Tips On Dealing With Those Who Are 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.