Tardiness

[simonworden]

I've got a mate at work who is absolutely useless with timekeeping. One of those that even trying to put his socks on, something happens to him types. I do like the guy personally and know he's not been feeling too perky recently (his useless time keeping predates this) so try to go out of my way to delay my lunch so it fits with his schedule at least once a week. This week it only worked on Wednesday where I've got a tight 45-minute gap. Of course, come 12.30 he hasn't surfaced, 12:40 and no sign so I message him to say I'll see him downstairs for lunch. I manage to get through a long queue. eat a whacking great big plate of food and return upstairs only to find that I'm just getting a message now with "Oh, sorry people wanted to talk to me.". So today I've had a pop and told him he should've either asked them to pick up the conversation later or at least drop me a message out of respect which the idea of seems to have shocked him. Are we really in a world where keeping time and communicating any emerging issues is considered too much, not necessary and ridiculous?

[Lorne Malvo]

@simonworden I've got a mate who is absolutely ridiculous for stuff like this. We will arrange to meet at the pub for 7:30. I'll get there, drop him a message to say 'just got here' and 9 times out of 10 he'll reply with 'okay, just getting in the shower now'. 

Luckily I don't mind sitting on my own and having a few drinks but it's just the lack of foresight and respect to let people know you're going to be late that winds me up. 

[DavidB6937]

2 minutes ago, Lorne Malvo said:

Luckily I don't mind sitting on my own and having a few drinks but it's just the lack of foresight and respect to let people know you're going to be late that winds me up. 

Yeah it's definitely this more than anything for me. I get things change but it's easier than ever to get in touch with someone and let them know so if someone can't take a few seconds to send a message then are they really worth it?

[gmoney]

44 minutes ago, Lorne Malvo said:

@simonworden I've got a mate who is absolutely ridiculous for stuff like this. We will arrange to meet at the pub for 7:30. I'll get there, drop him a message to say 'just got here' and 9 times out of 10 he'll reply with 'okay, just getting in the shower now'.  

I've got a mate who's like this and he's always been like it. One time when we were about 16, I went to his first before we went out to meet other people and I thought I could shuffle him out the door on time, but he would drop bombshell after bombshell.

"Come on mate, let's go!"

"Hold on, mum's just doing dinner"

"Fucking hell. Ok, wolf that down then we'll go"

15 minutes later

"Ready?"

"Yeah let's go. I've got to drop something off at my Nan's first though. It's a mile in the other direction."

[BomberPat]

yeah, I had a mate who was notorious for sending a "just getting in the shower" text at the time you'd agreed to meet at the pub, knowing he then had a good half hour on the bus before he actually got to you. The one time that was so stupid I couldn't even be angry at him for it was getting a text saying, "I was about to head out, but I'm full of pasta and had to have a sit down".

It's frustrating because on one hand you think you're just used to and should plan accordingly, but sod's law is that if you tell them half an hour earlier than you mean in the hope that they'll actually show up on time, or if you think you're safe to be running a little late, that's the one time they get there early.

My partner has a friend who used to be awful for something similar to this; you'd invite her to do something, and she'd always say "I'll see how I feel and let you know on the day". Which basically meant she expected you to not make alternative plans and still be available, but she was free to decide five minutes beforehand that actually she couldn't be bothered. Everyone has every right to cancel if they're not feeling it, but that was her default position on every social engagement, basically saying she didn't value your time and effort nearly as much as she valued the option of just sacking it off.

My time management basically defaults to "everything takes either half an hour or an hour". If something is ten minutes away, it may as well be half an hour away, and I'll plan accordingly. If something is more than half an hour away, it's an hour away. Anything that takes longer than that may as well take all day. If I have something planned for later in the day, I basically just waffle about doing nothing because I know I have that event hanging over me, so I never get around to doing anything else. And if I'm meeting someone somewhere, I usually get there a good half hour early, find a nearby pub if we're not already meeting in one, and have a quiet drink and read a book. The downside of that is that when someone is then half an hour late, chances are I've already been there an hour by the time they get there.

[waters44]

Yep I feel your pain! We have one mate who is ridiculously late every time. I refuse to meet him one on one now because you could be waiting hours for him to turn up. So I only ever meet him if others are going too. 

Last time we were due to meet at 7. Get a text on the group chat at 8 to say he was just picking a Nando’s up for his wife. He gets to us about 9 and heard us moaning about him which was a bit awkward. He then expects us to be out for a few hours with him, not considering we’ve already been out for a while, and as we are now old men our beds are calling as the clock approaches 10pm.

So basically the quick catch up between the rest of us has finished just as he’s ordering food. It’s crap really but the other option is not include him which sucks as well. 

[deathrey]

2 hours ago, Lorne Malvo said:

@simonworden I've got a mate who is absolutely ridiculous for stuff like this. We will arrange to meet at the pub for 7:30. I'll get there, drop him a message to say 'just got here' and 9 times out of 10 he'll reply with 'okay, just getting in the shower now'. 

Luckily I don't mind sitting on my own and having a few drinks but it's just the lack of foresight and respect to let people know you're going to be late that winds me up. 

Yeah I had a friend that was like this, it got the the point that even when I factored in her lateness, it still messed up all our plans. Once for her birthday, as surprise I had booked something nice for her in Leeds (our closest city) gave her plenty of warning, she was still late as fuck and was ignoring my calls and messages when I tried to find out where she had got to other than one message saying 'getting ready, be there soon'. We missed the booking and I absolutely lost my shit at her that day, I'd taken the day off work and had lost money on the booking. The lack of respect for my time really fucked me off.

We aren't friends anymore as she ended the friendship after I had kids as she didn't feel we had anything in common any more. I'm sure me losing my shit at her probably had a big part to play in it but she needed to hear how her actions effect other people as I think she was genuinely oblivious to it.

 

[Chest Rockwell]

14 minutes ago, deathrey said:

We aren't friends anymore as she ended the friendship after I had kids as she didn't feel we had anything in common any more.

I know this isn't the point of the post, but I have to enquire... Was this something that was explicitly said then? I wasn't aware that this was a thing that happens.. I thought you just drift apart and leave it mutually understood and not said. I've never really heard of someone explicitly 'ending' a friendship unless there was a specific single big event that led to it. 

[deathrey]

16 minutes ago, Chest Rockwell said:

I know this isn't the point of the post, but I have to enquire... Was this something that was explicitly said then? I wasn't aware that this was a thing that happens.. I thought you just drift apart and leave it mutually understood and not said. I've never really heard of someone explicitly 'ending' a friendship unless there was a specific single big event that led to it. 

That is generally what happens with friendships in my experience too but in this case it was explicitly said.

I had messaged her asking if everything was ok as she'd been a bit distant and given one word answers when I had messaged her and she replied saying that she felt the friendship had run it's course and that now I had a baby she didn't think we had anything in common anymore.

I replied saying that making it clear that I didn't feel the same way and it made me sad that she felt that way but there should be no compulsion in friendship so if that's how she felt I would respect her wishes.

It was pretty awful, she had one of my bestfriends and it felt a bit like a bereavement if I'm honest. Took me a while to get over it. It's five years later and I still get quite upset when I think about it for too long. We have friends in common but we just don't talk about her. She was at a mutual friend's wedding last year, that was awkward.

Edited February 4 by deathrey

[King Coconut]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

that's the one time they get there early.

 

Yeah, but fuck them. 

[tiger_rick]

Slightly the opposite, an Xmas night out was arranged on our group chat. 6pm in town. The week before, the "where are we meeting?", "what's everyone wearing?" and "what time are you getting there?" starts. We get a few excuses for 6pm, due to work, kids, etc and a few are coming to find us at 7 or 8 or whatever, which is all good. Then some start saying "I'll be in town for 2." Then others jump on that and then we've got "I can be there for 2 but I'll need to go about 5." 

I was mainly annoyed because I had something on in the afternoon so 6 was great but suddenly there's an afternoon out that half of us can't make. What the fuck happened to 6? 

Other people make life annoying.

[Lorne Malvo]

Don't even get me started on trying to make plans in group chats. We've got one for our monthly curry night and out of the 8 or 10 of us who regularly go, there will be me and maybe two others lads who actually try to organise anything in there. The rest just exist as happy bystanders who don't dare try to take on any of the work of planning these things. One of them put on there a few weeks back 'Its been a few months since we've gone for a curry' - you fucking sort it then! 

Then there's a few lads who just half-read a message, or don't read it at all, then want you to recap everything for them because they're too lazy to read the chat back.

There's one chap especially (and he's not even really a mate of mine, more a mate of a mate) who is just an absolute fucking drip when it comes to things like this. This was one of our exchanges the other day;

Me: So the plan is, we're meeting in the pub at 5:30 then will walk on down to the curry house about 7.

The drip (in the VERY NEXT MESSAGE): So we're meeting at the curry house at 5:30 yeah?

He's a schoolteacher too! The next generation is doomed. 

[DavidB6937]

Even worse when you're on holiday with a bunch of people - either your mates, or stupidly extended family. 

People being late for breakfast.

People then using breakfast to argue over what to do with the rest of the day.

The rest of the day being all stressed and ruined by everyone clearly pissed off with each other.

Spend ages looking forward to a holiday and then realising you'd have been more relaxed at home by yourself.

I'd never go on holiday with extended family again. Awful idea.

[waters44]

We’ve been friends with another couple who also only have one daughter for years and in all that time we didn’t have one single crossed word.

We decided to all go on holiday together, thinking the adults can chill out while the two girls go off and do fun things together etc. Great idea but as soon as we got there everyone just bickered the whole time! It was absolutely bizarre to be honest, just amazing how you can all be best pals in small doses but it all falls to pieces when you spend a longer amount of time together. 

[HarmonicGenerator]

29 minutes ago, Lorne Malvo said:

Don't even get me started on trying to make plans in group chats. We've got one for our monthly curry night and out of the 8 or 10 of us who regularly go, there will be me and maybe two others lads who actually try to organise anything in there. The rest just exist as happy bystanders who don't dare try to take on any of the work of planning these things. One of them put on there a few weeks back 'Its been a few months since we've gone for a curry' - you fucking sort it then! 

Absolutely! I tend to be the designated admin person in our group, trying week after week to get people to just say when they're available, trying to coordinate it together, figuring out which one night across four months everyone can actually make ... then half of them drop out the day before. It's an absolute arse, and every time someone posts a "shall we get together?" "When's good for this?" "it's been ages", I know it'll fall to me to actually figure it out, and that it won't end up happening anyway. It's even more annoying when four of them live streets away from each other and I'm an hour and a half away by train, but I know if I don't do it, none of the rest of them will be motivated enough to do anything and we'll just not see each other again. Arse!