Rant - lateness

I can't stand it when people are late. I'm ok if someone now and then turns up to things late, but it is the people who are consistently never on time that bug me. 5 minutes is ok, 10 minutes - maybe traffic, more than 15 minutes is incompetence and disorganisation. Let me give you a recent example. I have a friend who is renowned for being late. Great guy, but if he had to pick up $1 million by a certain time or lose it, he wouldn't end up being any richer. This guy will likely not even be on time for his own funeral. He told me he was coming around to my place at 1:00PM. About 12:45 I get an SMS saying that he will be around closer to 2:00PM, but hopefully before. So I go about my business and lose track of time (because I don't have to go anywhere). When I look at my watch its 2:30! He finally turned up at 2:45! This guy's life is not THAT important. He is single and lives with his parents about 15 minutes away from me, so WTF is he doing that makes him nearly 2 hours late?? In this case he didn't explain, but in the past when he has they are always very weak excuses. While this of course is not a massive disruption to my life cause I was at home and had stuff to do, similar incidents have happened while going out somewhere and I hate waiting for others. It's rude and inconsiderate to be late, so if you're this kind of person, get a fricken watch, spend the microsecond it should take a normal person to estimate how much time you need to get somewhere, then give yourself another 20 minutes cause you're probably an idiot without a realistic concept of time and then prepare yourself to go early. IT'S NOT THAT HARD!

This is also a problem in my workplace. Without going into the politics of my work, even though I work with a small team of people there are some who are constantly late. EVEN when they are on a shift where it is just them and the boss!! How stupid is that?! The boss might grumble at them, but there is no punishment! I'd be docking pay for it, cause a line has to be drawn. It means that the person who is on first often has to do more work and if it's busy of course it's even worse. Again there are other reasons the boss isn't too hard on us which I won't go into, but ultimately these people make the whole team look bad. If I can wake up early (which I hate as much as anyone) and make it into work on time, then anyone can. I too would like to spend an extra 10-20 minutes at home either sleeping in, or having more breakfast or whatever, but being on time to things demonstrates that you are a reliable and competent person which is how I would like to be seen.

Well I'm glad I got that off my chest. I should really state that I don't "hate" people who are late as such, but basically don't understand their behaviour for the reasons mentioned above. I hope this post doesn't come across as a Michael Richards racist, rage tirade type of thing. ;-)