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Comment by tluyben2 | Hacker News Reader

When shops open here at 9, they often open at 9:30 or 10. When you go to pay at the cash register, often there is no-one there and you have to wait 10-20 minutes. People stop in the middle of the road blocking everyone to chat for 15 minutes, no-one honks, usually people get out and join the convo.

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.

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How do the people there manage the cognitive dissonance of being extremely inefficient with time and productivity with being a poor country dependent on the EU to keep economy from collapsing?

That is a good question. For me it works and for a lot of people it works. But for a country as a whole I don't know. Travelling a lot between Spain, UK, Netherlands, Portugal I must say that for instance a very bad economic country like Portugal has people working like maniacs. And they are going worse than Spain; in the UK the people I meet are punctual but very inefficient with time overall and they do great. Netherlands are super efficient in a lot of ways, so those meetings are the best; usually 5 minutes and done.

Punctual and inefficient with time sounds like the US too. Must be the shared English heritage.

That's cute and all but

> the cognitive dissonance of being extremely inefficient with time and productivity [all the while] with being a poor country dependent on corporate corruption to keep [the] economy from collapsing

ftfy

Well, they seem to cope surprisingly well with this. The first and sixth place in the best world restaurants in 2015 are from spanish companies for instance.

Some of those strange and inefficient creatures make also excelent vines, create superb cheeses, first class olive oil and delicious cold meats, cultivate a big chunk of the fruit and salads that citizens of many central europe countries eat... A few of those are in the list of the world's richest persons, or renowned film directors, actors, opera singers, biochemists, engineers, sport players. Some even launch satellites to the space or work for google.

Is a mystery how they did all of this with just a mexican poncho and two sticks.

I guess it varies by culture. What would be considered late enough to be rude in Spain?

More than a week late. That's a bit rude.

So when I'm meeting a plumber at 15:00 on wednesday, he often comes a week later. You just drink your coffee, wait till 16:00 and go away and turn up a week later.

Sure hope it's not an emergency!

Hahah, often it is. That's why you often see houses with crap in the badroom for weeks. People are not all that bothered.

Quite the opposite here (USA): infuriates us to no end when trying to make an appointment for home service (plumber, wiring, whatever) and are told "will arrive sometime between [insert 2-5 hour range here]". Only reason we tolerate it is, for some industries, there is no alternative - it's a systemic problem which customers hate hate HATE.

When you have to take a half (or full) day of vacation just to get your home internet connection fixed (or new sink installed, or air conditioner fixed, etc), and you only have 2-4 weeks of vacation per year, "just drink your coffee, wait 'til 16:00 and go away and turn up a week later" feels like theft, stealing your $X/hr time.

Yes, but that is related to the total concept of being obsessed with the wrong things (money/time). And yes, that's easy for me to say and I appreciate that. But I think that's easy to say for many people here.

For others; I used to make a crapload of money in the Netherlands but I hated the life and the stress. I moved to Spain where I can live of a literally less 1/10th of what I made in NL, and live like a king (big house, car, pool, dinners out). The obsession with money and time are in your head ; you can live like a king in a lot of countries in this world for the rest of your life. That you 'need' a villa in the most expensive city in the world is your mental issue, it's not a 'real' thing. That's what I realised about myself anyway. And luckily I realised that before I was 30 and not when 60 like many...

Even with flying in for meetings all over the world, it's tons cheaper than living in the north...

If you only have a single extra vacation day you can take off and the plumber doesn't bother to show up, do you get your toilet fixed or lose your job? That's a societal level construct that you can't fix by deciding not to worry about it at a personal level.

While I'm totally sympathetic to the viewpoint that punctuality is efficient?

Europe gets almost an order of magnitude more vacation days, sick days, and holidays than the US does, and Mediterranean Europe gets a midday break on top of that.

"almost an order of magnitude" is exaggerating a little.

http://www.vpcalendar.net/average-vacation-days-by-country.h... pegs it at just over 3x at the extreme.

(That said, I'm Canadian - never knew the gulf in "average" vacation time was so stark.)

I don't care for it. But sometimes I'm the guy whose plumbing problem pushes everybody else's appointment back an hour. I wish that the service people didn't have to provide windows; I wouldn't care to see the windows narrowed by the plumber walking off with a sink unusable because he has to be on time to the next appointment.

It depends on the context, zone, and cause of your delay, but its mostly a cliché. Is acceptable in some situations but not in other cases.

"never has been on time once; it gave him an edge"

What edge?

If you are late to certain meetings people will turn you away. Yes, this happens.

Small delays are acceptable, but apparently he got lucky (or made his career in Spain)

No in the Netherlands and then northern EU after that. The edge (which I notice too) is that you seem stronger if you have the balls to show up late, even if there are people 'higher up' in the room (or people you want something from). Anecdotal: in a meeting with an AXA director and his colleagues (a potential client) I was 45 minutes late (not on purpose, I don't do it on purpose) and he said; 'here is a guy who is more important than I am wink wink'. We got the project and we became friends.

Must say that in NL in the beginning of my career I always was punctual (getting up 1 hour early to make sure I was there ahead of time); when I stopped doing that, I got more successful. Not sure if that's related, but I also have no more stress, so I'm not changing that myself.

This makes sense, however I would make sure to not be late on certain meetings.

No to be fair, if it is a one on one meeting and I know the person is a stickler for being punctual I try harder. Like said; it's not something I do on purpose, but especially with MORNING (9 am) meetings, I just don't like getting woken by alarms so I don't set them.

In other words, you don't respect the other person enough to abide by the obligation that you created by agreeing to a 9 am meeting.

If you don't want 9 am meetings, don't accept them. If you do, you're obligated to show up on time, and you are being selfish and petulant by your willful refusal to set an alarm clock because you don't like it.

And I don't. The part with the alarm was not about meetings I set myself. That is about meetings I have to be present at planned by others. Anyway it all sounds worse now than it is and I guess it is culteral. I had a meeting in Florida a few weeks ago: we were 45 minutes late because of traffic and could not reach the client (who was very religious, another hard thing coming from Europe). When we arrived (my colleague being stressed, me not so much) the client was not even there and came in 1 hour after that. Not sure if it is NYC and Silcon Valley or whatever: the rest of the world do not seem to care as much as some people do here (who seem to get actually angry which proves my point: you will die young if you care about things so insignificant). Imho ofcourse.

Obviously, being late in itself does not make you any more or any less successful, so there must be something more to it. If you find being on time is stressful, perhaps it was a good idea to embrace your lateness, though.

Well it's not the being on time itself, but because everything is punctual, the whole concept of being late gets stressful. And this is not 'just me' if you see aggression in traffic because people 'are late', if you see people running in supermarkets and sweating waiting in the cash register line. If you see people running in sweaty suits across London to make some meetings; you cannot tell me you get nice and relaxed by that. Yet most of us do it.

Definitely the Spain you know is not the Spain I was brought up in. Except for the shops opening times.

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