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.

Definitely most of us have such friends or colleagues who are always late, so it is necessary to wait for them all the time. It happens all the time, when they’re getting ready to go out or must  finish up something they are doing. And, the most irritating thing is: such people do not feel responsible or sad because of their nasty habit. This can be really frustrating and depressing, but, unfortunately, we have to deal with such kind of people quite often.

Have you ever thought that social level and wealth of people can play a role in developing bad habits like being always late? The scientists at the University of California at Berkeley have published the findings of their study which state that wealthy people actually tend to behave unethically, especially towards other people around them.

After analyzing people’s social rank based on such factors as education, wealth, the type of occupation and occupied position, etc., the experts came to quite surprising and unexpected conclusions. It turned out that those who achieved professional success, who have some wealth and are occupying relatively high positions in the business organizations are actually have much stronger tendency to such things as cheating, breaking the law, telling lies, and demonstrating other types of unethical behavior. At that, in most of the situations such behavior is directed to other people, or on making the life of other people harder and more problematic.

As the experts underline, more and more of current events are showing that relatively wealthy and rich people are actually more greedy and more focused on own interests and problems compared to the people with lower income. In particular, the analysis of San Fransisco experts have demonstrated that those who have more expensive cars are more often involved in traffic accidents and cut off other cars. In the framework of other experiment, it was found out that wealthier people tended to admit that they used lies and other types of unethical behavior in order to win in a card game or receive a 50 dollar prize.

In a similar way, wealthier and richer people do not see anything unethical when they are 1 or 2 hours late for their meetings. However, according to the experts, the top moving factor of this tendency is feeling power. Having some financial savings make people believe that they mean something and have power. That’s why they are convinced that they have right to cheat, lie, and show all other type of unethical behavior toward other people.  There thoughts and always fed up from being greedy and being scared of the necessity to share their power with others. Certainly, the UC experts underline that the findings should not be applied to all wealthy people of modern times.

Being always late is a habit of many people around us. Usually, this habit starts forming in those times when we are teenagers and are learning to make decisions on our own. Some teenagers turn into chronic latecomers because they are just slow by their nature. Some teenagers are really overloaded with their daily activities, duties or responsibilities, so they are getting used to always running behind their schedules and being always late. Some teenagers are lazy and do not actually care about anything, they prefer spending their time playing PC games or watching TV shows thinking that they will always manage to escape responsibility for their life. There can be other factors and reasons causing this nasty habit in young people.

Those who are thinking that being chronically late is not a big deal and this habit will never bring to anything serous can check out the list below and think about it again. Is it worth to spend time for laziness or ding useless things if this can lead to quite serious problems? Do not underestimate the power of punctuality, and if you are having issue with this, go on reading.

1. By being always late you can easily lose your job. Certainly, your potential employer will not like you being late, and even your being on time for the first job interview may not save the situation. Being late for work means for the employers showing no respect to them, both professionally and personally.

2. By being always late you can lose your money. It is possible to pick a great deal of examples to illustrate this example. If you’re late, your tickets can be given away, your items can be sold , your food can be eaten and your place can be taken. You can miss some important events and opportunities, you can lose your chances and miss your good luck. Remember that making plans and learning how to follow them will help you avoid these situations and not to lose important things in your life.

3. By being always late you can lose your friends. Living or dealing with the people who are always late is extremely distressful, and quite a few of your true friend can be ready to endlessly wait for you being late for meeting, for lunch or for any other occasion. They can understand that you may have had other very important things to do, but if your habit of being always late affects their plans and their life, they will make a right choice and sooner or later try to eliminate you from their life.

4. By being always late you can lose your reputation. If you are always late, people will feel that they can not trust you, and it is very hard to achieve success in the life for those who do not evoke trust in others. Remember that this nasty habit can cost you a lot and turn your existence into a really miserable one.