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?

I do think there are coping techniques people can choose to implement. If I am not really careful I end up being late.

I forget things, and end up going in and out of the house 3x because I haven't remembered stuff. I don't leave enough time for there to be traffic, or for locking up the house/getting into my car. I get distracted while getting ready and start doing other jobs and then don't leave enough time to get ready. I sit down and end up engrossed in a book/think I have time to fit an episode of TV in/scroll mindlessly on my phone and lose track of time.

So to avoid being late I do things like write lists of all the things I need to take and then check them off on my phone - the list might include things like checking traffic and adjusting leaving times accordingly. I set an alarm for 10 minutes before and then the time I need to leave the house so I can't get distracted and miss the final shoes on/pop to the loo/lock up the house time. Depending on the day/my brain I either force myself to do 90% of the getting ready before I do anything else or I set an alarm for 150% of the time that my brain thinks I need to get ready to do the actual getting ready. If I need to do Loads of things before I leave I'll actually write down the times they should all take and add them up and then put some contingency time in - i.e. bake brownies, have a shower, dry hair, and then proper getting ready rather than just shoving some clothes on and picking up my handbag or whatever.

I implement the techniques above pretty much every day - which one depends on the circumstances - and I'm rarely late. I guess given my natural tendency to disorganisation, I never really understand why others can't implement the same strategies. Some people would say I'm organised - I say I'm naturally disorganised with a lot of coping techniques. It may be my lack of knowledge/understanding but these feel like techniques anyone could use.

Your time is not more important than mine.
I don't accept lateness at all any more, I just let the friendship lapse.
In one of my friendship groups there was always one that kept us waiting, we started giving her a time 30 minutes early so she would get there on time, then once she was ACTUALLY on time and got really angry with us because she had to wait.
She cried when she discovered what we had been doing, but she never did it again.

I had one chronically late friend. We are no longer friends because of it. It’s wonderful.

Of course I can excuse a genuine cause of lateness, esp when accompanied by a heartfelt apology.

Being always late seems to go along with thinking you are quirky and fun and an inability to apologise.

Oh well. As I said upthread, my friends with ADHD- and one friend in a wheelchair even- make it on time. Because they plan for it. It's the ones who are ND that don't. Because they take a cab in London traffic, or wash their hair just before they leave, or get busy on the phone....My most chronic completely ND friend was late to her own wedding party; she missed the plane there!

I am just not going to accept "timeblind" as an excuse any more for 40 minutes of waiting. 10 or 15 minutes, fine.

Ugh that whole post made no sense. Replace ND with NT. I always get confused.