Comments on @whatupwilly!: A Culture Of Lateness

ooh, you boys are hilarious, @Jordan and @whatupwi...

2010-01-18T10:00:14.937-08:00

ooh, you boys are hilarious, @Jordan and @whatupwilly. i guess Sapient attracted a certain type, because i hate it when people are late. i have my moments, on rare occasion, but i'm normally early.

i think some of it comes down to poor estimation abilities.

example: i have some lovely friends who i adore, but are perpetually, horribly late. they estimate it will take them 15 minutes to get to a restaurant from theirs.

however, they neglect to include the 8 minute walk from the flat to the tube station, the 4 minute walk from the tube station to the platform, waiting on the platform for 3 minutes for the next train, the 4 minute walk back to street level and another 6 minutes to get from the tube station to the restaurant.

so 25 minutes on top of the 15 minute tube ride, but they don't even leave 15 minutes before we're meant to meet! meanwhile, i get there at least 5 minutes early (due to 'padding' for unexpected delays), wait 25 minutes only to get a text that they'll be there in 5 (but is actually 10).

think my OCD comes from having a mom who was never on time for anything during my childhood and getting bored/impatient while i waited and waited and waited around for her.

it's highly disrespectful to others to be late, suggests your own priorities are more important than their time. life is chaotic, you have to plan for the unexpected and then at least be decent enough to let others know as soon as you can that you'll be delayed. flakiness is just not an acceptable excuse.

drives me bonkers. (to which some might reply, 'short drive')

x

@The Revolutionary - Your comment totally fascinat...

2010-01-13T10:01:55.590-08:00

@The Revolutionary - Your comment totally fascinates me. As someone who hates when people are late...but is someone who is chronically late...what do you think are your top 2-3 reasons why you are late?

This blog post from Penelope Trunk has some interesting thoughts on the topic: http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2007/03/12/5-ways-to-stop-being-late/

Thanks for sharing!

I absolutely agree - I HATE it when people run lat...

2010-01-13T09:46:29.519-08:00

I absolutely agree - I HATE it when people run late. It really is one of my pet peeves.

Ironically, I can't seem to ever get anywhere on time. I would be late to my own funeral, if given the opportunity.

And is it a surprise to anyone that @Jordan and I ...

2010-01-12T08:50:16.138-08:00

And is it a surprise to anyone that @Jordan and I worked together at Sapient? "Sapient, where employees get ulcers when they are late"

When I know that I will be late to an event I desc...

2010-01-11T18:54:08.771-08:00

When I know that I will be late to an event I describe it as "causing ulcers." This is especially a problem when I am going to be late because of someone else. That other person will say, "Ohhh don't worry. They expect us to be late." All I can think is, "no one expects me to be late."

Great feedback everyone! @traceythompson your com...

2010-01-11T16:30:01.870-08:00

Great feedback everyone! @traceythompson your comment is a blog post in itself. Good for you to for your self realizations and search for balance.

i also have a slight OCD in being on time as well,...

2010-01-11T12:36:03.133-08:00

i also have a slight OCD in being on time as well, although i have to say it's dwindled a bit, and i find myself running late sometimes. but i do ALWAYS give a heads up (what kills me is when people tell me 5 minutes AFTER we are supposed to meet that they will be even later). so in my opinion there are 2 types of people
1) people who are always running late, about 10/15 minutes
2) people who have no sense of time, and will schedule a one hour massage at 6pm, when they have to meet you at 7pm (this is a true story by the way)

i honestly think the bottom line is you can't ever truly change this behavior. you have to work around it. tell people in the #1 category to text you when they leave the house. bring a book. play a game on your phone. for people in the #2 category, same thing. tell them you will leave after 15 minutes of waiting (i've done that one before). i know some people who won't even make plans with a #2. if it something that drives you that crazy, avoid the situation. you can voice your frustration, but it ain't gonna do shit. but letting them know is still better than letting them get away with it.

While not excusing lateness, I've found there ...

2010-01-11T09:40:59.486-08:00

While not excusing lateness, I've found there to be a high correlation between a particular brand of perfectionism and lateness.

I was one of those kids who got straight A's, played varsity sports, had a part time job, volunteered, all while also going to community college on top of my high school classes. There was a certain expectation that I could do anything. I had to succeed. No goal was too high. Failure was unacceptable.

I couldn't say no to an invitation to responsibility. Take on an extra shift at work? Sure, I'll just stay up all night to get my homework done. 5 am track practice, okay, I can do that, I'll be there. I never slept. I drove like a maniac trying to get from one thing to another. I couldn't lose time anywhere because I hadn't budgeted time for delays.

I went to college and kept going down this road of madness. I worked 3 jobs, went to school full time, and participated in school activities, community events, never slept.

I was late to things. I was late to class, I turned in assignments late, I worked long hours to make up time. Usually it was 5 minutes here or there, sometimes more. Sometimes I'd come early to meetings just to sleep outside the room until the rest of my team showed up. Every minute mattered but I was always getting hung up on the last superimportant thing I had to do. I didn't see it as being late. I saw it as "well I'm working so hard ".

The biggest thing I could have been doing was saying no. I could have been telling myself it's okay to turn something down because I just couldn't fit it in. But that was unacceptable. Not taking on and completing a project was as good as failing.

My first corporate job my boss pulled me aside and told me she was disappointed in my unreliability. I was furious. I completed all my projects on time no matter how ridiculous the changes were from the client. I put in late hours to get my designs to be just right, I worked over lunches to help improve workflow, I attended night school to learn more skills for my job, and yet here I was being chided for 5 minutes here, 15 there (in LA traffic too! ugh). I thought it was absolutely absurd that my boss valued a few minutes over the contributions I thought I was making.

I realized that taking on so many things at the expense of other projects was really hurting me. No one saw me pushing myself relentlessly as a strength, instead they saw my lateness as a failure. It was an endless cycle of my lateness preempting the value of my work, so I'd work longer hours and harder to prove I was valuable, only to come in later because I was exhausted. I was running myself ragged in a no-win.

So I sat down and started to think about my life in terms of my priorities. I know it sounds really silly, but if you're someone like me it's very difficult to say one thing is more important than another. Someone's counting on you to do y, how could it be more important that x?

It's taken years to be able to learn to balance out my schedule and set reasonable goals. I slip back from time to time (right now being one of those time as I'm in a financial crunch), but I have become more aware of how my lateness will be perceived by others and I have been able to plan accordingly.

I was 10 minutes early to work today. :)

I think part of the culture of lateness comes from this idea that we HAVE to do everything or we have somehow failed. Companies can't both discourage lateness and encourage schedule overloading but many of them do. I imagine your late CEO is coming from that same mindset. Congrats for sending your email to him, the best things we can do to overcome cultures of lateness and cultures of perfectionism is to be honest.

Kudos for pressing "send" and letting hi...

2010-01-10T20:39:41.285-08:00

Kudos for pressing "send" and letting him know what was up. Seemed like he needed a wakeup call. I must admit, I tend to run late for appointments or dinners (usually arriving with a lame excuse of some kind). But this post is a good reminder for me to be on time...and btw...you were late for our first date...even if it was one minute. SUCKA ;)