I think this is dead on. In meetings at work, 10 minutes is the norm. A quick "sorry, running late" seems to make people feel immune to keeping a room waiting.
When I was at Intel early on, Andy Grove would famously lock the door at the start of the meeting. The only meeting I was in with him where I saw this in person was an all hands meeting. His argument was that every minute you are late you're incurring many times that many minutes in cost because folks are waiting on you.
I found it remarkably effective. It had the unexpected effect of making meetings end on time as well since folks would not be late for their next meeting. So while I found it somewhat 'quirky' from a culture perspective I had to admit it had a positive effect on time utilization.
I'm another who hates people who do this. I make the effort, you're wasting my time.
I do understand sometimes there are circumstances beyond your control - for example at my last dentist visit they were 15 minutes late due to a medical situation, but they told me as I arrived - but people who habitually do this really get on my nerves.
For what it's worth, when it comes to scheduling social events, if everyone understands that "my party starts at 7:30" means "drift in sometime after 8:00", there's no harm - no more than there is no harm in answering "fine" to the question "how are you?"
I can't remember the last time I was late, my family has a history of being the first arrivers, but I also get agitated with people who are late, especially if no heads up
Let your frustration out in a polite manner. They haven't hit you in the face or anything. Ideally you can use some appropriate humor, too. Make them feel a little bad, so they avoid doing it next time.
> they smile warmly at the waiting group, as they unwrap their bacon sandwich
"Wow, John, you should recommend this sandwich place to the rest of us... we were missing out on it while waiting on you"
> At 8.20, I was into my second glass of Pinot and at half-past I got a text saying ‘on the way’. We finally were all seated at 8.45.
"Guys, you'd better have a few shots. I've been working on this bottle since 8, when we were supposed to meet, and you have a lot of catching up to do."
Is a passive-aggressive comment really the solution? It could backfire and make them feel defensive as easily as it could make them feel guilt. They're late all the time will become because your pedantry pisses them off and they don't want to spend time around you.
Habitual lateness could be engaged with positive reinforcement too couldn't it? This could be achieved by calling the latecomers before meetings or escorting them there early a few times until the habit changes.
Agreed. Business is full of enough passive-aggressive behaviour, no need for more. Either punish it with a real punishment, or ignore it. The best way to handle the meeting situation is to simply start making decisions without them. Eventually if they want their career to go somewhere, they'll start showing up on time. I find the post-college age range tends to do this kind of stuff, but when they don't get the promotion they're "clearly" entitled to, they start to behave like adults.
A little bit, yes, but in a friendly manner. The key is to do it early, when you can still laugh to yourself a bit about it. If you let the frustration accumulate too much, then it might come across as snide and I understand what you're saying about passive-aggressive. Still, even an occasional snide remark that vents some steam is better than boiling hotter and hotter on the inside.
I say "promptly at X" when something is going to start at X, and I start it at X and finish it at X + appropriate time, prioritizing stuff I want more than them.
I don't say this for everything, but for many things.
I don't know much about Dentist offices, but Doctor's offices are notorious for being late.
- There's always a certain number of no-shows, so just like airlines, they overbook by scheduling slightly less time per patient than required.
- It's a battle between management who want to get through patients faster, and the good doctors who want to spend more time with the patients. Management sets the schedule, the doctors actually decide how much time to spend with each patient. So everything goes late.
- Patients tell the receptionist one thing but the doctor another. If you say you need a prescription renewal, you'll be put in a ten minute slot. But if you come in needing suicide counselling, you've just made everybody else wait an hour extra for their appointments.
- Patients assume the doctor is going to be late, so show up late themselves.
- There's very little slack in the system, so if just one thing goes wrong suddenly the doctor is late for everybody.
I've called ahead and said "I have an appointment at 3:30 today. I just wanted to see if everything is still on schedule or if I should come in later."
It doesn't always work (sometimes they flat-out lie) but when it does you feel like a super genius.
They might not be lying. It's certainly possible they were on time until the appointment before yours, but that appointment took an hour longer than scheduled.
They should take a credit card when you book. I've booked a few restaurants that do that: if you miss the table you pay a fee or something - I'm not sure exactly what because I made sure I wasn't late for that table!
You know when Peoplesoft said "people become less productive when they work overtime for long stretches of time"? I think this is one of those ways--the people being late get their coffee, and the people waiting get a breather to talk about sports or whatever.
Once this culture starts it's really tough to turn around.
When a meeting is supposed to start, and not everyone is present, I'll maybe wait a minute or two, but then the meeting is rescheduled. This of course depends mitigating factors-- it isn't always possible or reasonable. Mr. VP of engineering is late? We wait. :(
Note that anyone missing is a reason to delay, since you don't send out "non-essential" invites. If you really have moxie, you make the person who was late co-ordinate the rescheduling.
The acceptance of this seems to vary towards the reliability and availability of transport (both personal and public) amongst other factors. Here in London where train frequency can be as little as 90 seconds but compensation payable to punters only if the service is greater than 15 minutes late - "stuck on the tube (with no phone reception)" is almost always an acceptable excuse.
In Tokyo, given as your employer usually pays for your train fare and the train service is notorious for being punctual and reliable, you're expected on time and if you're not, the rail company usually issues on paper an apology like this http://traininfo.jreast.co.jp/delay_certificate/pop.aspx?D=2... .
That's very true. I tend to hate people's BS excuses for most things (I'm glad "the holidays" is now over, since that was a perfect excuse for pretty much anything), but I rely on public transit (bus system, not subway) to get around. Often to get places that I could drive in about 15 minutes (if I had a car), I have to leave an hour early. I'm used to it, and this works a good deal of the time, but if something is really off, I could end up being late. I feel awful about it, but with bus schedules to account for every random circumstance I'd have to allot an extra hour or half hour and always get to places horrendously early. Sometimes a scheduled bus just doesn't show up, or sometimes odder things - a car clipped the bus and we all had to fill out witness sheets, etc.
I used to work with a guy who used to lock the door, anyone who showed up late had to knock on the window and get begged to be let in, it disturbed the meeting enough to chastised the late person with a disappointed frown or jibes from the rest of the team. Very few people arrived late to his meetings, and when you where going to be late you'd let him know.
Hi there. I'm the one you're talking about. I'm always late. You're right. It's a character flaw. But I swear to you, it's the toughest character flaw I've ever dealt with. For some reason, when I'm deeply immersed doing something, I'm incapable of wrapping up whatever it is that I'm tied up doing and fucking leave. It's stronger than willpower. It truly bewilders me. I feel that dealing with my lateness is 100 times worse than dealing with that other time management disorder, procrastination. At least with procrastination I can realize what's going on and help myself out of it. But let me assure you: I don't mean to be rude, and I'm not at all selfish as I consider myself pretty empathetic with your frustration. And I'm not only late for appointments: I delay eating my meals, falling asleep, going to the bathroom... I guess it's some sort of time-autism: if I'm supposed to be somewhere at 8, only when the clock is about to turn 8 an alarm triggers a switch in my brain (all other alarms are useless) and I get going, with zero chance of making it on time. Like you said, 8 and 8ish
become the same on a daily basis. At 8, when I snap out of it I'm really angry at myself for losing track of time. How did it happen, I ask myself one time after another. It's sickening how often it happens. It feels like waking up in pajamas in a bus stop and realize you just sleptwalk your way there. Consider it some sort of Tourette's. It's not pleasant to be around me, but I just can't help it, I swear.
From what I've been able to observe so far, procrastination precedes my lateness, in a way that one becomes a symptom for the other. Ie. It's morning and I have to do some really important task at work ASAP. Later, at 8pm, I have to meet you for dinner downtown. But I don't start getting work done until way after lunch, having procrastinated all morning surfing HN. So, around 3pm, when my mind finally comes to terms with responsibility, an overwhelming sense of duty takes over me, striking upon the task at hand with great vengeance and furious anger. Concentration is tops and speed is maximum. Code is thorough. Design is sharp. Text is brilliant. Suddenly it's 8 o'clock and, yup, I'm late.
Time is not standing still anymore. I feel awful.
My theory is that the strength I have to build up on a daily basis so that I can overcome procrastination, sleepiness, attention deficit and mild depression is also responsible for my recurring tardiness. To be able to reach such concentration nirvana, my mind has to shut down everything else on the planet earth. On the other hand, whenever I wake up focused and in a good mood, chances are I'm going to be the one ordering that bottle of Pinot.
I'm ADD as well, and the only thing that works reliably for me is alarms. It seems stupid to have to set an alarm for everything and it totally goes against my nature, but it's slowly becoming habit.
It helps if you can get into a routine. I'm married, and so we always have dinner at the same time, which means I always leave work at the same time, which means I can have a daily alarm. If I don't get everything done (due to procrastination &ct) I work after dinner.
If you're like me you will hate the structure (to the point of possibly even feeling a bit physically ill) but if you keep up with it, the feeling goes away and it will help enormously (particularly with your relationships with those close to you)
While I agree with the basic premise of this blog post what I find just as rude and selfish is when people over-generalize late-comers to include anyone that is late at all ever and don't care about the "why?" even if it is quite a valid reason.
I've had this happen to me multiple times, and I'm the most reliable person I know when it comes to this stuff.
Reasoning aside, sometimes people are just rude and selfish and it doesn't have to have anything to do with being late at all it's just one of many symptoms of the underlying problems.
> Why do people, invited for a dinner party at 7.30, think its cool to arrive at 8.30? It’s rude. It’s inconsiderate. And it’s selfish...
Some people here are saying that dinners are different than parties: that you really do need to be on time. I also tended to believe that. Especially, one would imagine, for "particularly special dinner occasions" such as organized holiday events. Hence, when I was invited to Thankgiving dinner this year, and was tasked with bringing the stuffing, I considered it horrible of me that I was arriving ten minutes late--due to my oven's starter stopping working halfway through my preparations I had to find a candle-lighter, delaying some of my cooking preparations--and sending notices to the other people by SMS.
However, when I got there, no one was there but the host, and he was nowhere near done cooking anything. No one else arrived for a half hour, and that was just one person. Most people didn't arrive until a couple hours later, and some people didn't arrive until a few hours later. If anything, the host was concerned that he had confused me into taking the time of the event too literally.
It isn't like there was a bunch of time wasted: we were having a get-together... the goal is to spend time with a bunch of people and have fun, and everyone's schedules are going to be somewhat different from each others. It isn't actually critical that everyone eats at the exact same moment, and it certainly isn't important that everyone hears every moment of every single conversation.
I thereby want to say that this is more of a culture thing than anything else. Here's one way to tell: when that person who was late tries to make a plan with you, come late next time and see if they get angry. Frankly, I bet they don't, and that they don't even seem at all phased: they ended up doing something else to keep the time passing, and weren't even closely paying attention to when you would arrive. Yet, I bet you will still be angry; in fact, I further bet you will even be angry that the other person isn't angry ;P.
Yes: to you this is really important. Maybe for the kind of event you want to have it actually is important (carefully prepared food will be ruined if people didn't eat it at the right moment, you are putting on a play and you actually need the actors to be there, etc.). However, that doesn't mean it is important in all circumstances or that even in the same circumstance it is considered important to all people.
It doesn't even mean that that kind of event is optimal, or that everyone else wants to have that kind of event. If it is actually important to you, be prepared to defend why it is important, be prepared to only be able to make that case occasionally, and keep an open mind to compromising with others who do not share your opinion that every event is better if everyone arrives at exactly the same moment.
A term that is sometimes used for this phenomenon is "cultural cross-talk", and a classic example is how long you wait before someone else is done talking before it is no longer considered you "butting in" when you start to speak. Different people from different backgrounds and different cultures have different expectations of how this should work, and if you aren't aware of this you end up getting really angry.
As a concrete example, the way this would apparently work in American Indian societies would involve very long silences: just because no one is now talking it is not to be assumed that the person who was speaking before isn't just collecting their thoughts to continue to speak again. To presume otherwise would be very rude, and it isn't like you need to be in a rush: you thereby should continue to wait until it is clear that the other person has ceded the floor.
On the other hand, in some places (I believe New York is the typical example; I'm from Chicago, however, and also have this tendency) you see a negative amount of time before the other person is supposed to start talking: yes, people seriously are predicting in thei...
I also fully agree with the author. I met an old "friend" whom I didn't see for over a year a few weeks ago and he was around one hour late. The only reason I actually waited that long for him was because I thought it would be nice to meet him since I didn't see him for a long time. However, he didn't even bother to explain why he was late and was acting like he was on time.
When I directly asked him if he realized that he is an hour late, he said that his girlfriend didn't let him go.. I'm definitely not expecting to be more important to him than his gf but that's a pretty shitty excuse.
I guess some people never change, and that guy is definitely not even remotely a friend of mine any longer.
This might be a little off topic but I personally don't understand why so many people I meet take everything for granted. If I'm extremely polite and nice to someone, most of the time they think that I'm an idiot and that they can treat me any way they want because "I won't mind anyway". I used to believe in the good nature of human beeings but I'm starting to heavily doubt that.
I don't know about this, depending on the excuse (I made a comment on travel reliability), the time frame, and the type of event, it isn't on the top of my list.
Perhaps I'm so forgiving because my actual problem is that people are so incredibly flaky and unreliable at this point that I often don't get to the part where they're "running late" - they'll cancel an hour before via text message or something like that, and I'll be lucky if I even get it. I think there was another post on here about how technology enables people to do this, back in the day when you made plans you couldn't necessarily get in touch with someone last minute.
It's not just in the social realm too, which I find baffling - I made a last minute appointment online with a massage therapist I'd been working with for a while due to back pain flaring up, and she called literally an hour before the appointment to say that since she didn't have anyone else scheduled for that day, she basically didn't want to come in. I've had doctors pull similar (yet not as extreme) stuff on me.
I live in Germany. It considered extremely rude to turn up late, and equally rude to turn up early. When you have an appointment, you are expected to turn up "on time". I.e. either side of a few minutes of the agreed time, even if that means waiting outside if you are early.
> 'Oh 7.30, but we won’t get there till 9 because by then it will
> have warmed up and all the interesting people will have arrived’.
> Nice. Imagine if everyone took that view.
> Cocktail parties would start at 3 am eventually.
Apparently this is exactly what happened to 'dinner' in British parlance, as described by Bill Bryson in his book 'At Home'. 'Dinner' was the midday meal and 'supper' was in the evening, but in the 18th century, people invited to dinner started turning up later and later in the afternoon (for various reasons, including entertaining strangers who had dropped in at their house for an obligatory tour). So dinner eventually became the evening meal, and a new word had to be coined for the midday meal, hence 'luncheon' which eventually became truncated to just 'lunch'. All this was happening in upper-class society, mainly in London, so other regions and usages have retained 'dinner' to mean the midday meal. For example, school meals are often called 'school dinners'; and in many northern counties, calling the midday meal 'lunch' is still considered an effete southern neologism.
37 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 80.2 ms ] threadI found it remarkably effective. It had the unexpected effect of making meetings end on time as well since folks would not be late for their next meeting. So while I found it somewhat 'quirky' from a culture perspective I had to admit it had a positive effect on time utilization.
I do understand sometimes there are circumstances beyond your control - for example at my last dentist visit they were 15 minutes late due to a medical situation, but they told me as I arrived - but people who habitually do this really get on my nerves.
> they smile warmly at the waiting group, as they unwrap their bacon sandwich
"Wow, John, you should recommend this sandwich place to the rest of us... we were missing out on it while waiting on you"
> At 8.20, I was into my second glass of Pinot and at half-past I got a text saying ‘on the way’. We finally were all seated at 8.45.
"Guys, you'd better have a few shots. I've been working on this bottle since 8, when we were supposed to meet, and you have a lot of catching up to do."
Habitual lateness could be engaged with positive reinforcement too couldn't it? This could be achieved by calling the latecomers before meetings or escorting them there early a few times until the habit changes.
We may have very different values, but if the alternative to venting steam is your prolonged unhappiness, it's for the best.
I don't say this for everything, but for many things.
- There's always a certain number of no-shows, so just like airlines, they overbook by scheduling slightly less time per patient than required.
- It's a battle between management who want to get through patients faster, and the good doctors who want to spend more time with the patients. Management sets the schedule, the doctors actually decide how much time to spend with each patient. So everything goes late.
- Patients tell the receptionist one thing but the doctor another. If you say you need a prescription renewal, you'll be put in a ten minute slot. But if you come in needing suicide counselling, you've just made everybody else wait an hour extra for their appointments.
- Patients assume the doctor is going to be late, so show up late themselves.
- There's very little slack in the system, so if just one thing goes wrong suddenly the doctor is late for everybody.
I've called ahead and said "I have an appointment at 3:30 today. I just wanted to see if everything is still on schedule or if I should come in later."
It doesn't always work (sometimes they flat-out lie) but when it does you feel like a super genius.
Once this culture starts it's really tough to turn around.
When a meeting is supposed to start, and not everyone is present, I'll maybe wait a minute or two, but then the meeting is rescheduled. This of course depends mitigating factors-- it isn't always possible or reasonable. Mr. VP of engineering is late? We wait. :(
Note that anyone missing is a reason to delay, since you don't send out "non-essential" invites. If you really have moxie, you make the person who was late co-ordinate the rescheduling.
In Tokyo, given as your employer usually pays for your train fare and the train service is notorious for being punctual and reliable, you're expected on time and if you're not, the rail company usually issues on paper an apology like this http://traininfo.jreast.co.jp/delay_certificate/pop.aspx?D=2... .
From what I've been able to observe so far, procrastination precedes my lateness, in a way that one becomes a symptom for the other. Ie. It's morning and I have to do some really important task at work ASAP. Later, at 8pm, I have to meet you for dinner downtown. But I don't start getting work done until way after lunch, having procrastinated all morning surfing HN. So, around 3pm, when my mind finally comes to terms with responsibility, an overwhelming sense of duty takes over me, striking upon the task at hand with great vengeance and furious anger. Concentration is tops and speed is maximum. Code is thorough. Design is sharp. Text is brilliant. Suddenly it's 8 o'clock and, yup, I'm late. Time is not standing still anymore. I feel awful.
My theory is that the strength I have to build up on a daily basis so that I can overcome procrastination, sleepiness, attention deficit and mild depression is also responsible for my recurring tardiness. To be able to reach such concentration nirvana, my mind has to shut down everything else on the planet earth. On the other hand, whenever I wake up focused and in a good mood, chances are I'm going to be the one ordering that bottle of Pinot.
It helps if you can get into a routine. I'm married, and so we always have dinner at the same time, which means I always leave work at the same time, which means I can have a daily alarm. If I don't get everything done (due to procrastination &ct) I work after dinner.
If you're like me you will hate the structure (to the point of possibly even feeling a bit physically ill) but if you keep up with it, the feeling goes away and it will help enormously (particularly with your relationships with those close to you)
The point is that the late person he's talking about agreed to meet at 9:00 but failed to be on time.
I've had this happen to me multiple times, and I'm the most reliable person I know when it comes to this stuff.
Reasoning aside, sometimes people are just rude and selfish and it doesn't have to have anything to do with being late at all it's just one of many symptoms of the underlying problems.
Some people here are saying that dinners are different than parties: that you really do need to be on time. I also tended to believe that. Especially, one would imagine, for "particularly special dinner occasions" such as organized holiday events. Hence, when I was invited to Thankgiving dinner this year, and was tasked with bringing the stuffing, I considered it horrible of me that I was arriving ten minutes late--due to my oven's starter stopping working halfway through my preparations I had to find a candle-lighter, delaying some of my cooking preparations--and sending notices to the other people by SMS.
However, when I got there, no one was there but the host, and he was nowhere near done cooking anything. No one else arrived for a half hour, and that was just one person. Most people didn't arrive until a couple hours later, and some people didn't arrive until a few hours later. If anything, the host was concerned that he had confused me into taking the time of the event too literally.
It isn't like there was a bunch of time wasted: we were having a get-together... the goal is to spend time with a bunch of people and have fun, and everyone's schedules are going to be somewhat different from each others. It isn't actually critical that everyone eats at the exact same moment, and it certainly isn't important that everyone hears every moment of every single conversation.
I thereby want to say that this is more of a culture thing than anything else. Here's one way to tell: when that person who was late tries to make a plan with you, come late next time and see if they get angry. Frankly, I bet they don't, and that they don't even seem at all phased: they ended up doing something else to keep the time passing, and weren't even closely paying attention to when you would arrive. Yet, I bet you will still be angry; in fact, I further bet you will even be angry that the other person isn't angry ;P.
Yes: to you this is really important. Maybe for the kind of event you want to have it actually is important (carefully prepared food will be ruined if people didn't eat it at the right moment, you are putting on a play and you actually need the actors to be there, etc.). However, that doesn't mean it is important in all circumstances or that even in the same circumstance it is considered important to all people.
It doesn't even mean that that kind of event is optimal, or that everyone else wants to have that kind of event. If it is actually important to you, be prepared to defend why it is important, be prepared to only be able to make that case occasionally, and keep an open mind to compromising with others who do not share your opinion that every event is better if everyone arrives at exactly the same moment.
A term that is sometimes used for this phenomenon is "cultural cross-talk", and a classic example is how long you wait before someone else is done talking before it is no longer considered you "butting in" when you start to speak. Different people from different backgrounds and different cultures have different expectations of how this should work, and if you aren't aware of this you end up getting really angry.
As a concrete example, the way this would apparently work in American Indian societies would involve very long silences: just because no one is now talking it is not to be assumed that the person who was speaking before isn't just collecting their thoughts to continue to speak again. To presume otherwise would be very rude, and it isn't like you need to be in a rush: you thereby should continue to wait until it is clear that the other person has ceded the floor.
On the other hand, in some places (I believe New York is the typical example; I'm from Chicago, however, and also have this tendency) you see a negative amount of time before the other person is supposed to start talking: yes, people seriously are predicting in thei...
When I directly asked him if he realized that he is an hour late, he said that his girlfriend didn't let him go.. I'm definitely not expecting to be more important to him than his gf but that's a pretty shitty excuse.
I guess some people never change, and that guy is definitely not even remotely a friend of mine any longer. This might be a little off topic but I personally don't understand why so many people I meet take everything for granted. If I'm extremely polite and nice to someone, most of the time they think that I'm an idiot and that they can treat me any way they want because "I won't mind anyway". I used to believe in the good nature of human beeings but I'm starting to heavily doubt that.
Perhaps I'm so forgiving because my actual problem is that people are so incredibly flaky and unreliable at this point that I often don't get to the part where they're "running late" - they'll cancel an hour before via text message or something like that, and I'll be lucky if I even get it. I think there was another post on here about how technology enables people to do this, back in the day when you made plans you couldn't necessarily get in touch with someone last minute.
It's not just in the social realm too, which I find baffling - I made a last minute appointment online with a massage therapist I'd been working with for a while due to back pain flaring up, and she called literally an hour before the appointment to say that since she didn't have anyone else scheduled for that day, she basically didn't want to come in. I've had doctors pull similar (yet not as extreme) stuff on me.
> have warmed up and all the interesting people will have arrived’.
> Nice. Imagine if everyone took that view.
> Cocktail parties would start at 3 am eventually.
Apparently this is exactly what happened to 'dinner' in British parlance, as described by Bill Bryson in his book 'At Home'. 'Dinner' was the midday meal and 'supper' was in the evening, but in the 18th century, people invited to dinner started turning up later and later in the afternoon (for various reasons, including entertaining strangers who had dropped in at their house for an obligatory tour). So dinner eventually became the evening meal, and a new word had to be coined for the midday meal, hence 'luncheon' which eventually became truncated to just 'lunch'. All this was happening in upper-class society, mainly in London, so other regions and usages have retained 'dinner' to mean the midday meal. For example, school meals are often called 'school dinners'; and in many northern counties, calling the midday meal 'lunch' is still considered an effete southern neologism.