominate a situation. They are the people who walk in to a situation after everyone else making some sort of grand entrance.
• There are the people who are delusionally organsiationally late. They over plan, over organise, they start 3 jobs and then lose track of these three jobs. None of the jobs end up being finished on time.

GreenLeafTea, I think you are the latter sort. You think you are being orgainsed by having lots of jobs on the go but in reality those jobs arent getting finished and in fact are taking longer than doing the jobs sequentially.

Do you look at your jobs for the day and start all of them at the same time?

I think that if you are a very punctual person then a 2pm meet time means 2.00pm. It is quite precise, 2.05pm is late.

At work, if a meeting is due to start at 2.00 then that is the time it starts. Someone walking in at 2.15 is very late.

Well spotted Laqueen. No-one used the word conspiracy. Fancy someone making something up, eh?

But as you?ve also spotted, on the whole being late isn?t an intention. People are late because they don?t think, not because they think their time is more important than yours.

So either drop them or make it so they can?t keep you hanging about. I do that with my friend because being late is about her only fault and I?d be cutting off my nose to spite my face if I dropped her.

I don?t think that?s being particularly forgiving or generous. It?s just about being friends.

I hate lateness I think it's incredibly rude. I am always early.

My best friend lives opposite the school and is late every morning and afternoon. The school have complained to her but she doesn't seem to care. I love her with all my heart but I can never rely on her to be on time. In so many other ways she is so caring she is generous with gifts and babysitting for others. She just cannot make it on time any where.