I am Always Late

I believe that virtually every one of us has a friend or an acquaintance who is always late. Some of the ‘luckiest’ have a spouse or a close family member who has a habit of being up to 1-2 hours late and make other people wait for him or her. The sad thing is: sometimes such chronic latecomers feel no guilt or remorse for their bad habit thinking that they had more important things to do or more significant things to think over while others are waiting for them. Sounds familiar? I can imagine how much anger, discomfort and stress you can feel when you have to deal with such kind of guys.

Below, there is a list of helpful tips for those who have to stand on the habits of chronically late people, who have to deal with them closely and fall victims of their improper behavior. I hope you will find those helpful and useful.

1. Accept the situation as it is and get prepared for waiting for your late-coming counterpart. In order not to waste your time, you can get prepared for waiting by taking things to be done with you. You can use this time for scheduling your meetings and planning your activities, looking for useful info online or chatting online with your friends, reading a book or a newspaper, making all sorts of arrangements, proofreading documents, etc. etc. Also, it is possible to arrange your meeting with a latecomer in a bookstore or a shopping mall, where you can use your time more effectively than just idle waiting.

2. Be prepared for the latecomer to fuss around and bring out the most amazing (and always very stupid) reasons why they were late. They can blame their pets, their business partners, their relatives, traffic, acts of God – whatever, to justify their being late (again and again). Try to act neutral in this kind of situation, do not show openly that you do not buy their reasons, but be kind and solicitous. Do not display your anger or disappointment: this can lead to more serious and dramatic consequences.

3. Do not nag, do not argue and do not lecture chronic latecomers. As a rule, they are kings of arguing and they can easily outlast you bringing more and more arguments. Nagging and lecturing will not be helpful as well because by doing so you are showing that you actually care and make importance of this nasty habit of your counterpart. The best strategy in such case can be showing that you are actually independent on their time and do not rely on their being on time. This can work out (at least some day one day;) )

4. If your counterpart is a “severe latecomer” (always late for work, sometimes late for flights, etc.), you should clearly specify the time for how long you’re going to wait. Do not feel guilty for leaving without any warning if you waited for the specified amount of time. Finally, if you are certain that your counterpart will be late, you can tell him or her to actually come 30 minutes earlier, or you can show up for the meeting 30 minutes later. But this strategy puts you at risk of being late yourself.

There is a common belief that losers – whether they are losers in a certain competition or game, or they are total losers in this life – are usually acting more aggressively, and the winners usually act more tolerant and kind toward the defeated. However, it was found out that the realities of our life made winners act much more aggressively and tough towards the losers. Not only psychological tests and studies have shown this tendency, I am sure that all of us observed this type of aggressive behavior of the high and mightiest of our times almost everywhere around. Today’s psychologists and social experts are vividly discussing this social phenomenon in modern mass media.

“It seems that people have a tendency to stomp down on those they have defeated, to really rub it in,” said Brad Bushman,  professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University. His specialists carried out a couple of social modeling experiments with a number of participants (mainly college students), trying to find out how today’s winners behave toward the losers. It turned out that those who win a competition tend not only to show their superior position, but also act as aggressive as possible: in particular, in the task which involved using sound as an indicator of their feelings, the winners always used the loudest possible sound to indicate their emotions of aggression.

The cause of this saddening tendency is to be discovered yet, and the psychologists suggest that aggression is a reaction of the winners on their being superior and powerful which they become after winning a competition or something else in this life. The cause can be the feeling of power which is usually exercised by aggressive behavior. “People were more aggressive when they were better off than when they were worse off than others,” says the expert. Very often the aggression of the winners is directed toward not only the defeated, but also toward other people as well. Unfortunately, winning in something makes most of us forget that actually other people can be better and win in something else.

Therefore, we are actually facing a dilemma: we can stick with winners in this life, who are more aggressive and more tough to the people around, or we shall stick with losers, who can be a little less aggressive and more kind, but still failing to achieve success. What idea can be better – it’s up to everyone of us. Whatever your decision is going to be, there’s no need in fearing the winners and sympathizing the losers, cos’ this life is a vary complex game, and one day you are a winner, and another day you can be a loser, too. That is why we all should avoid aggressive behavior and being tough toward the others, for our own safety and success in this life.