To say enough is enough re flakey or late people

[arcticgreen]

I was supposed to meet a friend of mine today at a cafe to pass her some snacks she had specifically requested me to get for her from overseas. We were supposed to meet at 2:30 pm (per her request) and I texted her at 2 to remind her of the meet alongside a message saying 'don't be late!' as she has form for it. She replied with 'relax 😂😂'. Is being habitually late funny?

I ended up waiting 40 minutes for her! To be fair I wasn't doing anything else today anyway but it still feels ridiculous having to wait for her every single time. She's not the only one like this.

Someone had a birthday party recently, notified everyone months in advance, made reservations at a cosy local restaurant (the kind that has a very, very limited number of seats so the restaurant was basically booked out by us) and only 5/16 turned up! Of the 11 that were absent, 6 were last minute to very last minute cancellations, with 3 not even bothering to notify anyone that they weren't going to show up!

I'm so sick of this. AIBU to slowly cut off contact with everyone like this? Or should I just 'relax 😂 😂' as today's friend put it?

Habitual lateness/ flakiness is plain rude. It’s akin to saying their time is more important than yours as your time is effectively dispensable to them.

Almost as bad is when you get told you can’t be upset by it as the late person might have anxiety and find it difficult to stick to plans. If that’s the case they should make this clear to the other person from the offset rather than make someone wait or cancel at the last minute. Anxiety shouldn’t be used as an excuse to treat other people badly.

Telling some one who is habitually late “don’t be late” reminds them not to leave other people hanging around - ie that their actions have a negative effect on others. Cant be said too often.

I would never wait 40 minutes if a friend was late

I had a friend like this, always late for everything. I used to take her dd to school now and again, if she was late dropping her off I'd be late getting to work, so on one occasion I said I'd be leaving at x time, with or without her dd. She was late so I did leave, funnily enough she was never late again when it negatively impacted her, which pissed me off even more as it proved that when she wanted to, she could be on time.

When someone criticised my near success (5minutes late) based on them waiting them for 20 minutes already, I sometimes felt like wtf, I'm not the one causing the problem here.
Another unhelpful response I got was "can't we just agree a specific time and be there on time?".
So you were late, and its them that is 'causing the problem' for being critical about your 'near success', really should they have had the bunting out as you were only a bit late?
And I have no idea what is wrong about the second part? Arranging something and holding to it?!

You are the one causing the problem!

except there was; we were often late to our religious meetings which were set times
we missed numerous flights and ferries
I recall us being invited to my parent's friends and being 2 hours late 😶
also recall waiting and waiting to be taken to my friends house's for a set time and on the other side I remember them simply not turning up to arranged meet up sometimes or finally get a phone call that "it's not worth it now"
my parent's would arrange that someone breaks their journey by having lunch with us then the person would finally show up way after lunchtime having eaten......
you get the idea, flaky people gonna flake

I would totally accept "5 minutes late level of annoyance", but I got the "20 minutes" one, as some people arrive super early and than add it to their waiting time. Not really fair.

Generally nothing wrong about arranging exact time - if it works for both parties. Just when a person who is aware of their own issues with time is trying to arrange things in the "less annoying way", it doesn't help with the communication to dismiss it using words like "just" or "normally".

Crackers. Arranging to be somewhere at a specific time now has to be worked out between parties like the Suez Treaty? Life is too short for all that negotiation and back and forth.

So true about persistent latecomers getting annoyed when things move on without them. Sometimes, it can be all about causing a stir when they finally turn up.
An organist friend was booked to play for two consecutive weddings at a church which was a popular venue. A gap was left between the two ceremonies to allow for guests etc to clear the building after the first service.
Except that the first bride exerted her prerogative of being "a bit late" to such an extent that guests for the second service began to arrive.....
Eventually bridal party No.1 were shifted to waiting in the church hall, so that wedding No. 2 could start on time, and when that was over, the vicar kindly let the first party back in. (At that time, the rule about weddings having to be conducted before a certain time in the afternoon was still in place; letting both weddings run in order with a later start risked the second one being too late)
Apparently the bride, expecting everybody to be frothing with excitement when she finally made an appearance, was most put out to be made to wait her deferred turn; she stomped up the aisle with a face like thunder,

I have anxiety and i struggle a lot to follow through with plans and to get myself places on time. I also have dermatillomania which can affect my timekeeping when my anxiety is bad although I do my best not to let it. I have never talked to any friends about it so they've no idea but I'd be incredibly stressed when I'm late and very apologetic because I don't actually take the person's time for granted. I would never joke it off if I know someone was waiting on me I think that's really rude.

Just be late yourself, every time. Turn up an hour late & express surprise if they have left. Better still, if you're really pissed off, text to say your on your way and make them wait, then don't turn up at all. This sort of person does this all the time and thinks it's acceptable, they need to learn that it really isn't. The most straight forward alternative is tell them their behaviour is rude, thoughtless and unacceptable & you can't be doing with it any longer.

There was a thread on this recently. I used to have a friend who lived 5 minutes away. He'd either turn up earlier than planned and moan because I was "late" or when he was late, (I had to text him to find out where he was) he didn't get my issue.

I once got moaned at for being 2 minutes late.

I gave up with him because of how often it was.

My friend was late for school meeting. He told her wait til end. You sometimes have to be firm with these people. Leave on time!!!!

I have been known to tolerate lateness/flakey behaviour, because we have moved recently and I don't have many friends in our local area.

My dsis is terrible for this..no explanation no apology.
I'd wait 15 mins and then go

I would find the cafe person mildly annoying but the birthday people different level rude. How can you do that to someone on their birthday when all you had to do was text RSVP sorry I can't make it?!!

Dreadful way to treat a small restaurant too, leaving them with so many unfilled places with no or minimal notice. And hugely embarrassing for the person who made the booking. I hope they had enough walk-in customers that evening to make up for it.

People who say they use strategies to avoid being late such as working back from the time they need to arrive and getting everything ready the night before - isn't that just what most people do as a matter of course?

People who say they use strategies to avoid being late such as working back from the time they need to arrive and getting everything ready the night before - isn't that just what most people do as a matter of course?

I would assume so but as one of those people who has anxiety and uses this "strategy", I would assume most people can just figure "I need to be there by 1pm" and then roughly work out that that means they need X time to get there and Y time to get ready so "prep time" is X +Y = 1pm

I need to actually sit and figure out every step from literally what time to set my alarm for in the morning to arriving at the event at 12.50pm 1pm and then invariably write it out to make sure I stick to the schedule. If it's something really important or somewhere I've never been before then, if possible, I will physically do a "trial run" on an earlier date to check that the timings I have allowed are right, and if I'm there less than 5 mins early on the trial run I will have to adjust my timings to allow more contingency time, just in case. I also never trust Google maps even though 99 times out of 100 it allows more than enough time - if it says I need 10 minutes to get somewhere then I'll leave at least 15 minutes because I can't risk it taking longer.

Just tell them to meet you half an hour before you intend turning up. So 2pm for your 2.30pm and soon.

My SIL is such a flake that I haven't even met her. She lives 10 minutes down the road! Ive been with her brother for 3 years, married for 8 months and he hadn't seen her for 3 years before we met. I've arranged so many times to meet up with her. Time place etc.. she would never show then ghost me for months. We invited her and the rest of my husbands family over to our new home after we bought it and she back out last minute. She's never met her nephew or her brothers step children. I'm expecting again and when we told her she actually turned it into an argument. She left my message unread for a week so i actually ended up blocking her and my life is so much more peaceful without being let down by her.

People who say they use strategies to avoid being late such as working back from the time they need to arrive and getting everything ready the night before - isn't that just what most people do as a matter of course?

I had a late friend, she's still my friend just no longer late! She used to struggle with getting places on time because she'd think something like, "it takes me 10 minutes to wash my hair" so would start washing her hair 10 minutes before she went out. She asked me to help with working out some strategies (as I'm always bloody early!)

I stayed with her whilst she got ready a few times and we wrote down how long things actually take. It has made a massive difference to her. Yeah, it takes 10 minutes to wash her hair, but then it takes 30 minutes to style. It was as though she couldn't see that.

It sounds a bit odd, written down.

You win the thread.

"People who say they use strategies to avoid being late such as working back from the time they need to arrive and getting everything ready the night before - isn't that just what most people do as a matter of course?"

I don't think that is an intuitive strategy. Rather, it's a learned (and learnable) skill. I think often people who haven't learned it, have grown up in families where they were not taught it. I suspect that people who find it easy to be "on time" also are probably a lot more efficient by nature, and actually do not take as long to do things as "time blind" people. People use multiple cues to schedule their time so if you see that your friends start getting ready to leave the house 10 min before their 30 min drive, and they are on time, then you might assume that you can do the same. But for you, 20 or 25 min might be necessary to get ready for leaving the house. You'll regularly be late but you won't understand why, until you spend time observing yourself and analyze what you are doing, specifically, with your time.

The friend of the OP in this post was clearly in the wrong but it's not always that cut and dried. People can sometimes use time as a means of control in the opposite direction too. I used to have a coworker who would become very irate if I tried to leave the hotel for the airport before the time she had decided. As far as she was concerned, her schedule was the correct schedule and she would snap at me if I tried to have any input into the time we booked the taxi from the hotel. But then when we got to the airport, she was absolutely horrible to me and would snap at me for not reading the airport signage as quickly as her, or for not walking through the crowds in the exact pattern she dictated (which was, in her opinion, the only correct way to walk through crowds), etc. She criticised others for what she considered their organisation flaws, but in reality, she was just an arrogant person who manipulated situations to put others down by controlling situations to her advantage and to the disadvantage of other people. Time was just one more way to control other people and to bolster her own ego by putting others down.

Nobody taught me how to be on time. I decided other people's time was as important as mine, so I decided to be on time.

It's not that complicated. Everything in life doesn't have to be made so deeply complex!

The posts blaming those who are punctual are beyond entitled.

As for the phrase "time blind" lord save me. Let's just call it what it is: rude, entitled and flaky.

The OP's friend is rude. You are rude and abelist.