The irony of interrupting the reading with an interstitial ad asking for you to sign up to a mailing list with the title We don't mean to be rude amuses me greatly
Thankfully, I didn't have that issue. I use the NoScript Firefox extension mainly because I have an ancient computer and not downloading and running JavaScript provides a huge gain in conserving resources. I thought it might lead to a less pleasant web experience but so for it hasn't and it saves me from annoyances such as pop-ups and interstitials.
Back on topic, I used to be really bad for running late. Most of the time people are too polite and let it go but as I grew older and became more self aware, I came to realise that it is rude and disrespectful - even though you don't intend it to be. A while back, I read Jeffrey Zeldman's Free Advice: Show up early [1] and it really struck a chord.
> 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.
Everyone thinks there is some fundamental and universal truth to some of their own cultural practices.
Some people's cultural practices do a better job at facilitating effective interaction among large groups of people, especially when not everyone knows each other very well, or when the specific people involved may vary from week to week. These cultural practices basically boil down to communicating about the thing that you're planning to do, and describing it accurately, instead of distorting it based on a certain convention (e.g. if you say that we start at 9 but everyone shows up at 10:30 instead).
Timeliness and running businesses effectively go hand in hand. (A contributing reason to why the Anglosphere and its close friends are the prosperous cultures in this world.)
boil down to communicating about the thing that you're planning to do, and describing accurately
Yes, effective communication is very important.
instead of distorting it based on a certain convention (e.g. if you say that we start at 9 but everyone shows up at 10:30 instead
This is a funny example to use directly after emphasizing clear communication, considering how ambiguous "start at" can be.
We "start at" 9, but that's very common language with a flexible schedule. If I went home last night with my earliest accepted meeting at 10:30, nobody bats an eye when I roll in at 10:25.
Perhaps the words you're looking for are "we don't have flexible hours" or "without discussing it with me first, you must be in the office by X and not leave before Y."
You're conflating the start times of meetings with the start of your personal work day. Sure, no one cares if you come in at 10:25 because you're still going to make the 10:30 meeting. You're not making anyone wait for you... That's the whole point of this article.
I think the universal truth is that people have their own lives going on, and you need a way to sync up in order to accomplish goals with other people. That's why we set times for meetings.
If you are late for a bus, it leaves. The plane will take off. The walking tour will have walked away.
But I'm supposed to make my wife handle dinner with the kids because 4:00pm really meant 4:25pm and now we'll all be stuck in traffic heading home?
Normally I just listen to audible or finish some work when the other party is late. But when it starts to impact family life I get mad.
Yeah that's the biggest issue for me. When you schedule something for a specific time and the other person is late, without letting you know they're going to be late, it's them essentially saying "My time is more important than yours; fuck you, deal."
I agree :) We don't really open and close though. Some people get there near 8 and leave near 5. Others 9-6. Very flexible, but one of the downsides of flexibility is concrete scheduling I suppose.
> I think the universal truth is that people have their own lives going on, and you need a way to sync up in order to accomplish goals with other people. That's why we set times for meetings.
What is not universal is how much value people put in a schedule. And how lax these schedules are. If there even is a schedule.
Non performance plus a good excuse is still non performance. Chronically late people need to make an effort to be EARLY if they're so bad at estimating how long things take.
I agree, this also struck me as a very judgmental article. I understand that some people are late because they lack respect. But that doesn't mean EVERY person that's late, does so for the same reason. One of my old professors was usually a bit late, but he had a heart of gold and really had no intention of being rude, he was just extremely disorganized in every possible way. But at the end of the day, he would often stays hours after class helping people without getting paid (on a Friday). I learned so much from him because he genuinely cared. Society is so quick to point at people and make judgements. Like normloman said, ... this article needs to chill out a bit.
The US isn't generally one of those cultures - expecting someone brought up in the US culture of timeliness to act like a Spaniard when someone else is late will is not a reasonable expectation.
Not to mention, those inconvenienced by the late party also have expectations they have to meet, and so on. A professor who is 20 minutes late but still wants to lecture for a full hour can make you late for your next class, for which you are punished, not the previous lecturer.
Should we chill? To a certain point. But after that point, it's our lives which are negatively affected, and being annoyed at someone who is making our lives harder is hardly unreasonable.
Being absent-minded just shows that someone doesn't care enough to make an effort. Someone who cares about something will not be absent-minded about it if they are willing to try.
A majority qualification wasn't present at any point in our short discussion. Don't move the goalposts.
>how did you figure
Impossible to do that. Maybe most potential commentators are so appalled by the aggressive and judgmental tone of the article/comments that they had to withdraw from the discussion. Let's not argue from speculation.
>Trust me, people stew about it a lot more than they speak up at that time.
Figured you meant possible comments. If you meant most comment from people that bothered to comment... well then duh. You'll find that people who take the time to comment are usually ones who are more .. vehement.
> "Impossible to do that"
Well duh it's impossible to do that. It was a rhetorical question. So you are saying the defenders are just white-kighting? Wow. Such arrogance.
> I remain unconvinced.
My heart is broken. You aren't Gandalf, your beard looks funny so I guess you have your own troubles too.
good day! I've had enough of listening to your drivel. Begone!
I don't agree. It definitely is a character flaw. Mind that we are talking about chronically late people. So, that equates being late with being an asshole with no respect for other people's time.
It's weird you'd say that. What you repeatedly do, creates habit. Habits are what defines the character of someone.
Your surprise seems to be grounded on the idea that lateness can be a habit formed in a way that the person has no control over it, that it's genetic perhaps? You'll be hard pressed to find many people that will agree with that thesis. It is habit formed by behaviour they have complete control over and to blame or villainize them is as akin to blame or villainize someone for e.g. masturbating in public.
That may be true for some, but some people actively flaunt their lateness. They're not apologetic and are unconcerned with how it makes others feel until it begins to affect them.
These people are pretty bad, and I hope your view on lateness is only because you've never met a person like this.
Let me use some terms from criminal law here, to dispute your claim (excuse?) of them 'intentionally' being a jerk.
There are three kinds of 'intent' (roughly, 'mens rea'):
- 'objective' (it's a lousy translation but I don't think there is a better work for it in English); this is when you find a man in bed with your wife and you want to kill him, so you put a bullet in his head. No discussion here.
- 'knowledge of necessity': when the crime is not something you intended to do, but you knew that it would happen if you did something to get to another object. The text book example of this is a ship owner who wanted to collect the insurance money for his ship, so he sank it; the crew drowned. He didn't 'intent' to kill the crew, it was just a side effect of his actions in sinking the ship (he knew they were on it).
- 'conditional intent', in many US jurisdictions aka 'willfull blindness': this one is the fuzziest. It's when you knowingly and willingly took the chance that someone would die (or other crime would happen). Text book example: 'eggshell skull' (Wikipedia has a whole page; in short: guy throws a slipper at wife's head, wife has a medical condition that causes her to have a skull that is literally as thick (and fragile) as an eggshell; guy didn't know; slipper breaks skull, killing wife - still murder).
(I'm not interested in discussion on legal technicalities like the nuances of tort law under various legal regimes and mens rea as a precondition for qualification as murder)
So, to come back to the point: people who are chronically late know that they are late. They could do something about it; like adding extra time to their estimates of home long things take, or not doing certain things when they know they're late already (like the 'getting coffee' mentioned in the GP, that infuriates me - my wife does it too, making me go through customs with a screaming toddler and 20kg suitcase in one hand, and coffee in the other once, but I digress). These people just choose to not work on their flaws and inflict their (easily fixable!) bad habits on others. That is most certainly 'intentional' in all but the most literal interpretation of the word.
You can work on it, it doesn't mean its going to happen.
Many things in life are inherently unpredictable. The number 1 cause of lateness is probably commutes. if your commute has a range of 50 minutes, to two hours. The only way to avoid being late is coming in hour early everyday. That's a massive cost.
Other stuff that can happen like, your webcam not working for an internet meeting, and so on.
Or an important client holding you up, before you before a meeting.
People aren't inherently being dicks, they're struggling to cope unpredictable nature of the world.
That's hilarious. They aren't trying to predict the stock market. They are trying to predict commutes (easy) and their current schedule(easier).
Why is it that it's always the same people? Does the universe have it out for them?
To me this is like the weight loss debate: yes a ton (but not many :)) of people have glandular issues/genetics/blahblah that makes them unable to lose weight. But most people saying they can't lose weight are just making up excuses.
edit: Why the downvotes? Downvotes != disagreement
Your commute has ranged between those values, but do you think that the mode commute time isn't a good indicator? Or maybe you can use the 75 percentile time? Are you really saying you don't have a good judge of about how long your commute will take most days?
No one is saying you have to be right on time every single time. But we do have a problem with chronically late people.
It can literally change by 30 minutes day by day. With extremes at 50 minutes.
At 75 percentile you'd still probably have to come in 30 minutes early most days, unpaid. And for most companies being late 25% of the time is not good enough.
That range isn't the full curve, just the ones I've experienced.
Having had short commutes, and long commutes the difference is immense in being able to predict how long it takes.
The only way avoid this is to come in really early, and negotiate to leave work early. Or flexi-time.
Most people just accept it and waste 30-40 minutes.
And in locations such as yours, you've found people to be more lenient with times.
I'm originally from a country with fairly crap transportation infrastructure. Consequently, the culture is very much one of "we'll see you at around X" rather than "meetings are at X". And, no one has a problem because it's a well-known problem that everyone faces.
But if you are the one who is always late, then you are the one doing something wrong.
Note that I'm not talking about being late to work. I'm talking about being late to mutually agreed upon events at specific times in a way that causes other people to wait for you. Surely all work doesn't need to come to a standstill untill you get in everyday?
It's wrong because the specific group of people you interact with say its wrong. In a lot of times it isn't damaging financially, productively etc. It's only there because of a cultural rule.
In plenty of societies it isn't an issue. In others being 5 minutes late, regardless of any damage done can get you fired. That is what I don't like. It's there choice however, if they decide that being dead on time is the most important thing in the world they can pay the cost associated.
I am talking about meetings, not general work. Meetings mean you hold people up
. General work means you probably won't. The article also talks about meetings, not general 9-5.
If your coming to work too late affects people then you should fix it. If it doesn't but is an abitrary rule you just have an overbearing boss, so fix that.
Note that everything doesn't come down to "if I'm not bringing corresponding value, they should fire me". It's that attitude that'll do you more disservice in the long run.
Well. Unless you pushback with cancelling meetings/calling them out on it, they will forever continue to waste everyone else's time.
I don't buy that they have a "poor sense of how long things take": they just don't care enough to keep it in mind.
I recently had a first-meeting with a new client. I waited 20 mins. He didn't show up. I left. Maybe a little diva-ish? Idk. All I know is instead of stewing about his lateness and excuses, now I could get on with my day with a sense of empowerment.
EDIT: Why the downvotes? Downvotes != disagreement. I can usually tell when a comment is going to be unpopular. This one confuses me. So please enlighten me :)
> 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.
If I invite you to a dinner party in Brazil at 7.30, I'm expecting you around 9. If you show up at the actual time, which has happened to me when I moved to Germany – and didn't realized the expectations were different – the food won't be ready. As a matter of fact, I won't even have started cooking! :-)
I now tell my German friends X and my Brazilian friends (X - 2) hours.
I mean if you boss lets people come in late, they will. This has absolutely nothing to do with being "rude and selfish" and 100% to do with what you are able to do without being fired / reprimanded. Seriously, just reading this I have no idea where the Employer is. Are they allowing people to come in late, and you're just mad because you feel like they shouldn't? Are you too afraid to bring it up to your boss? Is your boss late too? If you're the boss, why the fuck would you let people come late. Lock the door. Treat people like children.
The lateness as it pertains to business is just bad management all over. Lateness in personal life is something that an individual has to decide if they will tolerate or not* but lateness in business is something that can and should be controlled.
* Example: I'm having dinner tonight with a friend of mine. I expect there's a 90% chance he's going to be late. This is typical behavior for him, and I understand it, and that's why I very rarely do anything with him that is time sensitive- but he's otherwise a good guy, and so I work around it.
Totally agree. Which is why I don't really understand the article trying to make this out as some epidemic. People are late because whatever they were doing took longer, and it would cost them more (not in money, in mindshare) to have stopped what they were doing earlier to be on time. It's a completely rational action. However, this happening in a work environment is like going to work with no shirt on because it's hot outside.
> People are late because whatever they were doing took longer...
I am wondering why can I always be on time and others don't? Don't let other people wait for you.
In my company, my direct reports are spread out over several buildings, so we expect them to be in on time. We do very little checking in on them, and we rarely have issues. These are mostly students directly out of college, so it's not an age thing, but I think the culture is probably significantly different from the article's.
WTF is this about? Do we need a 'boss' to tell us not to be assholes? What's next, I have to tell everybody not to forget to breathe? Tell them to not drive after the friday afternoon drinks, and if they kill their drunk asses it's 'the boss' who didn't tell them not to be idiots?
My wife is one of the sweetest most caring person I met in my life. She is also to a fault extremely concerned about any ethical slights people might feel. She confesses any bad thought she has or possible slight error she did.
She is ALWAYS late and she is the least selfish rude person I know. Time is just something that clicks with her.
Yea, except for meetings where the organizer puts it at 9am and then is late themselves.
If you schedule me for a meeting in a time range where I can't be available, I'll tell you. That's true for timezone issues / conflicts / bad-time-of-day.
That leaves 10-11 and 2-4 as the only acceptable meeting times, accounting for differing lunch times and the people who can leave at 4 because they showed up to work at 7:30 or 8.
10-12 and 2-4 has been the rule at several places I've worked. These have been considered core hours, and the best time to set up a meeting. Meetings at other times would still take place, but you would check everyone was OK with it first.
No... no, it's not. Terribly antisocial would be to have it at lunch time. Let's not make it worse than it is, 9 o'clock can be inconvenient for some, but it's not "terribly antisocial".
- Sometimes it's not their fault (accidents on the way, etc), still, yeah, for let's say, 80%, it's because they simply don't care
- 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
This post may offend some readers. But only because it’s going to cut close to the bone for many.
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.
Ok then. Fire them. Hopefully they'll find a place that has flexi-time. Some people can try all they want. They aren't going to come in 50 minutes early everyday(Required to guarantee for some commutes), just to make sure they're not going be late.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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
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.
The way to be more productive when the reality of actual unforeseen circumstances hits is for the 10 people to bring their work with them and/or not get sucked into unnecessary meetings or any meeting lacking an attendee relevant agenda. (No agenda, no meeting). Wasting time is a choice on any side of the table. Blame games are bikeshedding, signalling a likely lack of valuable industriousness. ("If you want something done, ask the busiest person you know.")
In the case of a dentist making you wait it actually makes sense and is to be expected. Some patients take a lot longer, or someone might have an unexpected issue come up during a root canal or whatever. What's the dentist supposed to do? Just leave the other patient to make time with you?
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.
> In the case of a dentist making you wait it actually makes sense and is to be expected.
Occasionally, perhaps, but if it's a regular occurrence, they need to schedule better. My wife's usually the first appointment of the day with one of her specialists and they're very regularly 30+ minutes late. No earlier patients to use as an excuse, and they have a hypocritical "7 minutes late = reschedule" policy for patients.
Some dentists are always on time +/- 10 minutes, and some are always late. No, this is not the nature of the dentistry business - it's poor planning, and not caring enough to change it.
I'm sure you have all the facts available to you when making such an assessment of dentists. However, I would argue that the world is not black & white; and what you perceive and what is factual are not always one in the same. Which isn't to say that there aren't going to be lazy dentists out there, of course.
If a dentist office always runs on time, that means that quite regularly they're sitting around doing nothing. The no-show rate for a typical office is around 10%.
Like any scheduling problem, the amount of slack in the schedule is crucial. Most schedules work a lot better with a little bit of slack, but a lot of people see slack as a horrible inefficiency that must be excised at all costs.
Being late every once in a while is not something I'll hold a grudge for - we all are late at one point or another for various valid reasons. It's those that are chronically late, to the point that the only thing you can count on is them being late, that to me are implicitly disrespectful. They are basically saying "Your time is worth less than mine", just not to your face.
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.
"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."
Larry. Dude. Get off your lawnchair, you're going to be late. again.
Anyway, why do you think he is incorrect? Time-management is a skill: why would this specific case of it be un-learnable?
Also, every time you decide that something happens to you/is out of your control, you are giving it power over you. Would you rather beat this minor time-management issue or decide that the universe is constantly and inexplicably throwing your day out of the loop? Which stance one gives you power vs taking it away?
Unless the problem is not with an unusual preparation regime, but with a cognitive / personality defect. Hyperbolic discounting, moment to moment procrastination in task-switching, and difficulty managing time estimates and proceeding through a preparation process is a trait associated with adult Attention Deficit Disorder. The subject can feel all the guilt and fear in the world about wasting other people's time and looking like an imbecile, without it necessarily adding up to a durably effective scheduling regime. They're constantly checking the clock, and telling themselves "Well, I made it last time, I can spend another 2 minutes in the shower / under the covers / eating breakfast", and establishing a reliable habitual routine that follows a set pace is very difficult for them. It gets especially bad when this trait touches their sleeping habits, leading very often to sleep disorders, in the form of a psychogenic non-24 syndrome from putting off bedtime until they're ready to drop.
I find it fairly likely that adult ADD traits, sometimes summarized as 'attentional indiscipline', are linked to modern multitasking (or Internet / gaming addiction, if you like) in the same way nearsightedness is linked to childhood literacy.
*Childhood ADHD seems to be a broader category, extended beyond these classic traits into any reason a child might not enthusiastically embrace the American K-12 educational system
> My dentist kept me waiting 50 minutes not long ago
> 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.
If you have been doing 10 short code challenges a day for 15+ years, I would assume you would have enough experience to estimate properly and take into account some margin.
He's not saying your not ever allowed to late, ever ever, but that if you are systematically late all the time, then you are doing something wrong.
So you know that most take about 10 minutes, but 5-10% take an hour; you just don't know which ones.
Now you have two choices: put enough slack in the schedule so that you regularly sit around waiting for the next challenge, or take enough slack out that you regularly start challenges late. No matter what you do, somebody has to regularly wait.
Would you pay ~50% more for an assurance that you usually don't have to wait? You might, but most people wouldn't. And if you want an absolute guarantee then it would be a lot more than 50% extra.
I think that the point was that she had been routinely this late for a decade. At that point it's not something "running over" but rather bad time management/lack of respect for your customers.
> 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!
This would only be a reasonable analogy if your late delivery had, literally, kept them waiting unable to otherwise occupy their time.
On the flip side, if you were a customer and said developer was purposely scheduling unknown length tasks once every 10 minutes, knowing full well that this would happen, how long would you remain a customer?
Professionally? Completely unacceptable. Talk to your employees about the importance of timeliness, and act if they don't respond to suggestion.
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.
In my experience, I run late because I let other people take advantage of me. The doctor sees you late; your client starts the meeting 15 minutes late and wants to stretch the meeting past it's allotted end time; your mother calls as you're packing up to leave; your boss blows through meetings.
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.
* The doctor: if your time is important that day it probably means you aren't taking sick leave. Politely cancel the appointment on the spot and book it with another doctor.
* The client: bill them for the 15 minutes that they were late, bill them for the extra time. If they want to extend the meeting make them sign for the extra cost before proceeding.
* Your mother: I'm sure she wouldn't mind taking the phone call later in the day, unless it's absolutely urgent - in which case the rest of your day is likely a write-off in any case.
* Your boss: after every meeting show them the result of this equation: <your hourly salary> x <number of people in the room> x <length of the meeting>.
Sometimes it doesn't work. My sister still calls me during office hours to chit-chat - having exhausted the polite option I am forced to rudely terminate the conversation after 5 minutes: "I can't chit-chat at work." That being said the polite option not working is a very rare exception.
Oh agreed, but it's tough. And yes I have control over it: I chalk it up to weakness (inability to say "no") vs. being rude and selfish. Arguably, I'm not being rude and selfish enough!
However... I think before we judge people, we need to find out if the routinely late people are using excuses to create a cover for a health issue.
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.
Interesting. Is the "go to the bathroom 7 times just to be able to get in my car" an exaggeration or an actual number? My asshole wouldn't survive all the wiping if I shat that much in one day, never mind just getting to the car.
I have two family members with IBS so what I've seen is:
- long painful morning poops no matter what
- certain foods (red meat, pasta, garlic, etc) cause pain or cramps
- eating a meal requires a trip to the bathroom after
- later in the dsy, depending on how many coffees or what food they ate, there may be a poop demon that needs to be exorcised before bed
- the feeling may strike at ant time and not give them much warning to get to a toilet so they have to stick close to a bathroom sometimes
I'm not talking about acute symptoms or if you eat something that triggers it, just their daily routine. Imagine if eating the wrong thing wrecked your insides, but eating the right thing only gave you tremendous pain, cramping, and poops. That's what you hope your day will be like :/
Anecdotal but whatever: I used to have what doctors diagnosed as IBS for about 10 years. Mostly it was constipation, lots of pain, cramping so bad I want morphine. I even went to the ER mutiple times cause I thought I was dying.
One day at the ER a doctor said "lets just do a CT scan" and he said "your appendix is fucked. we're taking it out". What's weird is I never had any pain in the right side of my abdominal when they pressed on it, even that day when they said it needed to be removed.
It's been 2 years and I feel like a new human being. Never had a single problem since.
I learned a tactic early in my working life, not for being late, but for taking sick leave; but it might work in your case. The trick was useful for dealing with those annoying HR types who like to harass people for things like sick notes from doctors and stuff. The first step is to be very concise or even curt when explaining tardiness (let's call it professionalism). If you're feeling generous, something to the effect of "I have a medical problem"; don't offer to explain because really, anything else is none of their business. Say it with conviction and complete confidence; remember, in your case, you're doing them a favor, remember that. If they drop it, good; mission accomplished. If they lack the couth or good sense to spare you your dignity, then there is no reason to spare them theirs. Now is the time to deploy in appropriate detail precisely the reason for your tardiness. Be sure not to soften the language with acronyms like "IBS", "spastic colon" is your go-to here. It's usually better to have these conversations in private, but if someone is so lacking in professionalism that they make the mistake of confronting you publicly, then punish them without mercy. Don't be the least bit shy. Even though your colleagues may not appreciate the moment, you're doing them and yourself a great service. The idea is to terrify the questioner so thoroughly that they never think of confronting anyone about a personal medical/health/hygeine/etc issue, ever again.
This is largely a cultural thing. I've been on both sides having lived in the South East U.S. where being late is considered the rudest thing you could possibly do and on the West Coast where everyone lists their dinner party 1 hour early and if you show up "on time" you're the only one there...and the host is surprised.
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.
While people understand & accept (to varying degree) others being late, the standard fallback is: start on time. If you tell me X starts at Y:30, and I'm not there at Y:30, I'll get the message if you start at Y:30 anyway - and stick to doing so. "Acceptably late" becomes acceptable because people accept it. Don't get mad, just start on time.
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.
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 :(
There definitely is a big culture component to this... to the point where arriving on time can be considered rude!
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.
Yes, instead of seeing time as a point, there is a culture of seeing it as a range. The range is derived from context (how pissed people will be if you are late/how informal is the event). The range might even be different for different people according to their roles. This gives you a buffer to handle many unexpected things. It also allows you to disassociate urgent from important. There are plenty of important things that get done at the expense of arriving late. True, sometimes you have to wait for other people to arrive, but that is expected, so you can arrange your day around it. And when the time comes you know it is okay for them to wait you. It is efficient once you get the hang of it. It is even more efficient now that smartphones are ubiquitous, you can coordinate the range in real time!
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 196 ms ] threadBack on topic, I used to be really bad for running late. Most of the time people are too polite and let it go but as I grew older and became more self aware, I came to realise that it is rude and disrespectful - even though you don't intend it to be. A while back, I read Jeffrey Zeldman's Free Advice: Show up early [1] and it really struck a chord.
[1] http://www.zeldman.com/2010/02/05/free-advice-show-up-early/
Everyone thinks there is some fundamental and universal truth to some of their own cultural practices.
Timeliness and running businesses effectively go hand in hand. (A contributing reason to why the Anglosphere and its close friends are the prosperous cultures in this world.)
Yes, effective communication is very important.
instead of distorting it based on a certain convention (e.g. if you say that we start at 9 but everyone shows up at 10:30 instead
This is a funny example to use directly after emphasizing clear communication, considering how ambiguous "start at" can be.
We "start at" 9, but that's very common language with a flexible schedule. If I went home last night with my earliest accepted meeting at 10:30, nobody bats an eye when I roll in at 10:25.
Perhaps the words you're looking for are "we don't have flexible hours" or "without discussing it with me first, you must be in the office by X and not leave before Y."
If you are late for a bus, it leaves. The plane will take off. The walking tour will have walked away.
But I'm supposed to make my wife handle dinner with the kids because 4:00pm really meant 4:25pm and now we'll all be stuck in traffic heading home?
Normally I just listen to audible or finish some work when the other party is late. But when it starts to impact family life I get mad.
What is not universal is how much value people put in a schedule. And how lax these schedules are. If there even is a schedule.
Chilling out is a preferred course of action. Also, hundreds of millions of people are parts of the cultures where it's absolutely normal to be late.
Not to mention, those inconvenienced by the late party also have expectations they have to meet, and so on. A professor who is 20 minutes late but still wants to lecture for a full hour can make you late for your next class, for which you are punished, not the previous lecturer.
Should we chill? To a certain point. But after that point, it's our lives which are negatively affected, and being annoyed at someone who is making our lives harder is hardly unreasonable.
I'd prefer a person who is constantly late than a one with your attitude.
Anyway, each side is ugly in the extreme but consider the cost of each of the extreme.
Person always late: wastes everyone's time. Person stewing about it: stews on silently.
Which one is "evil"? Neither. Which one is inconsiderate?
This is just absurd. The linked article, the majority of comments and your own comments are not silent at all.
Which is why they are probably coming out of the woodwork now :)
Also how did you figure out a majority of potential commentators aren't silent?
A majority qualification wasn't present at any point in our short discussion. Don't move the goalposts.
>how did you figure
Impossible to do that. Maybe most potential commentators are so appalled by the aggressive and judgmental tone of the article/comments that they had to withdraw from the discussion. Let's not argue from speculation.
>Trust me, people stew about it a lot more than they speak up at that time.
I remain unconvinced.
Figured you meant possible comments. If you meant most comment from people that bothered to comment... well then duh. You'll find that people who take the time to comment are usually ones who are more .. vehement.
> "Impossible to do that" Well duh it's impossible to do that. It was a rhetorical question. So you are saying the defenders are just white-kighting? Wow. Such arrogance.
> I remain unconvinced.
My heart is broken. You aren't Gandalf, your beard looks funny so I guess you have your own troubles too.
good day! I've had enough of listening to your drivel. Begone!
Thanks for clearing this up for those confused!
This comment breaks the HN guidelines. Please follow them when posting to this site.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Your surprise seems to be grounded on the idea that lateness can be a habit formed in a way that the person has no control over it, that it's genetic perhaps? You'll be hard pressed to find many people that will agree with that thesis. It is habit formed by behaviour they have complete control over and to blame or villainize them is as akin to blame or villainize someone for e.g. masturbating in public.
These people are pretty bad, and I hope your view on lateness is only because you've never met a person like this.
There are three kinds of 'intent' (roughly, 'mens rea'):
- 'objective' (it's a lousy translation but I don't think there is a better work for it in English); this is when you find a man in bed with your wife and you want to kill him, so you put a bullet in his head. No discussion here.
- 'knowledge of necessity': when the crime is not something you intended to do, but you knew that it would happen if you did something to get to another object. The text book example of this is a ship owner who wanted to collect the insurance money for his ship, so he sank it; the crew drowned. He didn't 'intent' to kill the crew, it was just a side effect of his actions in sinking the ship (he knew they were on it).
- 'conditional intent', in many US jurisdictions aka 'willfull blindness': this one is the fuzziest. It's when you knowingly and willingly took the chance that someone would die (or other crime would happen). Text book example: 'eggshell skull' (Wikipedia has a whole page; in short: guy throws a slipper at wife's head, wife has a medical condition that causes her to have a skull that is literally as thick (and fragile) as an eggshell; guy didn't know; slipper breaks skull, killing wife - still murder).
(I'm not interested in discussion on legal technicalities like the nuances of tort law under various legal regimes and mens rea as a precondition for qualification as murder)
So, to come back to the point: people who are chronically late know that they are late. They could do something about it; like adding extra time to their estimates of home long things take, or not doing certain things when they know they're late already (like the 'getting coffee' mentioned in the GP, that infuriates me - my wife does it too, making me go through customs with a screaming toddler and 20kg suitcase in one hand, and coffee in the other once, but I digress). These people just choose to not work on their flaws and inflict their (easily fixable!) bad habits on others. That is most certainly 'intentional' in all but the most literal interpretation of the word.
Many things in life are inherently unpredictable. The number 1 cause of lateness is probably commutes. if your commute has a range of 50 minutes, to two hours. The only way to avoid being late is coming in hour early everyday. That's a massive cost.
Other stuff that can happen like, your webcam not working for an internet meeting, and so on.
Or an important client holding you up, before you before a meeting.
People aren't inherently being dicks, they're struggling to cope unpredictable nature of the world.
Why is it that it's always the same people? Does the universe have it out for them?
To me this is like the weight loss debate: yes a ton (but not many :)) of people have glandular issues/genetics/blahblah that makes them unable to lose weight. But most people saying they can't lose weight are just making up excuses.
edit: Why the downvotes? Downvotes != disagreement
Maybe my joke rubbed them the wrong way[0].
[0] " a ton (but not many) " => implying that they individually weigh a lot so doesn't take many to get to a ton.
Or they live within 20 minutes?
And predicting commutes is not easy. My commute can range between 50 minutes and two hours. Depending on Accidents, roadworks etcs.
If you have short distance to travel, you are less likely to come across this.
No one is saying you have to be right on time every single time. But we do have a problem with chronically late people.
At 75 percentile you'd still probably have to come in 30 minutes early most days, unpaid. And for most companies being late 25% of the time is not good enough.
That range isn't the full curve, just the ones I've experienced.
Having had short commutes, and long commutes the difference is immense in being able to predict how long it takes.
The only way avoid this is to come in really early, and negotiate to leave work early. Or flexi-time.
Most people just accept it and waste 30-40 minutes.
I'm originally from a country with fairly crap transportation infrastructure. Consequently, the culture is very much one of "we'll see you at around X" rather than "meetings are at X". And, no one has a problem because it's a well-known problem that everyone faces.
But if you are the one who is always late, then you are the one doing something wrong.
Note that I'm not talking about being late to work. I'm talking about being late to mutually agreed upon events at specific times in a way that causes other people to wait for you. Surely all work doesn't need to come to a standstill untill you get in everyday?
It's wrong because the specific group of people you interact with say its wrong. In a lot of times it isn't damaging financially, productively etc. It's only there because of a cultural rule.
In plenty of societies it isn't an issue. In others being 5 minutes late, regardless of any damage done can get you fired. That is what I don't like. It's there choice however, if they decide that being dead on time is the most important thing in the world they can pay the cost associated.
I avoid those companies anyway.
If your coming to work too late affects people then you should fix it. If it doesn't but is an abitrary rule you just have an overbearing boss, so fix that.
Note that everything doesn't come down to "if I'm not bringing corresponding value, they should fire me". It's that attitude that'll do you more disservice in the long run.
I don't buy that they have a "poor sense of how long things take": they just don't care enough to keep it in mind.
I recently had a first-meeting with a new client. I waited 20 mins. He didn't show up. I left. Maybe a little diva-ish? Idk. All I know is instead of stewing about his lateness and excuses, now I could get on with my day with a sense of empowerment.
EDIT: Why the downvotes? Downvotes != disagreement. I can usually tell when a comment is going to be unpopular. This one confuses me. So please enlighten me :)
Here, let me google that for you. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...
> 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.
If I invite you to a dinner party in Brazil at 7.30, I'm expecting you around 9. If you show up at the actual time, which has happened to me when I moved to Germany – and didn't realized the expectations were different – the food won't be ready. As a matter of fact, I won't even have started cooking! :-)
I now tell my German friends X and my Brazilian friends (X - 2) hours.
* Example: I'm having dinner tonight with a friend of mine. I expect there's a 90% chance he's going to be late. This is typical behavior for him, and I understand it, and that's why I very rarely do anything with him that is time sensitive- but he's otherwise a good guy, and so I work around it.
It is being rude and selfish.
She is ALWAYS late and she is the least selfish rude person I know. Time is just something that clicks with her.
(edited Spelling)
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.
If you schedule me for a meeting in a time range where I can't be available, I'll tell you. That's true for timezone issues / conflicts / bad-time-of-day.
No... no, it's not. Terribly antisocial would be to have it at lunch time. Let's not make it worse than it is, 9 o'clock can be inconvenient for some, but it's not "terribly antisocial".
- 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.)
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)
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.
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.
> 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
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.
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.
Occasionally, perhaps, but if it's a regular occurrence, they need to schedule better. My wife's usually the first appointment of the day with one of her specialists and they're very regularly 30+ minutes late. No earlier patients to use as an excuse, and they have a hypocritical "7 minutes late = reschedule" policy for patients.
Like any scheduling problem, the amount of slack in the schedule is crucial. Most schedules work a lot better with a little bit of slack, but a lot of people see slack as a horrible inefficiency that must be excised at all costs.
Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency by Tom DeMarco is a great read.
http://amzn.to/1KGF8DG (affiliate link)
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.
Could not be more wrong.
Anyway, why do you think he is incorrect? Time-management is a skill: why would this specific case of it be un-learnable?
Also, every time you decide that something happens to you/is out of your control, you are giving it power over you. Would you rather beat this minor time-management issue or decide that the universe is constantly and inexplicably throwing your day out of the loop? Which stance one gives you power vs taking it away?
I find it fairly likely that adult ADD traits, sometimes summarized as 'attentional indiscipline', are linked to modern multitasking (or Internet / gaming addiction, if you like) in the same way nearsightedness is linked to childhood literacy.
*Childhood ADHD seems to be a broader category, extended beyond these classic traits into any reason a child might not enthusiastically embrace the American K-12 educational system
> 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.
He's not saying your not ever allowed to late, ever ever, but that if you are systematically late all the time, then you are doing something wrong.
Now you have two choices: put enough slack in the schedule so that you regularly sit around waiting for the next challenge, or take enough slack out that you regularly start challenges late. No matter what you do, somebody has to regularly wait.
Would you pay ~50% more for an assurance that you usually don't have to wait? You might, but most people wouldn't. And if you want an absolute guarantee then it would be a lot more than 50% extra.
> 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!
This would only be a reasonable analogy if your late delivery had, literally, kept them waiting unable to otherwise occupy their time.
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.
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.
* The doctor: if your time is important that day it probably means you aren't taking sick leave. Politely cancel the appointment on the spot and book it with another doctor.
* The client: bill them for the 15 minutes that they were late, bill them for the extra time. If they want to extend the meeting make them sign for the extra cost before proceeding.
* Your mother: I'm sure she wouldn't mind taking the phone call later in the day, unless it's absolutely urgent - in which case the rest of your day is likely a write-off in any case.
* Your boss: after every meeting show them the result of this equation: <your hourly salary> x <number of people in the room> x <length of the meeting>.
Sometimes it doesn't work. My sister still calls me during office hours to chit-chat - having exhausted the polite option I am forced to rudely terminate the conversation after 5 minutes: "I can't chit-chat at work." That being said the polite option not working is a very rare exception.
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.
- long painful morning poops no matter what
- certain foods (red meat, pasta, garlic, etc) cause pain or cramps
- eating a meal requires a trip to the bathroom after
- later in the dsy, depending on how many coffees or what food they ate, there may be a poop demon that needs to be exorcised before bed
- the feeling may strike at ant time and not give them much warning to get to a toilet so they have to stick close to a bathroom sometimes
I'm not talking about acute symptoms or if you eat something that triggers it, just their daily routine. Imagine if eating the wrong thing wrecked your insides, but eating the right thing only gave you tremendous pain, cramping, and poops. That's what you hope your day will be like :/
One day at the ER a doctor said "lets just do a CT scan" and he said "your appendix is fucked. we're taking it out". What's weird is I never had any pain in the right side of my abdominal when they pressed on it, even that day when they said it needed to be removed.
It's been 2 years and I feel like a new human being. Never had a single problem since.
Not only do the things that you mention do that, but also things like salads :(. Trying to lose weight with IBS can be a PITA
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.
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.
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 :(
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.