As I was sitting on my sofa watching sports center this morning waiting on the repair man to come fix my range fuming it got me thinking. It was 17 minutes past my scheduled time and I had not received a call from him. I was recently watching a documentary HBO aired on Vince Lombardi and it reminded me of the time I spent in the Military. They were interviewing Bart Starr about “Lombardi Time”. It was pretty much the same as Military time:
“If you’re 15 minutes early, you’re on time. If you’re 10 minutes early you’re 5 minutes late and if you’re 5 minutes early then you better have called or be in an accident because the meeting has started and the doors are locked.”
You may not think 17 minutes is much, but I called him and he returned my call at 24 minutes late to say he was on his way. He finally showed up 36 minutes late. He came to the door and stated “I’m here to fix the oven”, my reply was “You’re 36 minutes late”. This started a semi-heated exchange where he threatened to leave and I reminded him that as a business man your reputation should be paramount and with the state the economy is in I highly doubt he can afford to lose the business of not just my unit but the building as a whole. After thinking this over he begrudgingly stayed. While he worked he asked what I did and we made small talk. I explained to him that one of my biggest pet peeves is tardiness. It happens to us all and things do come up, but where I think people have gone wrong lately is not informing the party they are meeting they are running late.
All too often I’m waiting to meet someone at 8:00, I get a txt from them at 8:05 they are running late and on their way. They usually show up 30- 35 minutes late. Depending on the circumstance this could be a non-factor, but if I’m in a time crunch and I planned 45-60 minutes for the meal and have another 30-35 minute drive to X place to meet someone else then I’ve now become this person. I think the polite way to go about situations like this are to call them and honestly tell them what time frame you will arrive. How often have we said we’re on our way to a lunch/dinner when in fact we are just getting in the car and we were supposed to be there in 5 minutes? I have friends that when they show up on or near time it’s a miracle. When I make plans with them I usually try and trick them by telling them the event starts 30 minutes before it actually does or I arrive 15 minutes late since I know they won’t show up. Sometimes they try to put too many things on their plate and other times they have no real concept of how long certain things take to get completed.
The cable company and doctor’s offices are by far the worst at not holding up on a scheduled time. When I had Time Warner they gave me a window, a 4 hour window of when they would be there. Since I worked 5 blocks from my job at the time I asked if the service rep could call me when they were on their way. She said that since they were so busy they couldn’t; I told her that if the company wants my business then they can take 30 seconds to inform me they are leaving from the last job and coming to mine. After escalating this to 2 levels above her I finally got what I requested. The cable guy at 3:50 and my window was 12-4. This allowed me not to miss a ½ day of work and they still had a new customer to gauge.
I think with the me-first society that we live in being on time or even giving courtesy calls fell to the wayside. It’s no longer the norm to adhere to an agreed upon meeting time or to even tell someone truthfully when to expect you. They want to do something with you so they are on your schedule, its kind of like being at the post office. The line is 15 people deep, 1 person is working, 1 person is talking to her, and 10 people are in the back standing around.
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