Thursday, October 28, 2010

Lets Be Punctual

Punctuality definitely means a lot to me. I'm proud to say that I am the most punctual person I know. Unfortunately, I seem to have friends and family that are on the other end of the scale. And guess what? It is my No. 1 peeve! It drives me absolutely crazy. The only people I make excuses for are parents with young children - genuinely unexpected happen to them that often require immediate attention.

There are two things worse than a person being late. The first is not letting the other party know they are going to be late. And second, only letting the other party know they will be late at the time that they were supposed to have arrived. That drives me even crazier. Surely, they would have known earlier that they couldn't make it on time.

I think some people are habitually late. And in some places, it is expected that people will be late. In Malaysia, people operate on Malaysian time. Its a sad fact that wedding invitations will always print the start time half an hour before the time they hope to start the celebrations. This is stupid because everybody knows it and only start arriving after that half hour and by the time everybody dribbles in, its an hour after the printed start time. And for people like me who even more stupidly hold to the principle of being punctual, its an annoying one hour of drinking chinese tea and eating peanuts.

In Indonesia, the official term is 'jam karet'. This translates to elastic time. You can just imagine how much of a priority punctuality over there is.

I know I can't change the way people are. All I can do is live by what I believe in and then grumble on the inside when I have to wait. But people, its not that hard to be on time.

First, find out what time you have to be somewhere. Then, list down all the things you need to do before hand and how long they take. Don't forget to include travel time. Once you've added all the time up, add on ten minutes to be on the safe side and work backwards from the time of your appointment. If you get delayed for longer than ten minutes, call to say you're running late. Its simple!

*Sorry for the rant but I was left waiting a little too long today.*

4 comments:

NomadicExpat said...

Uh oh... who left you waiting? I'm with you on punctuality. However, at times, I do run late but I always let the other person know in advanced.

Mike said...

I think the late arrivers like the dramatic entrance they make when finally showing up.

Scott and Elaine said...

Sorry to hear that you had to wait. It is also one of my top pet peeves! People can be so inconsiderate. Actually, the thing that is worse than being late and not calling, is when you've set aside the day to meet this person(s), and then either don't call or call late to let you know they can't make it, so you've wasted your morning/evening/day and if you've prepared something special like home made juice or cakes etc, then that's even worse! It has happen quite a few times that I've kinda felt really let down and my trust in people showing up isn't very great.

Jean-Luc Picard said...

I agree with puctuality. I don't like peoploe to be habitually late either.