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.

Brown paper but can't you see that if you left 45 min contingency every time you left the house, office, etc you'd never commit to very much at all? Unless it's paramount that you're on time you are better off with a mutual understanding with your friends that you'll do your best to be on time but shit happend sometimes. And as long as it truly is mutual, that's better all round? That's all I've been trying to say.

@longestlurkerever

I don't leave that much time every time I leave the house. The amount of contingency depends on how far I need to go, how complicated the journey, any delays that are likely etc.

Sometimes you can't cover all bases. Yesterday I got stuck for 3 hours in a motorway traffic jam. I do that journey at least once a month for the past 5 years. Got caught that badly only twice. Thankfully I was coming home so it had no impact on anyone. These occurrences are rare and you can't cover every eventuality but by being organised, recognising limits and allowing reasonable journey time you can greatly reduce the number of times that you are late.

Being constantly late is just bad manners.

longestlurkerever

because I haven't prioritised this particular meet up

Precisely! But the person being kept waiting almost certainly will have. Does that make them wrong? Why bother to make arrangements in the first place?

Constantly late people always think they are the only busy people, they are too selfish to realise how they impact on everyone they keep waiting

I don't care if you want to run around looking for things to fill your day so you can look 'oh so busy'. I want you to commit to arrangement and not inconvenience me

I had a childhood friend, her whole family would be late. We holidayed together as families, we would be sitting on a mini bus , at the time agreed to go the airport and someone would always be showering or on the loo. My sister took me and friend to school - friend would be running down the road just as my sister was ready to pull away (sister drove off many times). I waited hours to go out as teens as she was never ready. As adults, I waited hours and hours to meet up

She always apologised, with a tinkly laugh, oh sorry - insert random reason here. I made allowances as she suffered from depression so tried to understand how getting out could be difficult.

I finally gave up - after 40+ years of friendship when she decided to drive 120 on the morning of my dads funeral. It wasn't important, she just fancied to visit a certain shop. The service was at 3:30pm and she text me at 3:10 to say she was still 120 Miles away - so sorry, catch up next week

I was so hurt, the one time I needed my oldest and closest friend she let me down. I cut her out of my life there and then

Late people are selfish people.

@mscellophane

I'm really sorry.

I can't see how people can she wasn't being self absorbed.

Oh god, I made my whole family late to a family friend's funeral once. I was convinced it was at 2 when it was at 12 and only realised my mistake at 11.

I still feel a bit sick when I think about it now.

for mscellophane

Oh FFS with the quoting out of context. The people with whom I adopted this approach behave in exactly the same way as me. It's an arrangement based on mutual understanding and respect and the knowledge that given the respective journey times prioritising never keeping anyone waiting would require disproportionate contingency and mean we never committed to anything. I'm not expecting anyone to wait around for me to be a superhero.

They know they are being self absorbed and rude.Why else would they try and blame the person who is actually on time.

@longestlurker Brown paper but can't you see that if you left 45 min contingency every time you left the house, office, etc you'd never commit to very much at all? Unless it's paramount that you're on time you are better off with a mutual understanding with your friends that you'll do your best to be on time but shit happend sometimes. And as long as it truly is mutual, that's better all round? That's all I've been trying to say.

Now you are being obtuse.

You dont need to have a 45 minute contingency for everything.But meeting your friend or going somewhere unknown you need to leave enough time.Why is it so hard to understand that.

I am not being obtuse. I said for things within walking distance (school etc) I am rarely late. But I live in London, journey times are unpredictable and long, most outings would require this sort of contingency to be effective.

I live in London and don’t agree that it makes time keeping harder. If anything it’s easier, there are so many routes to places and everything is walkable, there are tubes and buses every 3 minutes and apps to check when the bus is coming so you know exactly when to leave your house. I worked on oxford Street for 11 years and was only late on strike days. My 3 children have been late for school only once.

@IamPickleRick

Exactly. Sometimes trains are delayed and things but there's always a workaround (unless you are stuck underground). You just need to allow some extra time and not be distracted while you are getting ready so that you leave on time and not at the time you are meant to be there.

Isn't it about prioritising? Some of us make it a priority to be on time and some don't.

Ok but if someone was persistently late dropping their children off at school or for work so you think the workplace/school should be tolerant. If the person in question has no additional needs but is just doing errands/superhero duties that regularly keep them late.
Would the person who is late be the one at fault or the school/workplace for having the audacity to have an arrival time?

Well you can't have it both ways. Either I need to allow contingency because that's only sensible, or it is perfectly possible to plan everything perfectly and it's fine to rely on average journey times. I think it depends. Bus and car journey times are unpredictable. Trains are fairly reliable but if they go wrong they really go wrong and if you misjudge you will be out by more than 5-10 mins.

Basically if you are late more than half the time you need to allow more time generally.

I think what is consistently coming up is “if I know a friend doesn’t like to be kept waiting” I will be on time. So it’s about pushing it as far as you can, realising what friend can be pushed and who will tell you to straighten up.

I have one friend who has just one child. We arrange to met at 12. I have 3 kids. She’ll say oh it took us soooo long to get out of the house, oh I couldn’t get her coat on, oh she wouldn’t get in the buggy. Can we make it 2?

Er yeah, except I’ve done all that x3 and still I’m sitting here at the time we agreed, my kids do all that too, and now the poor sods are sitting in Starbucks for the foreseeable future. In the end you just say, no thanks and move on.

If your time management is poor, go on a course, there are loads out there. People can improve their lives with all the many strategies that exist.

There's seemingly three types ofate people

The ones who over commit. So they say yes to everyone, schedule every one i and then one tiny thing causes a domino affect of lateness. You are a priority, but so are the other three things they also need to do before tea time. Getting there early will never work as they have too much to do.

The ones who can't work it out. So lost keys, lost time, lost purse. They have put in numerous strategies over the years and thus may be better at parts of if but they'll still lose their phone before you leave the coffee shop and you'll spend ten minutes trying to find it when it was always on their bag. Extra time might work but that extra time needs to start from literally getting out of bed point not just leaving to get to you.

With both of those either it's OK with you or it isn't. The friendship groups I've built over the last 25 years it is. Of course it's annoying but so are lots of things. No one HAS to be my friend.

The really can't be arsed. They Swan in an hour late, twinkly laugh about their awesome sex marathon / bath / replacing morning. There's a cousin, mom and ex-friend already example. Thing is, it isn't about lateness because of someone would prioritise a random shopping trip over a friends parents funeral then they don't sound very nice people to start with. You're better off walking away. It's a really shit thing to do to someone

I think all I am saying is that there are choices. You can either put a premium on never being late, build in more time and commit to less. That's fine and it is what you need to do if you expect others to do the same for you. Or you can put a priority on other things and accept that others will do the same. Neither is wrong necessarily, and you can actually adopt different approaches with different people. If what you are doing isn't working for one party, then you need to agree something different or accept you just aren't going to meet up. It seems to be generally accepted that that should be the flexible person shaping up and becoming more organised, but I was just saying the opposite can also work if actually neither of you particularly like having to leave ages of contingency and turning things down, which most on this thread say that don't (they just do because they prioritise not keeping the other waiting) and don't particularly mind sometimes having to hang around or change plans (which also many people have said they don't mind in itself - it's what they do if they are early) and that preferring the latter approach doesn't necessarily make you an awful person. Obviously you can't adopt this approach with everything as it's not always possible to reach a mutual understanding as it's not a two-way relationship, but often being late for these other things impacts mainly on the latecomer so it's not really comparable. This seems to have been misinterpreted as "it's all your fault for being on time" or "you have to sit around waiting for someone else to be superman". Obviously there's then a whole separate category of people who are just inconsiderate twats who won't put themselves out for anyone.

sleepstanding I think we would get on!

Me and my friend are vastly different. If a journey takes 1.5 hours to go to a show, I would allow 2.5 hours, to allow time for traffic, parking, walking to venue etc.

My friend would allow 1.5 hours .

It annoys me when people know that a journey takes 45 minutes, so if you need to be somewhere by 2pm, you should leave at 1pm, but no, they leave at 1.30pm and arrive 15 minutes late.

I think it is disrespectful when somebody is repeatedly late. It is saying that your time is less important than theirs. It is also very controlling, as it means that you are hanging around waiting for them and can't do anything else.

I’m one of those people who’s late for everything, and i mean everything - work, doctors appointments, events, friends. Thankfully I’m in a managerial position where I can pretty much choose my own hours so I have no one telling me off when I’m late to work (every day). But on the flip side I don’t find it remotely annoying when people are late to meet me, it really doesn’t bother me. I think a lot of my friends are similar although I think they make it on time to work

Forgot to add my reason, basically i have depression and I never want to get out of bed so I stay in bed until the absolute last minute. This also means I never have time to shower or make myself look presentable in the mornings as this would make me even later

@longestlurkerever

I don't think there's any problem if both parties are always late or if that at least both agree that lateness isn't a problem. That's up to them.

The problem is where an arrangement is made to meet at X time and then one party is late, repeatedly and without good reason. And repeated excuses of "I list my phone, keys, bus pass" etc every time isn't a good reason.

I suppose it just boils down to respect. If you are arranging to meet at a certain time maybe warn the other person that you are likely to be late and offer to meet later or another time when you will have less to do? I don't know. It's just rude to unilaterally change an arrangement isn't it?

Maybe if we stopped waiting for persistent latecomers they'd start to realise what it feels like to be inconvenienced.

I’m not someone who is generally late. People who don’t know me very well view me as incredibly organised. Like extremely unusual levels of organised.

People who know me better are baffled at how such an “organised” person can lose things so regularly/be so messy/always be in a rush.

People who know me really well know that my levels of organisation are compensation for my natural tendency towards hideous disorganisation.

I’m on time to almost everything. But that’s because I’m aiming to be there between 30-15mins early usually, even if it’s in the same town. And if I'm not there 30-15mins early then that probably isn’t (but is sometimes) because some external force delayed me (traffic jam etc) it’s because I’ve fucked up and been unable to find my house keys (I normally leave them in the door) or my phone etc. I don’t know why. I try really hard not to lose things and I’ve got much better. I check my pockets and bags constantly. I try to leave the keys in the door where I can see them and this works almost all the time. I don’t know why this is; I have loads of thoughts flying in my head all the time and I’m constantly getting distracted from one thing to another and I can’t focus on any one thing. Then sometimes I’ll be totally hyper focused and I will sit down to do something and not stop or consider anything else until it’s done. I have a massive (like 50cm) wide clock in the main room and clocks in almost every other room in the house and wear a watch. I set google alarms and put them in earlier than the appointment times. I have duplicates of some stuff where possible (e.g deodorant) so that I’m more likely to be able to find one. I try to store everything in the place it needs to go. E.g all bike stuff lives in a box in the shed or lives in bike basket. All work stuff lives in work bag. All volunteering stuff lives in volunteering bag. Etc. But it STILL doesn’t always work.

I do lots of counting backwards and allowing extra time etc so that’s quite carefully done. I’m not actually usually late, I’m usually on time or early. But it does not in Any Way come naturally to me.

My ex dh would openly boast about his such cool lateness. Interestingly he was never late for work. Once we divorced he would agree to collecting the children at say 3pm. He was always always around 15 to 30 minces late. A long time in the eyes of a child waiting to see their father. I would deliberately not mention it and knew this annoyed him. It was all about him having control over our time. One day I decided to have a little walk up the road at the time he was due. He was sitting in his car in a side street. He still arrived 30 minutes late.
For me it’s all about control and lack of respect. If you respect someone you will meet them at the time you agree to. If you don’t respect them it really won’t matter if you’re half an hour late. You’ll assume they’ll be there waiting and therefore you will believe you are in control