Surely you have a friend who is always late when you meet for coffee and you find yourself with about 10 minutes of waiting in which you don’t even know what to do. Maybe you are that friend who is always late for appointments. And it seems that lateness is becoming an art, the art of wasting other people’s time and making a convincing excuse.
If you are one of those who are always late, you may be interested to know that being late is considered a lack of respect for the other person and that it can cause you more than one upset at work.
Lateness is a women’s thing
- Various studies suggest that lateness is a more characteristic feature of women than of men. It is true that women usually make men wait when it comes to an appointment because it is a social convention, something that is clearly seen at weddings, in which there is no boyfriend who has not had to wait at least half time for his imminent wife to arrive.
- But social conventions are made to be broken, especially when it comes to a custom that imposes a specific role according to gender and, above all, when punctuality is a virtue that says a lot about the seriousness, responsibility and professionalism of a person. And it is that the biggest problem with lateness occurs in the workplace, and there both men and women have the same attitude.
- There are people who are always late. But being late for an appointment with friends or family, or even a blind date, is not the same as being late for a work meeting, because being late can be grounds for dismissal.
How to avoid tardiness
- We are clear that arriving at the agreed time, whatever the situation, is a show of respect for the other person. That is something that people who are always late for their appointments also know and assure that their lateness is a matter that they cannot control. For all those people who are late by system and because they do not care at all about the time of others, we have no solution.
- But we do have some advice for those whose tardiness is motivated by an organizational problem. For them it is very important to have an agenda where they write down all the appointments and review it every hour, or set an alarm that notifies one hour before each appointment. It may be necessary to get up earlier to start the day with an organized and unhurried agenda and, in any case, it is advisable to avoid unnecessary distractions, such as checking Facebook, where time flies without you noticing.
- Always have a watch on hand, because many times the reason for being late for an appointment is that you don’t know what time it is. And a mental exercise that gives very good results is to make yourself believe that the appointment is 10 minutes before the agreed time. You lose nothing with these tricks to try to be punctual, nor does the person who is waiting for you if you manage to arrive on time.