Late Late Late

[CantBelieveImHere]

Just need some perspective on this situation.
I have a friend (1) who is always late and I mean always but recently this has taken the biscuit totally.
She was out making personal deliveries of a home shopping product and messaged me to say "i'll be with you shortly" brilliant I thought as she had to see me and another friend I thought I'd pop there to kill 2 birds with one stone as such.
Well friend 1 messages 40 mins later saying she's just travelling through a local village (which is 20 mins away at most) so to me and my other friend this reads as if she is on her way to us.
2 hours later still no sign of her baring in mind I hadn't been home and other friend has a new born so we are now coming up to 8pm.
So I leave friend who has baby as I can see she needs to get on with his evening routine and I haven't showered/eaten etc.
So we are a little worried so i message friend 1 husband as no on can get hold of her. She finally messages me at 5 to 10 saying one more drop and I'll be with you.
I have to be up at 6am so I'm already in bed.
So in brief the "be with you shortly" message was sent at 6pm.
She is arguing that nothing was set in stone and she had other deliveries to do which I am not refuting at all.
So my question is do you think I am in the wrong for pulling her up on this or am AIBU?

Yanbu

Yanbu be with you shortly means see you in less than 30 minutes not see you in 4 hours.
Who visits someone at 10pm anyway she is completely out of step with how people live.

Does your friend realise other people have, y'know, lives to be getting on with and they can't wait around for FOUR HOURS for her to turn up?
Frankly she has shown total disregard for other people's time. I would refuse to meet her again until she apologised.

And not just apologised but actually changed her ways.

She has vaguely apologized but then came back with nothing was set in stone so technically I wasn't late.
This was actually the final straw with me, she's late all the time, she will only make plans that suit her and has a complete disregard for if I have plans and when we do meet its all about her family issues etc.
I've now been told I'm being over dramatic!!!!

YANBU! If someone sent me a text saying they'd be with me shortly I'd fully expect them to arrive within the next 15 minutes. I'd start getting twitchy after 30 mins, 4 hours is thoroughly taking the piss.

It's not just shaving a couple if minutes off. It's chaos.
No one needs someone else's chaos pissing into their life so hand it back to her.
Be where you are supposed to be.
Be and adult

I'm not sure I'd describe that as late, exactly, other than 10pm is just way too late to call round on anyone. But it's very definitely rude beyond belief.

Shes a bellend
'Nothing was set in stone'. Yeh we expected you to come at 10 fucking pm to a newborns house.

Perhaps you need to evaluate what you gain from having this friendship.

It's very rude. She values her own time more than yours. HATE late people. Sometimes it doesn't matter, but when it does, and they still don't care, then they just aren't worth it. GET RID.

Get this I’m supposedly over dramatic and not perfect (never said I was) but no need to be personal. Told her I need a break from her to evaluate things

I always used to be running 5 minutes late for everything. Then I read somewhere that by being late you view your own time as more valuable/important than other peoples & that made me feel awful! You have a life too and it shouldn’t be spent waiting around (for 4 bloody hours!) for rude people like her.

YANBU.

Turning up at least 4 hours after a “be with you shortly” message is utterly ridiculous. That’s not okay just because no one mentioned a specific time.

oh I had this - well, not four hours, but someone who was systematically late by at least 2 hours for every meeting. Sometimes this involved me hanging around a pub or whatever.

I confronted her about it and told her that in future she could only ever come to my place! she was upset that I'd confronted her.

the friendship lasted quite a while after that but when my dad fell ill - he has now passed - she didn't really care and didn't understand that I couldn't make plans to socialise around hospital/hospice.

looking back, I think the lateness was probably the time I should have ended the friendship, not later on (ended up having enough of her as I got a cheery text sitting by dad's bedside with "so when are we going for drinks?")

so take some space, but yes, this sounds like complete lack of consideration if it's a habit.

the thing about valuing time is really important. She did nearly lose her job on account of lateness, so I do know that she's someone who does this to everyone, but that doesn't help really!

YANBU but have you ever pulled her up on her lateness previously (you mentioned she has a history of being late)? I ask because a friend of one did a similar thing to me once, she was 3.5 hrs late. She has a long history of turning up late but neither me nor any of our mutual friends ever told her how annoying it was. As the years rolled by she just began to think it was normal. The 3.5hr episode was the final straw for me and I lost my shit with her. She seemed genuinely confused and just said "But I'm always late..".

Not making excuses for your friend but some people do live in a parallel universe and she might not have realised how outrageous her behaviour was.

I have mentioned it here and there and the joke in our friend group is we need to work on friend 1s time. So we always tell her at least an hour early if we want her to be any semblance of on time

Yanbu. I hate lateness, it really is my biggest peeve. My best friend is a nightmare, she lives a few hours away but comes up to visit her family and me and a few others. She'll message me vaguely and be like " when is good for you, midmorning okay" to which I'll agree, she'll then message and noon saying won't be long before arriving at 2/3pm and i get so annoyed at myself for waiting around for her. Why can't people just be on time

My FIL does this (not to the extent of a four hour wait though thankfully!). Sends a text saying 'be there in 10' and it could be up to an hour before he actually turns up, because he gets side tracked by phone calls or browsing through eBay for a new bleeding car!

I hate being late, DH doesn't care whether he's late or not and because he's the driver we usually end up being late! Drives me mad! He's the type to not think about getting ready to go out until it's 5 minutes before we are supposed to be there (usually a place that takes way longer than 5 minutes to get to)
The number of times we've got out for meals with his family and we are only just ordering when they are all getting their starters - it's embarrassing (also I think quite rude to order before the whole table has arrived, but then again it's DHs our fault for being so late)