No, You Are Not ‘Running Late’, You Are Rude and Selfish (2011)

While I agree with this article to some extent, I have also had my eyes opened up to a very plausible alternative. Etiquette surrounding meeting start and end times turns out to be are very culturally subjective.

Being "somewhat" German, I have always held that being late to a meeting was as rude as suggested in this article. However, I also felt that a meeting that extended beyond the allotted time was even more disrespectful and it potentially meant everyone would be late for their next appointment. I held no qualms about up and leaving (current context be damned) in order to make my next appointment on-time.

A few years back though, a colleague from South America told me that in their culture the exact opposite is true.

If you were to leave an ongoing meeting that was being productive just because time was up then you were being very rude to the others whose productivity would would disrupt. Everyone understood that it was more important to continue a productive meeting than to be on-time for a meeting that had not even started. Even those in the next meeting would understand and take no slight.

I still feel that one should be on-time (5 minutes before in fact) but I have also come to expect that there are other perspectives. At a 10km level, it actually seems clear to me that a productive meeting should have priority and continue at the expense of one that had not started.

No, you are not punctual and respectful.

You are the result of the de-humanizing alienation of people's natural time and daily cycles, that went full strong in the 18th and 19th century to train factory workers and other replaceable cogs to work "on time", and metastasised to all aspects of modern life...

>And I don’t care if I sound old-fashioned, because actually it’s nothing to do with ‘fashion’ or ‘generation’. It’s got everything to do with basic good manners and respect for other people.

Actually it very has much to do with both fashion and generation. It's not some innate aspect of human society, it was introduced (read: forced upon people) with the advent of the personal watch, factory shifts, mechanized production, etc. In fact, even up to today, outside of urban communities, the sense of pressure to be "on time" is much less present, as is in general (even in urban ares) in many societies (think of the idea of the more laid-back Southerners for example).

As uberman above notes, "Etiquette surrounding meeting start and end times turns out to be are very culturally subjective.".

If anything, more of humanity (Asia, Africa, Latin America, Mediterranean, Middle East, etc) is less against being punctual than in favor of it. So you [well, people with the author's mindset] are also racist, imposing your provincial protestant values [whether yours or adopted from migrating to some such place] upon the whole world.

As someone who is part of something like 20 meetings or more every week - my role is very meeting-centric - I'll only say two things.

1) I find it extremely annoying to receive a message 30 seconds after the start of a meeting asking if I can join. Don't do this. Someone might literally be taking their only bathroom or snack break or stretch between 5 hours in a row of meetings.

2) If the rudest thing you can do is waste someone's time, then poorly run meetings trump minor meeting delays by a ratio of about 99:1.

> And certainly I consider serial lateness a character flaw which I take into account when working out who to promote, who to hire and who to count amongst my real friends.

So, it's about 9 years since this article has published. What has this attitude done for Greg? Has it found him more conscientious employees and more caring friends? Has he, a recruiter, been able to work with top candidates?

I think the question of the appropriateness of running late is an empirical question, not just one of loud opinions or appeals (or non-appeals) to fashion. Does the employee who shows up at 3:10 to coffee actually lose out on things compared to the one who shows up at 2:58 (and therefore does not schedule a 2:00 meeting)? Does the dentist who books fewer customers to be always on time make more money? (Actually, does Greg's dentist treat every customer with the sort of respect he wants - or only him?) Do the party-goers who show up to a 7:30 party at 7:30 instead of 9 have more fun?

IMHO more importantly is letting the others know that you're running late and why. Are you 20 minutes late? Fine, the I can keep coding for another 20 minutes. Same with my dentist, since the article brings it up, which informs me ahead that my appointment will be delayed by X minutes because of an emergency or similar. No problem, I won't leave work until I need to then.

That said, if someone is running late without explanation, like that guy with the sandwich, why didn't they just start the meeting? Was he really that vitally important?

I'm sorry I gave this entitled drivel the benefit of a click. It's just a rant about how much more important his time is than everyone else's (flouncing on a dentist's office running behind and then crediting it with never having to wait again? wow. just wow).

It's almost as if we live in a world where communication of boundaries, needs, timestyles, norms and constraints is important and even necessary to working with other people.

It might even yield better results than just using it as just another excuse to treat people with similar approaches, constraints (or lack thereof), and abilities to you better than those who don't.

There are two ways to look at it: That person is being rude and selfish, behaving that way. I don't know why that person is behaving that way, but I'll keep an open mind!

I agree with most of what this author said, but I definitely do not agree when it comes to parties.

Wasting people's time by not showing up to meetings within a few minutes of the appointed time, especially, is such a selfish thing to do. I think it's so important to be flexible and understanding of people, but it sounds like this guy is working with people who casually show up 15-30 minutes late without remorse. That's horrible.