To think always being late isn’t a quirky personality trait

[CorianderDestroysFamilies]

I’m meeting my friend today and I already know she’ll be late. Normally she’ll message me at the time we’re supposed to be meeting saying she’s just about to leave so I’ll be stood waiting for 15 minutes, one time she messaged saying she would be an hour late I was already at the meeting point with my DC so it was a waste of all our time.
Anyway I’ve just seen another funny meme about how someone will still be in the bath at the time they should be going out and how hilarious it all is. I just think things like this normalise lateness and justify people like it’s some sort of quirky, unavoidable character flaw when it’s actually really rude and makes people like me less likely to want to see you. So AIBU?

It’s rude. It’s inconsiderate and it’s selfish. I’ve stopped meeting up with two separate friends who were perpetually late, despite me telling each of them that it was really rude to say we’d meet at (eg) midday, then leave me sat there for 45 minutes. One of them turned up for a party we had at 1115pm. The party started at 7 and the bar closed at midnight. Drove me insane. We’re still friends, but I no longer organise to meet up, and I bat back invites to get together because I just cannot be arsed with the lateness.

I am very disorganised but HATE being late makes me really anxious so when going out I make a list eg
9-9.20- shower
920-9.30- hair etc
It may seem extreme but that way I always leave on time.
Use to have a bf who was always late ended up taking a book with me everywhere so I had something to do, once sat on his doorstep for 2 hours waiting for him!

@gyro if I had been 2 hours late for my wedding there would have been no wedding as my now DH would've gone home

Unless there's a medial reason for an inability to manage/organise yourself, I honestly think it's just plain rude.

I've had friends turn up late for so many events. One example (of many) I've booked tickets for mine and a friends children to see things at the theatre and at the time the children are meant to be at my house for me to take them, said friend is just dishing up lunch at her house! Now that is just plain rude and ungrateful.

I honestly think with people like this, they just don't care about anyone else and see their time as more important.

When I was quite young (early 20s?) I was always like this and it was due to lack of organisation. One day I went out to meet a friend for lunch, already a tiny bit late, and my tube line wasn't working so I was more than an hour late. I kept texting her but when I arrived she had left, as she said she had errands to do. I was gutted but I had to take the point that it was on me. Something she said also made me realise that it wasn't just an endearing quirk, it's actually incredibly rude.

I'm now really rigorous about being on time (it is just about organisation!) and as a result I get incredibly pissed off with people who are always late. I have a small child and am never late, but I have friends without children who are routinely 30-50 minutes late to meet us it annoys me so much.

Lateness is just plain rude. It is about valuing their time over yours, of course their are genuine reasons occasionally but the majority of late people just don't care about keeping you waiting.

I am really disorganised, like naturally I am a total mess. I have to work really hard to be on time. But I still am on time. I just have to factor in random extra time for all the faffing I know I'll do.

If you know you are ways late why don't you just plan to be early? For example if I know I need to leave at 12, I plan to be ready for 11.45 and then will just sit and relax for 5 minutes before I leave. I will wait in my car for 5mins/grab a coffee whatever, so that I am there a bit early and know I will make it on time.

I have the philosophy on time is 10 minutes early, so if you have to be somewhere at 11, aim to be there for 10 to. Then you can just relax in your car or the cafe whatever the scenario for 10 minutes.

Because really that's what it comes down to, you can never plan exactly how long something is going to take. So someone will be waiting around a bit, the people who are always late make sure it's just never them.

To the people who say "I always end up doing something before I leave" why don't you just not do whatever it is? Like you know you are always late, so you do know you don't have time to do it because you are always late. Yet you do it anyway.

Or "I always forget about the little things". Again you know you are always late, you don't have to remember all the little things. You just have to recognise that you are always says 20 minutes late so aim to leave 20minutes earlier. Everytime. You do know you have to do these things because you are always 20minutes late, you know it's going to take you longer than you think so you need to factor that in.

If you know you are late/have poor time keeping whatever then you need to factor in a lot more time in your leaving process. You don't need to allocate it to anything, just give yourself longer. Because even if time keeping is poor, logically your not always going to be late, your timing will be all over the place. If you are always late then that means you just haven't given yourself enough time.

Time keeping really doesn't come easy to me and that's why I get even more pissed off when someone's late, because I have gone to a fair amount of effort to be there on time. I haven't done whatever it is then were doing that made them late, ill still have to do the washing up/laundry whatever when i get home, I have just been sat waiting for them. It's waisting my time so that they can get done what they wanted.

I find with people like that let them know when you “leave the house” not when you reach the place as it’s usuallt their lack of good planning that makes them late

@xtinak wasn’t Israel was it? I have clients there and it’s very similar.

Dhs family do a similar thing. They’re late all the time but it’s ok it’s an “surname” thing. Infuriates me. And dh (although he’s usually late but hates to be kept waiting).

We went For Sunday lunch a while ago. Fil, his gf, dh me and ds. Lunch booked for 1. Dh ds and I arrived at 1245. Shown to the bar ordered drinks etc. Menus brought out for perusal. Fil and gf arrived at 130and we were shown to our table. They were annoyed they’d not had chance For a drink beforehand. Felt rushed etc.

We’re holidaying with them next year for a family wedding. I’ve purposely booked our tickets separately. We will go with or without them this way. They’re always the last ones on the flight. Always. Pride themselves on not boarding until their name is called.

I’m a very nervous flier and like to be on time and settled. This trip will be the first long haul with ds (who will be 2and a half) and possible dc2’s first flight. So I’ll need to be calm. And not rushed.

Infuriates me. More of my friends do it.

Xtinak - Middle East? Their meeting times are centred around their five daily prayers. Which is centred around the sun position in the sky 😂. It is “after prayer” which gives a margin of around 20/30 mins to meet up.

Works fine for that culture as it’s all centered around prayers anyway and no one had commitments more prioritized to prayer so sort of everyone knows the last thing they’ll be doing before meeting up is praying.

who well some people can't be helped

To be fair though if another adult that I was supposed to be in an equal relationship with started trying to give me advice to "improve" me I'd probably feel annoyed and patronised too... I was more meaning for MNers with DC who might have similar problems.

YANBU it's rude.

I would ensure you are very late for your next meeting with her. Her response to this would be quite telling.

grannieanne

Your reply was flippant, as if after all the many people on this thread who explained why lateness is not on, their views didn't matter.

You're not the only one who's going through a difficult time, and in your current circumstances, it's understandable if you're 5 minutes late. But you said you're always late, so what were the reasons before, and what will they be after?

I'm very sorry to hear about your parents. I lost my mum a couple of weeks ago, but was unable to see her during all the weeks she was in hospital, due to my own terminal illness. She didn't live near me, and insisted that I didn't travel down, because she knew it would be detrimental for my health.
I wish you peace.

I know Bertie - I was tactful in how I phrased it! It impacted me and D.C. He missed flights and left us standing at the airport to collect him (and didn’t think to text to tell us he had missed the flight!), never mind missing trips on holidays, don’t talk about the time we went away for two weeks and he was so late he rushed out and LEFT THE BACK DOOR WIDE OPEN, he was always late for work (now works for himself), I could go on and on - late to pick up kids and got fined by nursery (which was mybill and he wouldn’t square me for it) ...

People who know they are rubbish with timekeeping, set thousands of reminders on their phone and manage to get somewhere by the skin of their teeth with heartfelt apologies are one group.

The other, more irritating group are the 'don't give a shit' brigade. They know they're rubbish at timekeeping. They don't care. They don't care ENOUGH to try to change. They faff, they procrastinate, they don't sit down and think about what THEY can do to change. Everyone else has to make allowances for them. They rarely apologise or when they do it's a "oh dear, silly me, never mind" type thing.

Ah yes, I had a friend like this. She was always just soooo busy and I came to the conclusion that in her mind her time was just always going to more valuable than mine. She's a GP now. There is definitely nothing wrong with her executive functioning. I do wonder how well she keeps appointment times, though. We're not really friends anymore.

DH's family are "always late" people. I think for them it is just constant disorganisation. Times are vague guidelines. All plans are vague guidelines. I get very anxious over any plans with them. We have been going out for lunch with them (many hours late), and five minutes from the place we've planned to go to, and they've changed their minds on a whim, turned the car around and started looking for somewhere else instead etc. I try to avoid planning anything with them now, or at least making sure we never rely on them - fine if they want to be very late and change their minds, but we'll go to the place we said we'd go at the time we said we would, and we'll get on with our day whether they're there or not.

I'm one of those people who is usually ridiculously early out of fear of being late. It's one of the main anxieties in my life, really. I plan my timetable in my head over and over again, and overthink every obstacle and thing that could go wrong on the way, so that I avoid being late. It's a bit extreme, really, and I do a lot of lemon-like loitering just to pass the time when I'm way too early for something again. Luckily this only inconveniences poor DH, who always brings his Kindle...

This thread just reminds me what it's like living in a neuro typical world when you aren't neurotypical.

I have ADHD and was diagnosed last year (aged 36)

For years I wondered why others could just be organised and I couldn't. Why I couldn't get it togwther and others could, why I was always late.

Sometimes it's not as easy to just be organised. For me that's like telling someone with depression to just be positive and you will be fine

But the general population won't understand as I am not strange or odd enough to stand out. Instead I'm seen as lazy, disorganised, also late. Oh and also always interupting, blunt and rude.

Yep it's a joy not being neuro typical!!!

I think it depends on the reason for lateness

ExH used lateness as a form of control. Willy waving and asserting his importance/dominance - not acceptable
Anyone with new baby or toddler - acceptable/understandable within reason
People with ADHD/Dyslexia/Dyspraxia- understandable, but might be helped by setting up a system of alerts on their phone. I have timers and alarms on everything if I have to be somewhere at a particular time. Sometimes it still fails
General flakiness/can’t be bothered - not acceptable

Does anyone here who is always late use the tactic of asking the person who they are meeting what time they are leaving/getting ready? I'm an always early kind of person (anxiety) and would ask this if I was going somewhere unfamiliar. (I'm well aware Google maps is best case scenario)

borntobe but if you are late all the time, you are making people wait for you, and it's not particularly pleasant to be sat waiting by yourself, it can be embarrassing and annoying . You are wasting peoples time. You have to accept that people aren't going to like that, it's asking a lot of people to just accept that everytime they see you they are going to waste x amount of time. I also hate the unknown so when I don't know when someone's coming it really stresses me out.

If someone's late I'm not sat patiently waiting, I would be sat stressing about what time theyre coming, are they coming at all, where do I wait egg. I am worrying about whether we will make it somewhere on time. It puts me through a lot of stress too, which is sometimes unavoidable and I won't begrudge it, and 5 or 10 minutes I am fine with. But if it's everytime your asking a lot for me to just understand.

If you know you are disorganised and always late why do you not just start aiming to be say 20minutes early and then you probably won't be late

Re late people hating others to be late, my mum is like this.

She would have the kids over for lunch on a Sunday and always, ALWAYS was late if she was picking them up on her way back from church. Always late dropping them off, by up to an hour and a half.

However when I was dropping them off or picking them up and I was ever late she would hit the fucking roof! I was once a few minutes late, less than 10, because of an accident causing a traffic delay, she went mad. She absolutely loathes being kept waiting but will cheerfully keep others waiting for as long as suits her.

Persistent lateness can be a sign of ADHD. There are an awful lot of adults with undiagnosed ADHD about.

I've been late for everything, all my life. I'm also forgetful, I lose stuff, find it hard to finish things and I'm always doing several things at once.

Turns out I have ADHD. (Innatentive ADHD - It's what they used to call ADD, There's no hyperactivity).

I'd hazard a guess several of the always-late people mentioned on this thread have (probably undiagnosed) ADHD.

I’ve just had to rejoin so that I could post on this thread - I deleted my account in an attempt to procrastinate less!

I’ve spent my whole life till a year ago late for stuff. Being told that I just needed to organise myself better, try harder, that they worked at it as well, it’s was simple. I couldn’t. I missed not just friends but trains, planes, my dissertation hand in etc. I hated myself to the point of severe depression, I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t function as an adult, I honestly thought that deep down I must be evil - why didn’t I care enough about other people to be on time. I took all of the “late people don’t care” comments to heart and truly hated myself.

Why did I always forget stuff, talk out of turn, be late, miss bills. I am an intelligent women with a medical degree but I dont know my left from right and like others have said I have no concept of the passing of time.

Last year I was diagnosed with ADHD. It means that your executive functioning isn’t functioning I.e you simply can’t plan well, know how time passes or think if I do this, I will do that, and especially you can’t cope of something last minutiae changes such as a baby poop incident. It doesn’t mean your stupid - it’s nothing to do with intelligence. Its to do with not having enough of a certain neurotransmitter in the brain. ( for those now wondering how I function in work health emergencies - I’m fine then as in those situations there is lots of adrenaline - so my brain has enough neurotransmitter to function, but I do thinks this often means people think that that you can be great in a crisis you can do it all the time)

Anyway I started medication six months ago. I am now on time. I don’t forget things (other than when I forget to take my meds). It that simple. There was no way my trying harder could fix this, the same way you can’t try harder to make insulin if your diabetic or hear of your deaf. I needed more of certain chemical in my brain not an alarm.

Anyway I’m slowly learning not to hate myself, to remember that I’m not “mad, bad, lazy or crazy”.....but please if it’s your friend that’s always late rather than think they don’t care ask them if their ok....and think before you post to me this is a thread that reads like “if you cared about people and really tried you could walk” to an amputee

@BlueCornishPixie

No offence but that's show you have no understanding of ADHD. I am not stupid and quite self aware that I should try and be 20 mins early but my brain does not and never will work that way and I might be able to do it the odd time but mostly not.

My brain simply can't do it.