When you agree to be somewhere — say, meet a friend for coffee or attend a meeting at work — do you try your best to arrive right at the scheduled time? Do you normally succeed? What would your friends and family say about you if asked about your promptness? Would they say you arrive on time? Or would they say, “Oh, he/she’s always late.”
Let’s face it, we all have friends and family members who are never on time. After awhile, you just give up expecting them to show up promptly so you start inviting them 30 minutes before you really want them to show up: you know whatever time you tell them it’ll be a half an hour after that when they arrive.
Psychologists, at least some of them, say being late is a control thing — the person will dictate when they show up, not you!! You can just wait!
So what about you? Are you known as the type of person who always shows up right on time? Or are you always or most often late? Please feel free to leave a comment.
I am 30 minutes early. Wife and daughter are an hour late. Spend more on gas but at least I have a bit of social time
Being a college professor for a few decades has instilled in me the necessity of being at least 10-15 minutes early to everything. When going to someone’s home and arriving early, I’ll park a block or two away and check my email or read until I’m “on time” so I don’t disturb my host.
My son and daughter-in-law were ALWAYS late getting to our family gatherings. So, I started telling them we were eating an hour earlier than we were actually going to. Problem solved!
We are usually arrive 10 minutes early finding a place to put the big dually truck often means leaving time to enjoy a walk to where we are meeting people.
I don’t like being late to attend church. I drive myself and wife and daughter choose to come late. It makes for a peaceful existence this way.
Always been on time because my mother set the clocks at least 15 minutes ahead. When I was working, my meetings also always started on time because I refused to reward late comers for their tardiness nor punish those who were considerate to be on time.
Always on time. It is just respectful to anyone you are meeting with.
When we went to other’s home for social gatherings we often found ourselves driving around the block or hanging out down the street to avoid being early. To this day we are known to be among the early arrivals at a gathering. As an insurance salesman I always timed my arrival for 2 minutes early. If a prospect kept me waiting more than 5 minutes, I was out the door with a promise to reschedule for another time, MY TIME was valuable back then.
I was a Real Estate Broker for 25 years and one of the reasons I lasted that long was because of punctuality.
I’m always 15 mins early and my husband is always late and that drives me crazy, unless your stuck in traffic they’re is NO REASON TO BE LATE.
Agree! I am like you Rosalie.
My wife, like your husband and it drives me crazy!
it depends, if i’m just meeting friends in a bar for drinks i’m not worried about being 15 minutes late. but if have reservations or they can’t do anything before i get there, then i’m on time.
When I was a working stiff I always tried to arrive about 15 minuets early for meetings in my office area. If I had to travel then I would leave an hour early then the expected drive time to account for traffic or accidents. This time allowed me to be ready and get my thoughts together. Of course I always had my laptop and phone to use any wait time constructively. I did dislike when people strolled in late for a meeting.
Always on time if I did not have to wait for my always late wife. (now former wife)
I arrived in this world at ABOUT 1:15 am or around there somewhere. Neither my mom, my dad, nor I could have made it happen at any other time. I will get there when I get there. AND, I have always gotten somewhere at sometime or another. Who had invented that clock thing anyway? Oh, and I am still here — so there!
Nope, never understood those who HAVE to be early! That is time those people sit around and just twiddle their thumbs, is wasted time they will never get back. “On time” is fine, not a minute earlier, and that is my life and time!
Military service last a lifetime. I am usally way early for any kind of appointment and proud of it.
When having Thanksgiving meals with my in-laws, they always said the meal will start at 2:00. If you showed up at 2:00, they were already on desert. So we learned that either stay the night before or go one hour earlier. Soon, that 2:00 meal became 11:30 brunch. We moved back to the area and changed the location to our home. If you showed up before 2:00 or whatever time we told everyone, you got stuck helping prepare food.
I always tried to live by being on time is late, 15 minutes before was on time, and late… don’t bother showing up (circumstances permitted).
My maternal grandfather had an expression that I was raised to live by that went, ” Better 10 minutes earlier than 2 minutes late”. He was an industrial engineer, aka “efficiency expert” and was a stickler about promptness as well as many other things.
When I say the posse rides at 9:00, I don’t mean 9:01.
In my book, on time is when I get there.
Only kidding.
Usually if I’m late it’s because of an outside influence.