People who have to be late

[Brad]

It can be extremely annoying. It seems to happen sometimes in business where people are a few minutes late for a call. I'm guilty of that myself on occasion and I usually just make appointments, unlike my wife who is always 15 to 20 minutes early. It drives her crazy that I do things at the last second. It's hard to tolerate people however who do this constantly, especially if they are more than 15 minutes late.

We have friends who never show up on time so we tell them to show up 15 minutes sooner than they need to and that seems to work out well.

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

But in everyday life, I've got things that HAVE to be at on time more or less. If I'm paying good money for a gymnastics class for my daughter and she misses 1/4 of her class every week because the pickup mom is habitually late...that's money down the drain for me. I don't work my ass of in bars so some beotch mom can be late and waste my money. I pick her kid up on time, she can do the same for me.

A word to those on the board who admit to always being late.... Don't be...it's really a drag for everyone else and nobody thinks it's cute anymore. That's just the honest truth from those afraid or too nice to tell you so.

I totally agree. In 8 years of morning drop offs and afternoon pick ups at school, I've never been more than 10 minutes late -- and that was the 2 or 3 times when I suddenly got stuck in traffic on the Washington Beltway because someone decided to dive off a bridge or something. Since I'm there 99.98% of the time when I'm supposed to, I expect other people to do the same...period. Now, if it's an adult-related function/interaction/gathering, I'll obviously cut some slack and not get wrapped around the axle.....but when it's kids, you had better be on the ball. The thing that also yanks me off is when people schedule a B'Day party for their child at some location that takes me a half hour to get to on a Sat. morning, only to have the host parents show up a forty-five minutes late. Dolts.

If I were you, I'd absolutely have a frank conversation with the mother.

[zen archer]

I have a client who is always late ....it's unprofessional.

[Niko]

last week a student came here, so we could go through his seminar talk before he does it and he was 20 minutes early, so i said "well, your bad, i am not really done with my preparations, but it will work out, i hope" and he didn't say he was sorry or anything but said he had a long way for coming here and thus could not really plan his arrival (a fine excuse for someone who is ten minutes late, but 20 minutes early? besides, he works here so he should not complain about having to come here...) strange guy

[Soul Stream]

I think I was having a particulary bad day when I posted this thread. Didn't mean to offend anyone on a personal basis, especially my admittidly preachy last post!

[billyboy]

As Julian Barnes said, "Punctuality is the virtue of the bored."