No, you're not 'running late', you're rude and selfish

You see, this "late" person is me. If I work for you. If I have to come to your office for a meeting. Anything. I'm late.

But it's because I have IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome).

I make up excuses for being 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes late. I blame the kids, the traffic, the car, the plumbing. It's exhausting, but it's just easier and less embarrassing than saying I had to go to the bathroom 7 times just to be able to get in my car.

Plus, you don't want to hear that. Do you really want to sit across from the guy who can't stop sh*ing because the SMALLEST deals in his life give him anxiety???

This can happen for ANYTHING I have to be on time for. Like a scheduled phone call, meeting a friend somewhere, just knowing I'm going to be outside for a few hours, etc.

As I go through life, and I spill my secret, I am constantly meeting people with issues like Crohn's and IBS that deal with similar issues, and most of us don't have a good solution.

So, leave earlier right? My body tells me I can't stop until the last possible second. The earlier I try to get somewhere, the worse the problem is, and the later I end up being.

So, anyway, maybe it's not rudeness, but a nightmare.

Welcome to Spain. And no, I will not be in time and that's not rude; you are just obsessed with something extremely unimportant and overrated. And you'll get heart attacks and strokes from that kind of obsession in the end although I hoped you won't.

I'm from the Netherlands and actually my father (a very successful CEO) never has been on time once; it gave him an edge and the former CEO liked it, even when he was just a coder.

It doesn't matter whether it is "intentional", because it is a relatively easy flaw to correct, especially given how many opportunities there are to practice getting better at it. So the lack of effort to correct it makes it basically equivalent to intent.

I wouldn't expect punctuality from a teenager, but by the time you are an adult, you've had plenty of time to figure out a strategy that works for you, whether it is setting your watch ahead, catching the earlier bus, waking up earlier, etc.

You just aren't paying enough to justify the cost of making you not wait. Same is the case if a bank makes you wait a long time on automated machine before they take a call. You just aren't important enough. If you're a billionaire, pay your dentist for a whole day. Get a private banker. If not, get in line, you aren't important enough.

There's your problem right there. 9am is a terribly antisocial time to organise a meeting. Have it later on.

Not all of us are morning people.

Well, I don't think I'm going to disagree with the thesis, but it's good to know I shouldn't even bother reading.

At least they're making their pre-emptive "I've got you all figured out if you think X" nonsense explicit. It's better than trying to engage with someone who has decided to lie to the audience (and/or themselves) that theirs don't exist.

I have been away from my native Mexico for a while, but I recently flew back for a wedding. As I was with my family getting ready to go, timing everything so we would be at the ceremony at the time indicated in the invitations, I was truly exasperated to see how slowly everyone else was moving. It soon became apparent that we would not make it on time at all.

We finally arrived there 40 minutes late. There was almost nobody there! And the few people that had arrived all seemed in good spirits. The groom and the bride were relaxed and eager. The actual ceremony was in fact scheduled for one hour later than what the invitation said. Everyone expects this, including the hosts. My mother said to me, "Jordi, you really have forgotten how things work around here."

Even for dinner invitations, you will be invited one hour before dinner is actually served. It is considered rude to arrive earlier, because then you may burden your hosts with having to entertain you prematurely while they prepare dinner.

Of course, generally the expected lateness only applies to social occasions, but sometimes it spills over to business settings. It is less accepted in such a circumstance, but still common and tolerated.

If you don't want to fire them, then you have decided that actually bring in more value, than the value lost by being late.

I'm terrible at this, I specifically plan my life around it(Make sure I have flexi-time, etc).

Generic Example: "I'm not late to the morning meeting, I just not a morning person." No, sorry, you're still late.

Meetings - in 90% of the cases the most productive way to attend a meeting is not to attend it at all. I still think that they should be optional and people that really have to be there will show up.

Dentist - deal with it - how much a procedure will take is not exact science. She cannot cut procedure short just to make the next patient feel cozy and respected.

If you use any kind of transport - being late is also expected.

We live in a system in which time waste is unavoidable.

> Sure she was “busy”, another patient took longer than she expected, blah blah.

Imagine if you had to do 10 short coding challenges, one after another, without knowing the full scope beforehand and had to say exactly when each one would finish. Now on project 9, your client shouts at you for delivering late because they are your CUSTOMER and you must not take them for granted!

Did she have to stop in the middle of someone else's appointment to deal with you?

Any story that goes "it happened for years without me saying anything then I got angry" would probably have been handled better for everyone if they'd talked about it to start with. Can't wait? Tell them!

Many people might have a spare half an hour and overall everything goes faster if occasionally the last person needs to wait 30 minutes so that typically more people get seen during the day. But no, because you have a requirement you've not specified, everyone else needs to deal with the consequences.

Or tell them when you make the appointment that you will have to be out by a certain time, there's likely to be a better place to be in the schedule.

It's hard to put your foot down and stand up for yourself, like the author did with his dentist. But that's what you have to do to solve the problem.

Another aspect of this is that people who are chronically late train you to be late. I definitely only leave for meetings 10 mins after the meeting start time for some people and I still beat them there.

There are a few clients who I will have a specific meeting time for, promise to be there on time, and then something comes up. Invariably, it's the chronically late people who always manage to have stuff come up.

So what have I done?

Cheaper chronically late clients =>

Fired them. It's not worth stressing out about this stuff. And I do stress out.

Lucrative clients =>

Increase my rate to a point where I am happy to sit and wait for them as long as required. Now i don't think "they are wasting my time", I think "thanks for paying me for just sitting here :)".

Social meetings =>

Since there isn't a way to incentivize chronically late friends, I just try to aim to be 30 mins late (still not the last one in). Yeah, I'm being part of the problem in this case :(

- Meetings are also a major waste of time and resources, so sorry, depending on the subject of the meeting it goes from mild annoyance to less productive than sending everybody home early

What I've learned is the rigor of adherence to punctuality is directly related to the difficulty in being punctual in that area.

For example, in most places in the S.E., Midwest, etc. it takes about 1 hour to go 60 miles. The only thing that slows you down getting across town are red lights and stop signs. That's it. Even in large cities "known" for horrible traffic conditions, I've been able to get across the entire city in a reasonable amount of time fairly consistently.

In other words, it's trivial to be punctual. And so punctuality is taken as a sign of respect.

On the West Coast, this isn't the case. It can literally take 45 minutes to an 1 1/2 hours to get 5 miles in L.A. by car. And that's during normal traffic conditions. If absolutely anything happens on that route, you could walk faster. In fact, my wife and I have done just that on a 5 mile commute in L.A. when traffic would lock up. Park the car, get out, and walk. Take the early bus and pick it back up in the morning.

Let that sink in for a bit. You've got a meeting. It's only 5 (or god forbid 10) miles away. Anything even slightly irregular happens, and it could take you hours to get there.

Starts making "minor" delays of 5 to 10 minutes or even 30 seem pretty trivial. Cancelations happen much more frequently. Sorry, buddy, someone had a flat. Can't make it today or it'll take me 3 hours to get there.

That's why out east, companies would dock workers if they clocked in 5m late. Out West work hours are more like "ohhh, sometime between 8:30 and 9:30 is when so-and-so shows up." It's not because they're lazy or inconsiderate or rude. They're probably getting up at 5am just to make the commute.

Personally? Chill the fuck out. There are a great many things in life more important than having a few drinks with you, or coming to your party. If there is no specific time pressure (e.g. a movie start time), then recognizing the distinctly lower priority of precision in socializing is pretty fundamental to a successful interaction with others.

I look at it this way - I have a busy schedule -- 4 kids, sole provider with a software development job that directly contributes to the revenue the company I work for receives and private developer of software that my customers enjoy. I even waited for a moment where I'm blocked to write this reply. If I schedule personal time with a friend or family member, it's being done at the expense of something else. I've decided that my time with that friend is more valuable than my core obligations. I value that time immensely and wouldn't want it reduced as a result of my tardiness. When the person/couple I'm meeting with chooses to be excessively late, I assume that they didn't really want to come at all and that they were simply being "nice" or fulfilling some sort of family obligation[1].

And it's not limited to friendships. I owned a gym membership and I'm an early riser (5:00 AM most days). The gym -- Bally's at the time -- opened up at 6:00 AM according to the sign and paperwork I agreed to when I signed up for a three-year commitment. In the first month, I showed up right at opening time only to find out that three out of the four days the opener arrived 30 minutes late. That's half of my workout on those days. As a result, I was receiving 2/3 of what I was paying for -- I'm directly paying for time to access a building and its equipment. The first month I prevented the automatic payment from processing and wrote a cheque for 2/3s of the bill along with a note explaining the situation[2]. This went over like a lead balloon. If I received 2/3 of what I ordered at a restaurant, I would have either had it resolved or left them with the bill after explaining to the manager.

[1] From the opinion of someone who values punctuality and my own time: Showing up late to an event because you feel obligated to appear there is far worse than saying "I can't make it" or even "I have more important things to do". I can respect that. There are certainly times when obligations related to a relationship can't be missed -- obligations you may or may not want to go to, but think about that for a few minutes. And what's wrong with saying "Well, that time is a little early and I have another obligation -- I'm OK with it, but could we push it a half-hour later?" If you don't want to go, why is that? Should you, perhaps, shed yourself of that relationship if devoting time to it is resulting in you wrecking it anyway due to your tardiness? Are you too passive to simply assert yourself with that person? Is there some way you could suggest to change that event to invoke the necessary willpower to show up somewhere near the time you're expected? Are you too selfish in thinking that your attendance is so important that you can just show up whenever you want -- despite everyone elses' schedules?

[2] I ended up successfully breaking the contract after filing a small claims action (that would have never been won).

Everyone thinks there is some fundamental and universal truth to some of their own cultural practices.