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Comment by flerchin | Hacker News Reader

I tell my kids this aphorism:

Early is on-time. On-time is late.

This vastly depends on culture and context.

We consider it impolite, if you show up for an invitation at someone’s home before the time you were invited for. Many would say it is even impolite to show up less then 5 minutes late, and consider being 10-15 minutes late the best, and up to 30-45 minutes acceptable.

For a business appointment or doctor's appointment, where there is an assistant that opens the door and a waiting area, it's expected to be early, so that you are already in front of the correct room when the appointment starts.

I have a funny anecdote.

I don't know if it's a Korean thing or my mom-specific thing but she had very strong opinion about being early. For her 15 minutes early == on time. To reinforce this notion, she would set the house clocks later by some random undetermined minutes. The clocks in her home would all differ slightly so you could never tell what time it actually was unless you looked at your phone but you'd know you're little bit early to things for sure. Good times.

She didn't by chance serve in the military or a civil auxiliary branch, did she?

"Early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable" was drilled into me while doing Civil Air Patrol back in secondary school (high school) and I habitually set all my clocks 5 minutes ahead, still, to this day.

She did not, but I would not be surprised if she picked it up for my granddad (he was in the UDU - precursor to the now ROK UDT/Flotilla).

It’s an aphorism

The other person already said that.

But for anyone living in an area where it's mostly wrong, it's not an aphorism for them.

You shouldn't nitpick an aphorism. But if it's wrong a sufficiently large amount of the time, rejecting it is fine.

I remember a discussion of why it was acceptable and even expected to be late at parties, but for work events, you had to be on time or better yet early, and the general consensus was "when you're doing work, you need to be precise, but when you're doing leisure, it's good to have time to relax while waiting for guests, and for guests not to stress getting there at a precise moment!"

I strive to be on time for work things, but don't mind being a little late to parties -- and this drives me and my my wife nuts, because my wife wants to be on time for parties.

Showing up early just makes other people feel like they did something wrong by showing up on time.

It could be argued that people can’t be made to feel anything, apart from pain. How people react, on the other hand, may be quite different.

True. Probably wouldn't be a very good argument though.

Other people's feelings about a dimension don't change the dimension.

In a social context, almost everything some people do changes how other people feel.

Depends on the power dynamic and the goals for the meeting, and what position you hold, no?

No it does not. Time is not a dimension that changes depending upon power dynamic.

Time isn't, but punctuality, as a social as opposed to physical phenomenon, most certainly is.

It's disrespectful to be late no matter the power dynamic. In some power dynamics, it's okay to be disrespectful, though.

If the social group in question regards 13:00 as meaning between 13:00 and 13:10 then arriving at 13:05 is arriving on time and no one is bothered or inconvenienced.

Being late is not simply a property of the clock time but also of the society you are part of.

In England arriving early for a dinner party is going to get you at least a dirty look, arriving half an hour late just means that you might miss a pre-dinner drink. In Norway, if you are ten minutes late the host might send out a search party.

"Late" here means "arriving after the social expectation." In many places in the Americas, you can be (and are expected to be) an hour "late" for a party of any kind. That doesn't mean you are late.

In a Western business context, "late" comes about 1-2 minutes after the meeting starts.

This makes a lot of sense. But where it really matters, say train departure times, are there rules that the doors are closing precisly at X seconds? Or is it arbitrary?

Won't be a problem if you're there on-time.

In the UK the doors close 30 seconds before the advertised departure time.

In the UK you're lucky if the train has even arrived 30 seconds before the advertised departure time.

That's not really true. In my experience (London), the trains are on-time more often than not.

What is specified is the actual departure time of the train. Before that it has to be decided to start closing the doors, the doors must be closing, the secure closure must be determined by the train leader and the train leader has to order the train driver to start driving. How long that takes depends on the train. For short-distance trains it's ~15seconds for long-distance ~1minute.

Isn't this phrase commonly known (in USA) as Lombardi Time?

Early is on-time. On-time is late. Late is how most people behave.

We always taught our kids that if you’re not five minutes early, you’re late.

One boy took it to heart and is very prompt.

The other, eh, not so much. He was almost late to his own wedding.

Technically speaking you can’t be late to your own wedding. If you’re not there, it isn’t your wedding. ;)

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