Comment by elbenshira | Hacker News Reader

Comment by elbenshira | Hacker News Reader

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Interestingly, this is mostly an American (and a also a Western) problem. In most of the world (South America, Middle East, Africa, East Asia, etc), "on time" ranges anywhere between 30 minutes to 3 hours later.

We grade our personal productivity level much more than other cultures. Other cultures value other things such as community and relationships at a higher level than we do.

A story:

I was invited to an Indian friend's birthday party. It was going to be a huge party with hundreds of invited people (all Indian, except two people), musicians, a hire clown, and a full-fledged buffet. The invitation stated 6pm. I arrived at 6:30pm because, well, I expected them to start late.

Guess what, only two people were there: the birthday friend, because he had to set up the place, and a white guy, who was even more confused than me.

So the white guy and I helped our friend set up. Then we kicked the soccer ball around for a bit. Just waiting.

People started to slowly trickled in at about 8pm. I don't think we started eating at about 9pm. And it was all normal to them.

Don't compare "East Asians" disfavorably to American punctuality within earshot of a Japanese salaryman.

The line beginning with "other cultures" is untestable horsepuckey reminiscent of the absolute worst tripe in American multicultural studies. And I have a degree in that. It survives only because it flatters the preconceptions of an Ameican subculture in academia who prefers to have a ready critique of Western culture, as if such a thing existed.

You are right that it's easy to misuse "other cultures," but my comment comes from my experiences of living in different countries.

I am not saying that one way of thought is better than the other. I just wanted people to understand that their perception concerning punctuality is perhaps mostly based on their cultural upbringing, not on some universal human truth.

I've found that in general, South Koreans both fret uncontrollably over other people's timeliness (viewing it as a form of politeness) and provide all kinds of reasons and self justifications for their own tardiness. One of my friends has gone so far as to say "we care about being on time like a fish cares about water, but being late is just in our genes".

In the end it all sort of averages out and everybody seems to be just a hair perpetually late.

Geez, everything is a liberal conspiracy to some people.

If you don't believe there are differences in punctuality between cultures then you just haven't experienced those cultures.

The line I called out was about "valuing relationships", which is both viscerally offensive to me and has no defensibly true meaning. It is like saying whites love their kids more than blacks do. It is too poorly constructed to even be wrong.

Fair enough, upon further reflection I agree that line is a meaningless offensive generality.

I still don't get the non sequitur attack on academia.

Sometimes I am really disappointed in HN's vote quality. This comment was downvoted to 0, even though it is a perceptive call on a not very rational habit. Yet, your grandparent comment was a blanket attack, unclear and probably much wider then you intended... and it's at score 7.

Then call me hopelessly, curmudgeonly Western. I like people who say what they mean, including when they say they'll be somewhere at a certain time(+).

Context is everything. Parties, many types of social situations are different. But if someone plans e.g. a meeting and it's important for everyone to be there (otherwise, why are they invited?) then you'd better (1) be on time or (2) suggest an alternate time when you know you can make it. If there's some question, there's no shame in saying so. Do that so that the other people can make their plans. If you can't make plans and stick to them, WTF are you doing?

(+) Mobile phones have made everybody commitment-shy losers.

Being Indian, I have to take a little offense at the generalization.

It isn't all of us. I'm never casually late for an appointment, and am always annoyed if the other party is, beyond the reasonable 10 minutes. And this is not because of any incipient effect of Western culture.

Please stop with the generalizing about pan-cultural differences in the perceived value of productivity, community, etc. Neither does an anecdote about a birthday party generalize to business situations.

No comment on Indians in business situations. But my non-Indian mother learned very quickly when she and my Indian father threw a dinner party for some of his relatives. The start time was 6p, and nobody rolled in until 8p.

She'll now tell my dad's relatives to show up at 4p because they operate on "Indian Standard Time".

And funnily enough, my father is always 5 minutes early for everything...

Hmm.. being Indian, I actually thought that he was praising us, rather than trying to offend.

I didn't see the praise.

What I really objected to was the stereotyping. I know I'm not the only Indian who cares about punctuality.

'Stereotyping' is just a way to extrapolate past experiences, of yourself or of others, into future situations to make reasonable assumptions about those situations. If it's customary for Indians to be late, it's perfectly reasonable for me to assume you'll be late on an appointment if I don't know anything about you. Once I get to know you, and notice that you're always on time, I will adjust my expectations of appointments with you, and maybe slightly adjust my perception of punctuality amongst Indians in general. Nothing racist or anything about that.

(for the record, my personal perception of Indians is that they are quite punctual, because the Indians I've worked with were, and I didn't really have an opinion about it one way or another before that. Latin Americans on the other hand, let's just say that my experiences only reinforced the preexisting notions...)

According to OS X's dashboard dictionary widget (Oxford American?) Stereotype: a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.

That "oversimplified" is what makes it an unreasonable assumption.

Ok, if you take that definition then yes, I agree that stereotypes are morally negative. I'd still say that the bad part is more in the 'fixed' than in the 'oversimplified' but that's just minor quibbling which doesn't take away from your point.

My point was coming from a slightly different notion of 'stereotype' where it's more similar to 'preconceived notion'. Maybe it's just a language thing.

Dictionary definitions are oversimplified meanings of real world word usage. People, almost all people, use words in slightly to significantly different meanings from dictionary usage. Also, objecting to someones use of a word based on minor differences with the dictionary definition is a version of argument from authority.

roel_v and I seem to have settled that the individual meanings of 'stereotyping' are not the issue here.

What I'm objecting to is what I have explained I mean by the word in the context of the original assertion by elbenshira, viz. that regard for punctuality is predominantly an American/Western trait.

And if you don't mind, this is all I have to say about it.

They never suggested that deprioritizing punctuality was a flaw of character.

I didn't say they suggested it was a flaw of character (though I've made clear that personally I think it is).

Again, I object to the stereotyping. "You're on time. How American of you!"

I've actually heard that exact phrase.

I didn't mean to offend. I've worked with Indians who were punctual. In fact, I don't recall ever working with one who was not. I think parties are bit different, though.

My point was to compare cultures, not to put down one or the other.

Thanks, I'm only saying that individual variations dominate any cultural tendency, the evidence for which is tenuous and as this thread demonstrates, anecdotal.

We have the concept of "fashionably late" in the US, too. A late night party might be scheduled to start at 7 or 8, but people might not show up until 9 or 10.

I feel like that's a bit less severe and not really the same thing. For an open-ended party, people will trickle in as they feel like it, and no harm is done. For 8pm dinner reservations, one is expected to arrive and be ready to be seated by 8pm, for example.

A party might be a different thing, but when you are meeting one or two people, the expectation is that they will not leave you standing around on your own for any length of time.

This is a sign of bad time management on top of rudeness.

I have known people who were continually late, so I would always tell them 30 minutes before I get there. Effective technique.

Things were worse before mobiles of course, I would wait for 10 minutes, and then head off. This was an accepted rule among my friends.

I dunno, in much of southern Europe it's certainly not expected that people will be there to the minute even for one-on-one meetings. Probably not an hour late in that case, but I don't think anybody would bat an eye if you had planned to meet at a coffee shop at 2:00 and someone showed up at 2:15. You'd just get a coffee and read a book or the paper or something. (Being exactly on time, and being angry if someone's 5 minutes late, is seen as a stereotypically "German" sort of thing.)

Yes, I found that working with people from Italy, Spain, and Greece. They also use a similar flexibility for delivery dates of programming work, schedules etc...

It is considered rude in Germany, Sweden and the UK. Taking a book when going to meet someone, is also considered a little rude, but understandable.

I'm from Spain (though I live in Chicago) and I have to agree. If you get mad at every Spaniard who is late to meetings... well maybe you should stop dealing with Spaniards at all. It's what it is, and it's going to be difficult to change it.

15 minutes in a coffee shop is one thing. 45 minutes in an office is another.

What about 45 minutes in a coffee shop?

I don't know, most eastern european cultures value being punctual and consider being late rude and obnoxious. This was definitely the case during the Soviet era, and that culture didn't value personal productivity nearly as much as the americans do.

That's true. When I've lived in Brasil, we were invited to a party for 7pm and if you came at 0730 you'd see the hosts wandering around in robes, comming about 2hrs late was the appropriate thing to do.

It all depends on the local culture. In Poland, besides business meetings, there's a 15 minutes space, only after that it's considered being late; and yes, in big cities we're also all into that western 'being always in a hurry' thing (which I personally don't like).

Due to the abysmal and unpredictable traffic situation in D.C., I've noticed people are allowing more and more of a buffer around expected meeting times. It's honestly not anybody's fault if a drive from one part of the region to another, that should take 15 minutes, and usually takes 35 ends up taking 2 and a half (and this is no exaggeration, it drives my business partners from elsewhere absolutely bonkers when they spend any length of time in D.C.).

If you plan ahead and start on time then you never have to be in a hurry.

No, I meant the culture of pressure on doing a lot of things the quickest way possible in the shortest ammount of time. Compare how people walk during working days on the streets of western big cities to what you see f.ex. in Gulf countries. Read a book on how business is made there. It's not a thing of being in a hurry because of bad time management, it's cultural impact on business.

Am I the only person who did not consider this a disfavorable comparison? If anything, I would suggest that Western culture is the one suffering. It is a consequence of consistent immediacy and impatience.

For reasons I probably couldn't convey to the author of this article- learning to accept time's transience can greatly improve quality of life. Or less romantically: dude... chill out... everything will be ok.

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