One day when I was going through officer basic training in the Army, a person came in to lecture us heathens on military etiquette. I can recall only one item from his talk: If you are invited to attend a party at the general's residence at 1600 hours, when should you show up?
a) Ten minutes early.
b) Five minutes early.
c) Exactly on time.
d) No later than five minutes after the scheduled time
e) No later than ten minutes after the scheduled time.
The answer was c.
I think of that occasionally in my business life. I am naturally a five to ten minutes early person. The idea of being late is abhorrent to me. Surprisingly, I'm fairly tolerant when others are late. Perhaps that patience comes from knowing how much of my life has been spent sitting in the car while awaiting the magic moment when I can walk into the appointment. On the other hand, I've seldom been foiled by unexpected detours or traffic jams because I normally leave by three for an eight o'clock appointment. (Just kidding!)
Some people find simple punctuality so difficult that out of the entire day you can easily predict the point at which they will definitely not arrive and that is the time when they are scheduled to be there. They may be two minutes late or fifteen minutes late but you can bet one thing: They will not be there on the dot. They appear to be as driven to be late as those of us who are punctuality freaks are driven to be early or on time.
I find the gap between these two camps to be fascinating. As soon I can uncover some theories on the psychology behind the punctuality/impunctuality divide, I'll pass them along.
5 comments:
Put me in the spot on time camp. I have two business pet peeves. First, getting to a meeting on time then waiting for everyone else to show up. Second, people who don't return messages. Both display a lack of manners, which is nothing but consideration that others' time is as important as yours.
As a grunt, when my managers are consistantly late while all the grunts wait around, it shows they have absolutely no respect for our time. I find it hard to be to anything on time, but I take special care to be to meetings on time because I dare not waste other's time.
BTW - Thank you for serving your country!
Pawnking and Matt,
Thanks for your comments. I think you both have identified a major motive for punctuality: not wanting to make others wait. (So many things in life get back to The Golden Rule.)
Matt,
Re your BTW comment: You're welcome!
My parents had a coping tactic for dealing with the perenially late and the slavishly punctual people in their lives.
The always 30-40 minutes late couple were told that the dinner part was going to be an early on with a 7.30 kick-off and the scarily punctual people were told to arrive at 8.15 for 8.30 - and they both did.
And then they both loudly told the other couple what their instructions had been.
And only 3 out of the 4 of them thought it was funny ...
Rowan,
I think that is a reasonable solution! It is amusing though how some people who are "punctuality-challenged" will get upset if people make such adjustments.
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