Is unpunctuality rude?

[joelallie]

Or am I just being really anal and boring? I get so cross when people turn up late - not the ones who are usually on time and sometimes get held up for ten minutes or so, but the ones who say they'll be here at 5 and turn up habitually an hour or more late. To me it says 'my life is so busy and important and yours isn't so it doesn't matter if you hang about for hours twiddling your thumbs with your kids starting to howl for the food you've been cooking all afternoon but which is supposed to be shared with your guests.'

DH thinks it's just charmingly eccentric behaviour which we just have to put up with. I think it's rude.

What is the MN consensus?

What I don't understand is that one of the people who is always late runs her own business and is extremely successful. I don't beleive that she is habitually late for meetings. So she can do it. So in her case I don't buy the incompetence argument. And I would always excuse lateness for a good reason but letting me know that they are likely to be late would be good too. And as I said earlier being 10 or 20 minutes late is OK.

I just couldn't manage my life if I was late so often. Habitual late people, how do you get things done?

Should have said 'habitually late people'. Not those who make a habit of being dead.

its rude rude rude especially when there is no acknowledgement, I have a friend who is always late and a while ago I told her that its rude to be always late. It says 'my time is more important than yours' she was and said she had never thought of it like that She is still always late . Now i just make sure I am late too and extra late if we are meeting somewhere so she has to wait around for ages with howling kids and I never apologise

Of course it's rude. Most of these people would manage to be on time to catch a train or a plane wouldn't they? So why are you less important?

i HATE habitual lateness. my mil and sil are chronically late. mil says breezily that she doesn't have any clocks in her house. sil is usually at least 2 hours late. she has no kids. there are countless things we were going to do but i had to miss because of dd due to her lateness.

but what really pished me off was witnessing mil getting ready to go out to a concert. she was the picture of efficiency. so obviously when it suits her to be punctual she can do it. she just doesn't bother with me.

Message withdrawn

Opps I think I must be rude.

To defend myself. I don't expect anyone to wait for and when I know I'm late I ring and say but then I live in Italy and do as the Italians do. In fact the only people I know turn up on time are the englsih people I know!

it is rude and selfish.