There’s a wide range of different social contexts for this. I personally share the opinion expressed in your quote, but I also have been in environments where such an approach was actively socially or otherwise counterproductive.
“i am five minutes early; no problem, i’ll read my phone.”
“my associate is five minutes late; how dare they!”
is this mostly for business/other high-efficiency contexts? to me, this seems so entirely opposed to what we might call the “spirit of friendship” as to be hard to understand.
i can recognize that there are contexts where efficiency is prioritized. (the way the original essay presented the situation made it seem not to be such a context, though.)
i guess i can imagine a friendly situation where the stakes are high enough that something like this is at play: “bilbo is late again, and now we missed the tour bus!” even then, though—“the real destination was the friends we made all along,” innit?
if you have the time, i would appreciate help understanding!
No, I don’t think that is an accurate summary, but that’s on me for leaving out the key piece: I apply very different standards to myself vs others. If I am late, I know all the things I counterfactually could have done to instead be on time but didn’t. When I tell others the story of why I’m late, it usually feels like an excuse I don’t quite believe. When others are (occasionally) late, I too am curious to hear their stories.
When someone (in a friendship context) is chronically late, you learn to expect it and route around it, whether they have a story or not, and whether the story is entertaining or believable or not. It’s not a big deal because you’ve established that expectation. But I’m never going to ask that friend to drive me to the airport.
When someone (in a casual or friendly context) is actively talking about planning and time, and you know they’re being unrealistically optimistic but they don’t want to hear it, then from then on you know not to believe their stories on why they’re late. They’re late because they’re not interested in planning to be on time. The story is not evidence of the real ‘why’. Whether or not this is fine is entirely dependent on context. In some cultures, it’s expected to be late to things, sometimes even hours late, and being on time could actually be a problem because everyone else won’t be ready. In others, being early is fine but being late is unacceptable—a lot of structured social activities, like team sports or many kinds of classes, are like this. In some cases both are seen as bad—I’ve known a few people (all of German descent, TINACBNIEAC) who would literally drive to the corner and wait in their cars, ideally just out of sight, until 1-2 minutes before they were ‘supposed’ to arrive, so as to get to the door pretty much literally as the clock changed to the ‘right’ time.
When someone (in a business context) is chronically or unapologetically late, it’s potentially but not unambiguously some combination of rude, disrespectful, counterproductive, and wasteful. If it’s because they had back to back meetings and one ran over, or they needed to use the bathroom in between, or they’re having technical difficulties, or some urgent personal matter came up, no problem! But you’re supposed to take 10 seconds to send a message letting people know, and if you can but don’t, that’s a problem. If it’s some sort of (even inadvertent) power move, because they don’t care about your time, that might be something you just have to deal with from your boss or a client, but it is always frustrating.
It also varies by culture—e.g. in central and southern Italy it is considered socially acceptable to be a bit late at a meeting, but everybody knows that so if they want to meet you at 11:30 they will tell you to meet at 11:15, or 11:00, depending the level of formality of the meeting. If they were somewhere where being even slightly late is considered rude, they’d tell you to meet at 11:30.
surely both of these cannot simultaneously be true.
(i don’t mind at all when someone is late! they probably had reasons. i’m curious to hear the story!)
There’s a wide range of different social contexts for this. I personally share the opinion expressed in your quote, but I also have been in environments where such an approach was actively socially or otherwise counterproductive.
is this a fair summary of how you feel?
“i am five minutes early; no problem, i’ll read my phone.”
“my associate is five minutes late; how dare they!”
is this mostly for business/other high-efficiency contexts? to me, this seems so entirely opposed to what we might call the “spirit of friendship” as to be hard to understand.
i can recognize that there are contexts where efficiency is prioritized. (the way the original essay presented the situation made it seem not to be such a context, though.)
i guess i can imagine a friendly situation where the stakes are high enough that something like this is at play: “bilbo is late again, and now we missed the tour bus!” even then, though—“the real destination was the friends we made all along,” innit?
if you have the time, i would appreciate help understanding!
No, I don’t think that is an accurate summary, but that’s on me for leaving out the key piece: I apply very different standards to myself vs others. If I am late, I know all the things I counterfactually could have done to instead be on time but didn’t. When I tell others the story of why I’m late, it usually feels like an excuse I don’t quite believe. When others are (occasionally) late, I too am curious to hear their stories.
When someone (in a friendship context) is chronically late, you learn to expect it and route around it, whether they have a story or not, and whether the story is entertaining or believable or not. It’s not a big deal because you’ve established that expectation. But I’m never going to ask that friend to drive me to the airport.
When someone (in a casual or friendly context) is actively talking about planning and time, and you know they’re being unrealistically optimistic but they don’t want to hear it, then from then on you know not to believe their stories on why they’re late. They’re late because they’re not interested in planning to be on time. The story is not evidence of the real ‘why’. Whether or not this is fine is entirely dependent on context. In some cultures, it’s expected to be late to things, sometimes even hours late, and being on time could actually be a problem because everyone else won’t be ready. In others, being early is fine but being late is unacceptable—a lot of structured social activities, like team sports or many kinds of classes, are like this. In some cases both are seen as bad—I’ve known a few people (all of German descent, TINACBNIEAC) who would literally drive to the corner and wait in their cars, ideally just out of sight, until 1-2 minutes before they were ‘supposed’ to arrive, so as to get to the door pretty much literally as the clock changed to the ‘right’ time.
When someone (in a business context) is chronically or unapologetically late, it’s potentially but not unambiguously some combination of rude, disrespectful, counterproductive, and wasteful. If it’s because they had back to back meetings and one ran over, or they needed to use the bathroom in between, or they’re having technical difficulties, or some urgent personal matter came up, no problem! But you’re supposed to take 10 seconds to send a message letting people know, and if you can but don’t, that’s a problem. If it’s some sort of (even inadvertent) power move, because they don’t care about your time, that might be something you just have to deal with from your boss or a client, but it is always frustrating.
It also varies by culture—e.g. in central and southern Italy it is considered socially acceptable to be a bit late at a meeting, but everybody knows that so if they want to meet you at 11:30 they will tell you to meet at 11:15, or 11:00, depending the level of formality of the meeting. If they were somewhere where being even slightly late is considered rude, they’d tell you to meet at 11:30.