God, lateness really winds me up. Why are people so late?

[pointing]

If you're a late person, why?!

I am often late but certainly don’t think my time is more precious than anyone else’s. I always Seem to think I can squeeze in more jobs to do in the time I have for example, as I’m running out the door at home I think oh I could put on a washing or I could quickly bring clothes in from washing line, there’s a theme here ! or at work I think I’ll just quickly answer that e mail before the meeting etc etc I’ve now realised time doesn’t stretch to accommodate all the things I have to do and I will be late if I try to do x y or z
I am getting better but it’s taken a long time Once when I really left early to meet friends with a firm talking to myself of ..get out the house NOW! I was early so waited in a book shop to pass the time I love reading got involved in looking at some books realised I was now late! And madly rushed over to meet my friends who luckily laughed about it as I had phoned them proudly to say I’m here and early! I am getting better but it’s work in progress

I think it's actually rude to be bang on time to someone's house - your host might still be preparing.
If I invite people for 8pm and they turn up at 7.55 it looks like I didn’t know anyone was coming; piles of clutter, no makeup etc. At 8pm I am ready. If they arrive at 8.10 the music is on, nibbles are out, I am chilled. I see 10 minutes late as polite in social situations.
Totally different with work and official appointments, I am on time for those.

"To the perennially late:

Being late to an office job can and does matter especially where tasks are expected to be performed in a timely manner.

If you arent at your desk at the appropriate start time and havent had the courtesy to phone to say so, how do I know you are coming in at all? How long do I have to wait before I start reassigning your tasks to other people?"

Is this common in office jobs? Having your tasks allocated at the beginning of the day by a supervisor? I work at the lowest level in an office and still don't get tasks given to me in that way. I have my own to-do list and superiors will email me with things that might be more time sensitive, but being 12 minutes late wouldn't normally make much difference. Of course it's different if you have a meeting or a phone call scheduled at a different time.
If people aren't coming in, surely they will call to tell you? Unless they're unconscious, that's probably a rule isn't it, so why presume they're not coming in because they're not there at 9 on the dot?

"If I invite people for 8pm and they turn up at 7.55 it looks like I didn’t know anyone was coming; piles of clutter, no makeup etc. At 8pm I am ready. If they arrive at 8.10 the music is on, nibbles are out, I am chilled. I see 10 minutes late as polite in social situations."

My point of view is that if you arrive early for drinks at mine you have to help out or you have to sit on your own while I'm doing things. I did have someone turn up a bit early last time I had people over because she had somewhere else to go afterwards. Wasn't a big problem.

This has been an educational thread for me. I totally expected to be one of the ones slagging off late people - I have two friends who are terminally late. However, having seen what people consider to be late and a problem, I've gone over to the dark side. Up to 20 minutes late is nothing for pub, dinner or most office jobs.

Depends how flexible the hours are at your office. If you regularly rock into the office 20 minutes after everyone else it is going to cause huge resentment unless you are seen to be regularly staying 20 minutes later than your colleagues.

"If you regularly rock into the office 20 minutes after everyone else it is going to cause huge resentment unless you are seen to be regularly staying 20 minutes later than your colleagues."

In 20 years of working in an office, I've never seen this be an issue. Some other person may arrive at 9 on the dot but go for fag breaks, another might arrive at 9.30 but take less time for lunch. I'm glad I don't work with such petty people.

I was going to a concert with my son.
My friend was going to a different concert with her ma.
Decided to meet before concerts for something to eat.

5.30 we where supposed to meet.6.45 they turn up.

They went home for something.At around the time they where supposed to meet us.
They live 30 minutes away.

Like who does that, knowing you're meeting people.
No text or anything.
When they turned up,we where finished.We left.I wasn't sitting there watching them eat.

I think as well as he reasons the late people don't text is to keep you waiting.If they let you know,you might leave and not wait for them.

@Gwenhwyfar it will depend on the role. My team has a job which has to be completed by a particular time. If it's not started on time then there's a risk that it won't be completed on time which has knock on effects down the line. Starting this task was part of my assistant's role.

If he wasn't on time then someone (normally me) would have to start the ball rolling, kick off reports etc. Meanwhile the team who were our customers would be starting to get twitchy.

If I was starting his job then I wasnt doing my job and my own customers would be starting to worry their work was going to be late.

Not all offices are laissez fairs, just so long as the work gets done type places.

"5.30 we where supposed to meet.6.45 they turn up."

Yes, this is obviously rude.

I'm a perpetually late person. If I'm not late I'll be in a last minute panic. I don't think my time is any more precious than anybody else's.

I just always underestimate how long things take. So I'll know that it takes an hour to shower, wash my hair, brush my teeth, dry my hair, put make up on, brush my hair and get dressed.

But I forget to allow for if I need to go to the toilet, or I can't find the top I want to wear, or I have a disaster with my make up and have to redo it, or I need to adjust the strap on the bag I want to use etc.

If I have a firm start time for something I'm more likely to be about on time, but I have to prepare the shit out of everything in advance. If I'm running late I always tell people before the time I'm due.

That's me, I just always underestimate time and what I have to get done.

The only time I'm ever on time is to a regular commitment. So I know that I have to leave at X time as last week it worked.

Otherwise it's very hit and miss but not because I don't care, or because I think I'm more important. I just can't grasp timing.

My last clanger was for a first night at the cinema. My husband is an avid fan of this series and I booked the tickets. Small independent cinema.
We arrived at the doors at the start time! Which would have meant queuing to retrieve tickets, snacks, finding seats etc.
Luckily they were sold out and so busy that the start time had been adjusted by 20 mins to get everyone in. Phew. Close call.

I hate it when people just generally have no concept of time.
Customer rings and asks when we're open to i tell her we close at 6.30. 6.33 I'm just about to drive off and she turns up and us cross as she'd made it at 6.30.
How my parents would say we're leaving at 10 be ready, ready for 10, guess what? 45 mins later they are ready.
We'll be there at 6. Wondering where they are at 6.20, turns out they meant they were leaving at 6.
Also agree on the fact that if you know your always late and why and you just continue, that's almost as bad as just being late as you know ow you could be better at being more timely but you just don't want to fix the problem enough.

It's not anal my time isn't more important but it is equally as important and I would like to thing that you like me enough and you wouldnt want to keep messing me about.
Occasional lateness is forgivable persistent isn't its careless and inconsiderate.

Particularly rolling my eyes at the ‘my life is too busy and important for me to wait for your entitled late arrival’ post

Wow. Well if you have all the time in the world to wait around until your late friends decide to turn up then I’m jealous! I don’t. I dont have hours of spare time every day to hang around waiting. Sorry about that but I have stuff to do and a job to go to and my Nan to look after. Maybe I should suggest to my job and my Nan that it’s fine for me to just ignore my commitments to them since someone on the internet is rolling their eyes and that I should just wait around for late people with no regard whatsoever for other appointments I might have! I wonder how that will go down eh? 🤔

If you regularly rock into the office 20 minutes after everyone else it is going to cause huge resentment unless you are seen to be regularly staying 20 minutes later than your colleagues.

In a previous job everyone was on time apart from one person who was 20 minutes late every single day. This was on top of the adjusted hours they requested to help them out in the morning.

This person also took fag breaks, which wasn’t actually allowed in our workplace. Frequently they would phone at 9am to take that morning off because they hadn’t slept well, even though the company policy was five working days notice for annual leave requests. Fine as a once off in an emergency but they did it a lot.

It pissed everyone off. I remember one day they got to work 15 minutes before their start time and at the end of the day they announced they were leaving early because they’d come in early 😂😂

I hate it too. It's rude and thoughtless and it saying they don't value your time as much as their own.

I am an early/punctual person as I really hate being late. If I’m late for work i miss handover so I’m early I can go in have a cup of tea and chill before starting shift and I’m not holding anyone back having to re do handover - I also live furthest away from work so leave earlier and up earlier and I’m not naturally a morning person.

I don’t like to keep people waiting, a good friend is fine turns up within 5/10 mins but I have another friend who cannot get herself anywhere within 40 minutes of our meeting time I’ve been left in bars etc on my own for over an hour before am clearly to stupid to just leave. I get that people have busy lives and jobs etc but so do I, I work shifts, I’m a single parent, I have 4 kids youngest with additional needs but we still manage to get where we are going on time.

I am dyslexic so organisational skills are not great but I’ve worked at it, I feel if someone is making the effort to meet me I could at least be on time, generally whilst school is on so limited time late friend will ask to meet at 1pm but she’s always v late so 2pm which gives me 1hr or 30 mins before I have to leave for school pick up and I hate hanging about. It’s bizarre she can be on time for other friends, work, events etc...am absolutely not putting up with it once things return to normal.

I'm very tolerant of occasions lateness, it happens to us all but I no longer maintain friendships with people who are persistently late. I too could just fire off a quick email, put the washing out or unload the dishwasher just before leaving the house because I believe it will only take a minute but I don't because of the risk of being late. I don't find being punctual stressful, it's just a habit, I don't need to chill out.
I have many experiences of being inconvenienced by the perennially late which I accept as my responsibility for being too accommodating. I once worked somewhere which operated an appointment system, one client regularly turned up 30 minutes late for a 45 minute appointment. I accepted her lateness and honoured the appointments but one day the next client left before their appointment because they couldn't wait until I'd finished with the late client, we never saw that client again. After that I refused to see the late client unless she was on time.
I booked a holiday with a friend who had very poor time management and the lengths I had to go to to make sure we didn't miss the flight was not funny. I vowed never to holiday with her again and eventually let the friendship slide.
I also worked in an environment where one set of staff could not leave until the next shift turned up because this worked reciprocally very few people were ever late, I only met one person in many years that was routinely late and they were performance managed. I think it highly unlikely that out of the hundreds of people I worked with in that environment that not one of them had problems mentioned by some posters but still they were able to manage to turn up for work on time.
I see posters say that they don't think their time is more important than anyone else's or they feel bad when they are late and yet they continue to be late. Others have said their friends are very relaxed about them being late; are you sure about that. In my experience there's a surreptitious group eye roll when a persistent offender turns up, breathlessly apologetic for being late again.
I'm meeting a friend for a socially distanced dog walk at 2pm this afternoon, it will take 20 minutes to walk to the meeting place but as I'm going with the dog I will give myself 30 minutes so the hound can have a leisurely sniff etc, this means I will leave the house at 1.30pm and be very relaxed about arriving on time. It's really not that hard.

My friend was 3hrs late once. She said she’d be with me 10mins after the initial first message. But in the time it took her to get to me, she went to her mums, went out for fish and chips, went home for a cup of tea and then arrived at my house when I was out walking the dog having got fed up of waiting.

I'm a private tutor and have several students/parents who are habitually late.

They regularly ask when I'm going to make up the time... But suddenly get better at time keeping when I stick to my guns. I guess some things are more of a priority than others and people who are habitually late for certain things see those things as less of a priority.

See, I'm baffled by the people who know it takes 10 minutes to have a shower and 8 minutes to eat breakfast or whatever and can work out to the minute how long they need to get ready. I don't do the same things in the same order at exactly the same time every day and I don't understand how anyone does. There are so many variables and I'm not a robot.

All these people who are quite happily late for social meet-ups (moaning that people are just uptight if they're bothered by standing around like a twat for ages)... I wonder if they're also happily late for work every day.

Do they wander on to their shift half an hour late, whistling away cheerily and ignoring the glares of their colleagues?

If not, and they acknowledge it's important to start work on time, why do they think it's OK to be late for friends?

I think if they examine their reasons, it will expose a rather unpleasant disregard for other people's time.

I’m not a robot either. I somehow manage to make a educated guess about how long a shower will take. If it’s not long enough then I’ll give more time the next day. It’s really not rocket science and it’s not something I give more than a fleeting thought to. I don’t think anyone here has suggested we should all be “robots” lolol

@rosesinmygarden - I'm a private tutor and have several students/parents who are habitually late.

Good on you. My son has a private tutor for Spanish as his teacher, while he does try, is just an utterly hopeless teacher. The tutor has most of my son's class as clients. She is 100% flexible if the child is sick or has something on at the normal time and will arrange a swap with someone else. However, she will absolutely not entertain lateness or last minute changes. Before she takes anyone on (2 of the 4 Spanish teachers in the local school are crap so she has no shortage of clients and can pick and choose a she is a fantastic tutor), she makes her position very clear. Payment is up front and if you don't turn up or are late, tough. If you don't like it, you can go elsewhere.

I'm always a few minutes early dropping him off. The next student is always waiting outside when I collect. Pretty much every one of her clients manages to make it on time. Most because they are polite and recognise they are only paying for a specific time slot. Others because the chat in advance works, and the rest because they paid for time they didn't use once or twice and she does not bend.

Well that's obviously why some people find it easier than others. There is no set time that a shower will take for me. It may be longer one day and shorter the next. I honestly couldn't tell you.