To think being 45 mins late takes the piss

[Ivorymoon]

Arranged to meet a friend in the park today to meet my 4 month old baby. Agreed the day in advance and that we would meet in the morning, confirmed the time this morning and I messaged her again as I was leaving. As I got to the park I received a message from her saying she was just leaving. 15 minutes pass and she still wasn’t there, I message again asking her ETA and she says she will be another half hour - and she would still need to find a parking spot and walk to the park. At which point I decided to cancel - I was sick of waiting around, baby would need feeding soon, I also have horrible post partum joint pain which makes standing / walking for long periods very difficult.

So as not to drip feed - friend is lovely, has ADHD and is often late, I thought she might be more mindful as I now have a baby. I don’t mind waiting 10 mins or so but over half an hour is ridiculous without good reason IMO. I’ve been disappointed my friend hasn’t arranged to see me/ meet baby sooner as we both live in the same city, but she’s been very stressed and preoccupied with her PhD write up. Perhaps my disappointment is colouring my view on this.

Friend said she didn’t realise there was a ‘specific time window’ in regards to our meeting after I cancelled and explained why. I’m baffled by this as we did set a time.

AIBU to think being 45 mins late is rude and that it was fair enough of me to cancel?

Yes, it is taking the piss. I have 2 friends like this. One I handle by just being deliberately late myself - if we say ‘meet at 12.30pm’ I’ll aim to get there at 1pm, which is the time I expect she’ll turn up. Problem solved. The other is part of a wider friendship group and routinely keeps 4 or 5 of us waiting. I’d like to drop her if I could, but the others seem to facilitate her, so I just seethe about it.

I have adhd. I do struggle with being on time for stuff but I know it's really rude so I have strategies to manage it. Adhd isn't a get-out-of-jail free card for treating others disrespectfully.

Similar situation here. We had two chronically late people in this group of friends, one was 50 minutes late for my birthday dinner but the others refused to order any food until she had arrived! Seething indeed! It does seem like groups can enable this kind of behaviour as no one wants to seem nasty by raising issue with it.

Anyone not keeping to a time, unless it's a vet or a surgeon engaged in emergency surgery, values their time way above yours. And I regard my time on this earth as important as anyone else 's.

No, but do you think she does this to her PhD supervisor?

If only there were things like alarms…..oh wait. There are.

Would you like us to believe that neuro diverse people lack capacity to set an alarm? What low expectations you must have of people with disabilities.

Why has she failed to apologise?

I have adhd, I struggle to get to places on time but I put things in place to try and avoid being late like alarms and timers to stop me getting distracted when I’m getting ready, I am still often late but only usually by 5-10 minutes and I always let the person waiting know. 45 minutes late with no good reason is inexcusable and especially as she didn’t keep you updated.

I think the worse thing for me would be that she lied. She said she was leaving when she clearly wasn’t.

If she’d messaged you to say she was running late, you could have gone off and found a cafe or something.

Thanks, she knew I was leaving but didn’t let me know then she was running late. She only let me know she was going to be late once it was the time to actually meet, by announcing she’s now leaving her house 😂so even at that point there was no acknowledgment of the fact she was clearly going to be very late. Baffling!

She messaged me to say she was leaving… at the time we were supposed to meet 😳

It’s unacceptable OP. Ridiculous comparisons to wheelchairs are just this thing that SOME people do to absolve themselves from any responsibility.

Setting an alarm to leave in 15 mins is in no way comparable to being expected to meet on the second floor of a cafe, with no lift.

Being on time is one of the few things I'm good at but I accept this isn't true of other people. It used to annoy me but OH is one and I've grown to accept it.

5/10 mins is one thing. 45 mins is taking the piss.

The lack of a decent apology I expect either means either that she is embarrassed about keeping you waiting or it means she thinks it's no big deal and nothing to make a fuss about.

People who are habitually significantly late often think about time in a different and much more loose and flexible way in my experience. I don't think this is wrong but I do think it's fundamentally incompatible with people who value punctuality (by which I personally mean 10-15 mins late is acceptable, but being consistently 30 mins or more late is not).

I have a family member who is really lovely but is always several HOURS late for everything. I never ever arrange to see them as it's just too annoying. It's a big shame, but we are at very opposite ends of the spectrum on time keeping. Family member is however very charming and has lots of friends and other family members who are prepared to accommodate the persistent extreme lateness. I think that those who have time keeping issues often have lots of positive qualities that prompt people like me probably lack.

Tbh it wouldn't bother me but me and most of my goods friends are all audhd/ dyspraxia etc.
A lot of time blindness - and we all tend to run late so not only do we not take it personally we also tend to be running late ourselves, and are more relieved that the others are too. It used to be a running joke that a certain part of our friendship group had their own time that wa every different to the others understanding of time.

This is an interesting short reel about how we feel about time based on language:

www.instagram.com/reel/C4lJyl_AGPu/?igsh=Z3pxb3Z0ajg5NTJw

Are you being sarcastic?

Same as @MolkosTeenageAngst I too have ADHD but have coping mechanisms. When things do slip through I'm very apologetic! No way am I brazening it out with excuses.

@Princessfluffy I've also found that people like your family member, being social butterflies tend to do things in huge groups. This makes their lateness easier to put up with, as nobody's left waiting alone.

I'm also struggling to understand how one can be 'several hours late' and not miss anything. How long are all these events? Obviously things like the theatre, concerts etc... you'll not be let in if late!

I assume that she is able to work and medical appointments etc. without being consistently around 45 minutes late? She just values her time and convenience as more important than yours. Not much of a friend, if you ask me. Particularly with the arrogant pushback about 'time windows' 🤨

One of my friends when I was younger would always text me at the EXACT time we were supposed to meet up to say she was leaving her house (20-30 mins from mine depending on traffic).

Then after that on her way out she usually got distracted into "just hanging the washing out" or similar potentially multiple times before actually leaving her house.

Some people implement successful strategies to address their time keeping and others either can't or see no reason to. We are all different!

I can get that time blindness is a thing, but surely if you know that you’re likely to be late, the only decent thing to do is to explain that to someone when you’re making arrangements so they know what to expect?

Yes she does, she works in a fairly senior HCP role while completing her PhD. She has travelled extensively, navigated complex legal and health based appointments and has lots of friends she is able to arrange meet ups with. I’ve no doubt that these things exhaust her and are much harder than for someone without ADHD.

As you say, it’s the dismissive response about time windows, rather than owning her lateness, that has really annoyed me.

For anyone making excuses for the OP's friend because of her ADHD, it's not just the fact that she was late. It's the fact that she was unapologetic about it. She messaged the OP when she knew the OP had already been at the park for 15 minutes to say she was going to be another 30 minutes. If the OP had actually waited, it almost certainly would have been longer than that.

If her ADHD genuinely makes her incapable of showing up even vaguely on time then she clearly has bigger problems in life than meeting up with friends (although, as others have said, presumably she manages somewhat respectable timekeeping for work, otherwise she would lose her job).

But if that's the case she should have said, "I'm so sorry, it's totally my fault, I understand that you can't hang around in the park waiting for me for an hour with a little baby. I hope I can make it up to you somehow."

Not some bullshit about time windows. Because she knew that whatever happened, the OP and her 4 month old baby would have been hanging around for at least 45 minutes waiting for her to get her act together. Her attitude implies that she thinks they have nothing better to do, or simply doesn't care.

@buffetbuffalo they do miss stuff or arrive for pudding at meals out or mid way through the event that comes after the meal. Or arrive on the last train of the night when coming for lunch etc.

My family member is ridiculously good looking so people do tend to bend over backwards for them.

That's what I was thinking.

I have a very good friend with ADHD. She's a professional academic woman running her own business and she manages to be on time for meetings in different places every single day of her life. She does this with lots of strategies and reminders/alarms (and some near misses but she has contingencies built in to her timescales) but she does it and achieves it because she knows it's important.

I'd be questioning how important this friend views your friendship.