Combatting lateness
After years of dealing with chronically-late friends and colleagues, I’ve come up with some simple tips to help stamp out this inconsiderate trend. These ideas have helped me retain my sanity in the face of the global lateness epidemic.
-Never agree to meet anywhere. Make them come pick you up. If they’re late (which they most certainly will be), you’ll be at home instead of cooling your heels outside a movie theater or restaurant. Picking them up is a close second, but they can still outfox you by cleverly not being ready, and you’re still left waiting. It’s all a matter of control.
-If meeting somewhere is unavoidable, set a relatively short threshold of time you will wait – mine is usually 20 minutes. If they are late past that time, get up and leave. Just one of these refusals to wait can have a magical effect on the chronically late.
-Late people want to explain to you why they’re late. It’s always something. You begin to wonder, how come the stars always align against them? Cut them off. No need to listen to their excuses – it just makes them feel better and you more irritated.
-Whatever you do, don’t register unhappiness or impatience with the late. That’s what they want – to get a reaction out of you. Ignoring them is the best strategy, both for your mental health and to show them their actions aren’t all that important after all.
Jeez, I would have more patience with someone who was late than someone who insisted that other people pick them up and drive them places.
I admit these are extreme measures. But after years of putting up with this stuff, I just had to put an end to it. It gets really frustrating.
I don’t mind driving at all. It’s more a matter of not wanting to wait around every single time.
hehee…we even have a new term called “Blust Time” which is arriving in a window 2-5 minutes before the agreed upon time.
i guess i would be your worst nightmare…lol…for lateness just comes to me naturally. there always seem to be a last minute thing that i have to do, that i made departure is pushed back, resulting to my expected lateness.
Kevin: and that’s a bad thing why? 🙂
I love Blust Time – and I try to use it whenever I can. You really need to be conscious of it though. Tying a consequence to lateness is very effective…”If you’re 15 minutes late, I will l leave. Hope to see you there.”
Similar to Blust Time: Here in Utah, chronic lateness is called “running on Mormon Standard Time.” A gross generalization, but Mormons have this weird tendency to be between ten and thirty minutes late, no matter what. To anything. My cousin’s mother in law was an hour late to their wedding. Often, if you’re outside on a Sunday morning, you get caught up in ‘church run,’ which is all the late Mormons barreling down the street in their Suburbans trying to make it to the ward house, since they are, of course, late. It’s great.
it’s convenient to get a reputation as always being late, because then people generally cut you more slack. i am, however, compulsively early to appointments, generally at least 15 minutes, because you never know, right? there could be a traffic jam or something. so i guess mig time would be arriving 15-30 minutes early.
we have a similar lateness/control problem when we stay with relatives in the States. we used to ride places with my mother in her car, and she was always taking forever to leave, then she’d have to run a dozen errands on the way to wherever we were going. this time we just rented a car of our own and set a time to leave for someplace. if the relatives tried their usual delaying tactics, we just left without them and they could catch up. worked well. like adam says, it is a control thing, at least partly.
one other method which I’ve employed is to specify a meeting time 15-30 mins earlier than the actual meeting time just for the chronically late.
one time, a bunch of friends agreed to pick up a chronically late guy to meet-and-greet me at the airport. I ended up waiting for them at the airport because he was late!
Now, I just assume he means half hour later than he says and go with that. If he ends up waiting, it would be a rare treat.
I used to be, not just on time, but early for everything. Then I married a cronic latecomer, and after years of frustration I just gave up trying to beat him, and just joined him. Add to that a young child, and I was chronically behind.
Now, I just try and do a few things to overcome that. One, I try to chum around with other late people. Two, I try not to tell people exaftly when I will be arriving. Three, if I have to give a time I pad it by anywhere from 1/2 to 1 hour. The other day, my sister actually thought I was early.
I’ll be sure though, to take these measures you have proposed to heart, and share them with EVERYBODY that I know, especially those who may not have home access to the Internet.
I would have commented on this sooner, but I was unfortunately delayed due to …
As someone who shows up at exactly 9:03 every morning, I know I bug the guy who is here 15 minutes early. And he bugs me. Just who is he trying to fool with his “I am here early” act? But we don’t talk about it and bloodshed is avoided.
As for being late to draw some sort of attention, I do not think I suffer from that. I suffer from wanting to lay about all day and it takes an awful lot of effort just to get wherever it is I have to be.
But he isn’t fooling anybody: he’s on time!
My partner is chronically late. When we’re ready to get out the door early, he manages to find something to do that will *make* us late. Maybe it’s a good way to feel like time’s precious? Carpe [late] diem?
I, too, am a punctual person who abhores the cronically late. (I’m not talking about occasional late, that can happen to anyone). My boyfriend’s friends are ALL chronically behind schedule. Drives me batty. For this reason, though, I eschew carpooling with them — because I want to get where I’m going, and not miss anything. Then again, they’re not MY friends, so I don’t feel constrained to wait around for them, either.