Help me understand people who are consistently late

[Namechangemum100]

I'm.meeting a friend today, I have deliberately told her the meet time is 30 minutes earlier than it should be as I know for sure she will be late, she always is.

I am one of those people who is always on time, I get ridiculous anxiety if I'm running late and it's just the way I am, but I find myself constantly waiting around for other people, and I just don't understand it.

If you are the type of person who is always late (15 minutes plus and excluding unavoidable traffic etc ), whats your reasoning? I have some friends who will actually say "oh I'll be late to xyz, you know me"...what does this mean?! How?! You know the time of meeting, why is it so hard? Some people will actually let me know they are "running late" at the actual meet time...how did you not forsee this situation 10-15 minutes ago and give a heads up?!

I'm not trying to be goady, if I understand the reasons why I think I might find it less frustrating.

It’s not that I am more important (and frankly that’s just your own ego talking, suggesting you believe your own time is more important than mine, when the reality is that I believe my time is worth less than everybody else’s and so I get even further behind by trying to accommodate other people, and never say no

So it's your friemds fault you are stressed now? You need to learn to say No. But don't lay on the guilt trip when you agree to do something let people down as a result and then playing the victim like that when someone moans.

Learn to say No.

On the flip side though, reading through the thread (and others like it), there are a lot of people who assume that if someone is always punctual it's because 'they don't find it difficult the way I do'. And that's not the case at all. A lot of people find it difficult and stressful, and that it doesn't come easily, but they still make it there on time. If you are one of those people (and I'd hazard a guess that that's actually most people) it's infuriating to be told 'oh yes, but of course, it's easy for you, you're naturally punctual'.

It’s almost as if a little empathy, communication and flexibility on both sides would be a really useful thing.

A lot of very overblown egos who can’t see that their values and preferences aren’t 100% universal on this thread.

It's true. im late because of my ego to look good and to want my house just right and to save myself having to tidy up later or do more jobs the night before. I really want to change this. I didn;t think i consciously was puting myself first but i really am... i wasn't prioritising them.

sometimes I have arranged a meet up when I was feeling enthusiastic about it and in a good mood but then on the day I feel very low and anxious.. I guess other people push through that. or just dont have these feelings?

anyone punctual that actually gets the urgh dont want to go feeling? I guess a strong sense of honouring your commitments motivates you?

Yes I am always on time and also have social anxiety. If anything it makes me earlier so I can sit outside for a bit and gear myself up.

anyone punctual that actually gets the urgh dont want to go feeling?
Totally, but if I've agreed to be somewhere then I'll be there. It's rude not to.

sometimes I have arranged a meet up when I was feeling enthusiastic about it and in a good mood but then on the day I feel very low and anxious.. I guess other people push through that. or just dont have these feelings?

In thise instances which yes we all have I'd far rather you just cancel.as early as possible. It is far more preferable to be honest. For me anyway. If some one rang to say they weren't feeling up to it can we rearrange I'm good with that. I can't promise it won't sting sometimes because theres every chance I turned down a shift at work or rushed about the day before to free up time BUT I would understand. Bevause it's supoosed to be fun isn't it? A nice coffee and catch up,,? After all it was a suggestion/invitation not command to run yiurself ragged to the point of becoming a nervous wrec and up half the night cos your worried you will miss the bus or something. Be honest. I will more than happily try and work something out. But please don't knowingly agree to meet me when you don't want to can't possibly make it on time any way and hold me responsible for how shit it's all made you feel.

I'd rather you just said no

Yes I get that - uurrgghh don't want to go feeling. But I still need to be on time. So I usually end up leaving without having done all the stuff I wanted to do before going out.

I met up with a group of friends last weekend and in the course of conversation it transpired that every single person there had felt about two hours before going out that they really couldn't face going. But they did, because they had agreed to (and everyone arrived within five minutes of the agreed time).

I think 'I don't really want to go' is probably more common than most of us realise.

Currently waiting for people who were due at my house for tea at 5pm! Over an hour late. Have had to take dinner out of the overnight and god knows what it will end up like. Three year old has had to be fed separately as she can't wait any longer. No I don't understand it.

I dont understand late people and don't really accept excuses for it when it happens regularly. As for the kids comment, I have 3 and I'm never late. My kids have also had it drilled into them about time keeping, if they don't get a move on then to do something we planned, we don't have time to do something they'll enjoy later.

I'm quite often 5-10 mins late.
It is because I want to maximise my use of my time - I do the 'I need to arrive at 9 so I need to leave at 8.30' part, so usually I'm fine, but then I don't add in contingency for unexpected things. This is because if I wasted 5-10 mins with every transfer I made in my week, plus the fact that things never seem to actually get going properly in the first 5-10 mins anyway, I'd be hours down hanging around waiting/making small talk pretty quickly - as it is I usually arrive on time, and if not, I never seem to have missed anything anyway and I will have an external reason why I was fractionally delayed.

And why does last minute hunting for keys feature so often in people's lists of 'reasons why I'm late'? With something as important as keys, why don't you have a designated place where you put them every time you come in the door?

Oh, this one drives me nuts. We have a designated key spot. Hooks that DH installed in a spot DH chose.
Every time I get home, I hang my keys on the hooks.
DH rarely hangs his keys on the hooks, and frequently runs around all “where are my keys, I need my keys, I’m going to be late, have you seen my keys” - of course my default answer is “if I’d seen your keys I’d have hung them on the key hooks”

The bit that really, really annoys me is when he uses my keys for whatever reason, then just leaves them lying around wherever instead of putting them back on the hooks
It’s especially annoying if I only discover he’s borrowed and not returned my keys as I’m about to head out the door.

I just don’t understand it. I don’t understand why he doesn’t just hang the keys up. He seems to be incapable of giving any reason for this. And it would save him so much time if he just hung the keys up!
(And me too, it’s not always quick finding my keys if he’s used them. This has made me late occasionally before)

@bestzebbie...can you not reread your post and see how selfish that all sounds...you dont want to add 5-10 minutes contingency in because it's a waste of time if your not late,, so better off letting the person you are meeting waste 5-10 minutes of THEIR time waiting for you.

It's becoming very clear that a lot of the late people are just simply giving not one iota of thought to anyone else but themselves. We live in a very entitled and self absorbed society it would seem.

It became very clear quite some pages ago that OP started the thread not so she could really understand why others behave differently from her priorities and preferences, but so she could display and be validated in her moral superiority.

I think I'm the opposite. Before kids I was always late. After kids I'm not.

@jazzyradlet...or perhaps I genuinely believed I must be missing something when it came to the reasons people were late and wanted to give people the benefit of the doubt...however aside from autism, social anxiety etc it would actually appear that my frustrations are in fact valid, and the majority really are just self absorbed.

Namechangemum100 - perhaps! From here it feels more like people expecting me to be 5 mins early to everything are in fact wasting repeated slivers of my time for their convenience - the exact same complaint. The ideal aim is always to arrive at the precise time specified, rather than before or after.

I know a family of 3 generations who always arrive late, every single one of them, sometimes up to an hour or so. My DM and I are punctual but my DS and her DCs are not. I've become a bit more relaxed about having to be ultra punctual, due to spending time with people who don't stress about this, but it doesn't come naturally to me and I still always set out to be on time.

Betty - I get it. I don't do all that, and I'm quite good at being on time actually nowadays, but, say I need to leave at 8:45, then 8:45 comes and I see I've got a stain on my top or I suddenly realise I haven't fed the dog, I will usually sort that before I leave, even though it might make me a few minutes late.

Obviously I probably wouldnt touch up my make up if it meant missing a flight, but to meet a friend if it would save me feeling self-conscious or on edge the whole time, I'd hope they'd understand.

Now I wouldn't mow the lawn or put my hair in curlers or anything at 8:45, I'd leave that as it would make me too late and obviously wouldn't be fair.

I used to have to have my house perfect before I'd leave when my anxiety was at its worst and that caused me to be very late sometimes, or even cancelling altogether. I can usually leave stuff now and manage to forget about it for the most part but it does fuck me off when I get home.

There's late and late.

Recently I was at a young person's funeral and the deceased's mother arrived 2hrs late

To put this in perspective, she abandoned him as a child but made his illness all about her.

I found it mindblowingly disrespectful

I'm fairly often late but do try not to be. It's sometimes trying to do too much before leaving, like just hanging out a wet wash to dry, etc. Sometimes it's things like last minute poos from kids etc. It's usually lateness by 10-15 mins I would say. Probably improved a bit recently as I'm now leaving loads of extra time to get to places. Clearly in organised people's minds, it's around the leaving time they'd have aimed at to start with I guess!

@jazzyradlet...or perhaps I genuinely believed I must be missing something when it came to the reasons people were late and wanted to give people the benefit of the doubt...however aside from autism, social anxiety etc it would actually appear that my frustrations are in fact valid, and the majority really are just self absorbed.

Eh, we’ll have to agree to disagree. In my experience those who struggle to be on time often have more complex reasons than self-absorption and those who can’t see that complexity and insist that their way is the only acceptable way are themselves fairly self-absorbed, which is why they look for it in others. I value my friends more than 10-15 minutes of occasional waiting.

As a small tip, if you want to @ people so it notifies them, you need to get the spelling right.

I’ll ignore the fact that it irritates me when people find misspell names (including usernames) and my knee jerk reaction is to find it disrespectful and dismissive. Because I’m guessing you didn’t mean it to imply that your need to type fast is more important to you than getting my username right and being respectful, and that you just find it less easy than others to transcribe accurately.

@jazzyradlett...wow, really got to you this one hasn't it...I think we all can guess whether you are the considerate accidental late type or the "I don't really care about other people's time" type.

And yes it was deliberate this time, because misspelling a username (and in fairness this really is a bug on Mumsnet for some androids, rather than a lack of intellect and awareness) is far less important imo, than letting someone wait around for you whilst you fail to organise yourself enough effectively.

@jazzyradlett...wow, really got to you this one hasn't it...I think we all can guess whether you are the considerate accidental late type or the "I don't really care about other people's time" type.

As I said earlier, I’m one of the punctual ones, sweetie. Just a punctual one with empathy and humility.

The thing with making sweeping assumptions is that sometimes it’s good to check the facts, to stop yourself looking really silly.

Can you enlighten me about the Android mumsnet bug that changes s to z, and drops the letter t and doesn’t let you proofread? I’m curious.

Well, sweetie, aside from the fact that Mumsnet on some androids allows no copy and paste functions to aid the correct use of usernames, nor does it pull up a list of recently active usernames like it does on an iPhone, as mentioned earlier there are reasons for which being late is understandable, like anxiety, autism etc...just like there are reasons for misspelling usernames, like dyslexia...perhaps your empathy and humility is only present in the case of punctuality.