This is going to feel like I am slamming some people and I’m sorry for that. I’m not trying to. I am trying to express my feelings about something that is quite prevalent in my social circles.
I think that punctuality is at the basic core of showing someone respect. I think that habitual tardiness and flakiness is about the same thing as saying, “Fuck you.” This is why I normally show up 10-30 minutes early for everything. There is a very very very short list of people in my life who are habitually tardy and from whom I have learned that either I lie to them about when I want them to show up (why yes Virginia, I did tell you to show up an hour earlier than everyone else) or I make it clear that if they are more than 15 minutes late I will be leaving. I have left. Given that we live in the bay area I feel about 15 minutes of variation is reasonable because traffic often sucks mightily. If you are going to be more than 15 minutes late you call and profusely apologize. I usually call and apologize profusely if I am going to be 3 minutes late, but I understand that other people aren’t going to be that much of a stickler.
And if you are going to show up at some point, you don’t know when… it’s probably not a good idea to make plans with me. I don’t say that because anyone is terrible or awful, but because I don’t handle that well. It’s a major personality quirk/pet peeve. If someone tells me they will show up around X o’clock then I expect them to show up within a window of 15 minutes before or after that time. That is simply how I view the world. I would rather not make plans with someone than have someone show up at a very flexible time. I get angry. I get livid. I get to the point of being so angry that I will not enjoy the time I have with someone. It’s just not something I should do.
This gets more complicated when it comes to people helping me. 🙁 I’m not very good at expressing my expectations all the time. Compound this with my unusual degree of extreme focus on punctuality and you wind up with a situation where I just shouldn’t ask anyone to help me at all. Because I wind up sounding like an ungrateful bitch. I’m aware of it. But I really don’t think I am capable of changing the fact that it is a core issue to me that I experience tardiness as a grave personal insult. I try to express this to people individually and many of my friends tease me about the fact that they show up on time for stuff with me better than anyone else because they know how angry I will get otherwise.
I know this is setting a high bar on knowing me/spending time with me. On one hand I feel like I shouldn’t because then no one will think it is worthwhile to spend time with me. I feel like I am too demanding. I feel like I am an awful person. But this is really important to me. I show respect for the people in my life by valuing their time and showing up when I say I will. I know my friends are busy and that they have a lot of things they could be doing with their time so I’m grateful that they chose to carve out a block of it to share with me and I want to demonstrate my appreciation by showing up for all of it.
This is hard right now because there are a lot of things I can’t do for myself. This is making me dependent on other people in ways I normally refuse to be dependent. This means that I am at the mercy of people who may or may not show up exactly when they say they will or who may or may not fulfill what I think they have agreed to. This is making me even more touchy and inflexible about people following through because I am vulnerable. I hate this. I want to go back to doing things for myself. I want to not need anyone anymore.
There are still a lot of boxes in the garage and at this point I don’t want help from anyone else. I will get it done by myself. Noah gets angry because I will push harder physically than I “should” but I think that doing it on my own and ending up in physical pain is better than feeling betrayed and angry and frustrated with the people in my life. I will get over being physically hurt a lot faster than I will get over feeling emotionally hurt.
I’m so sorry love. I understand how you feel – and I don’t think that you’re off target at all. I had a similar frustration with the bridal shower I threw this weekend — most of the people didn’t RSVP so I had no clue how much food to prepare. I also included in the invitation explicit directions from their house to the shower – I mapquested for 30 different homes, but I *still* had people who rsvp’d yes claim that they couldn’t find the place. *le sigh* It’s very hard to count on people.
I hope this hasn’t soured you for good on asking for help. I wish I could have been available, but until the wedding is over I’m pretty solidly booked.
It isn’t that I want people to drop their lives and help me. It really isn’t. It is more that I need to be more aware of how badly I communicate some things and I need to limit my requests for assistance to people who have already been “broken in” so to speak in terms of tolerating/allowing for my quirks.
It’s a generational thing, I’m afraid.
A few years ago, when I was still living in my loft, I gave a party for my friends. It turned out to be a very successful party, but up until it was actually up and running I thought it was going to bomb, because a huge number of attendees had not bothered to RSVP. When I looked at the actual list of non-RSVPers, all of them were under 40.
In a fit of pique, I went online and re-set the age criteria on all my personal ads up to 45-60… and that was the search that popped E up.
What I don’t know is whether your generation will become more considerate/etiquette-oriented as you age, or whether it’s simply a different value set that will stay with you throughout your lives. But there is a big difference on this one between my generation and yours.
So you are saying I can list this as one of the reasons why I have always gotten along better with people who are much older than me?
I don’t know that I can say with absolute certainty that it is generational, but my experience is the same.
There are very few of my friends under 35 who I would consider timely. This goes (to a lesser degree) for co-workers as well.
Punctuality has become one of the gotta-have traits for anyone I’m involved with. Luckily, my new lover is, even though she is under 35.
Its more a ‘cultural’ thing. I worked for a company at one point that did workshops on both coasts. West coasters were continuously late and we had to constantly try to reinforce timeliness. East coasters you only need to make the point once that 5pm was on time, 5:01 was late, and it was seriously rare for them to show up late without a damn good reason, and in that case they would still apologize for having not been on time. Now that I’m living back in the Midwest I again find most folks show up on time, and look embarrassed if they’re even 5 minutes late. (well at least among the type who would never show up to work stoned)
This is odd for me..
Because when I call (as I do when I’m going to be even a couple minutes late) I’ve gotten the impression that you were sorta “why are you bothering to call me and tell me you’re running two minutes late?”. That may be due to our different phone styles (mine sucks) or other communication differences.
My thoughts are with you, hope you and the bun are doing well.
T.
Re: This is odd for me..
Probably mostly a tone of voice thing. I often sound impatient/frustrated when I don’t feel that way.
The Lizard seems to be doing well. 🙂
I was brought up to believe that 5 min early is on time and on time is close to being late…
I totally understand… it really bugs me….. a lot! I dated a guy for 3 years who was always late. In the end we no longer made dates with a time frame… he’d call me when he was on his way over.. like actually in the car. That gave me enough time to get ready.
Maybe it’s a generation thing? I too get along with older people. I also think it might be a first born thing…the strictness etc.
I’m the baby of four kids. 🙂
It’s not just a generational thing. I was married to a guy my age (we’re two weeks apart) who was constantly late for everything. The only reason he wasn’t late to our wedding was because it was at his house. He started getting a little better about it the last couple of years we were together, but basically for the first 10 years I knew him. he was famous for being late. And having seen it from inside (well, as inside as a spouse gets), it wasn’t because he was invested in keeping his reputation or avoiding events or anything. He would simply not be quite ready, or he’d suddenly remember something, and maybe then one more thing…
OTOH, he’s not the first born. I am. I’ve been compulsively punctual (5+ minutes early = on time) most of my life and only now am I starting to get over it. Which is a good thing, given how often I put myself at the mercy of other (very generous, mind you) people’s schedules. Maybe it is related to birth order.
I usually feel like it is a little bit rude to show up to my friends houses on time for parties, because they aren’t ready yet. So for largish parties I intentionally aim 15 minutes late. Some people I know are habitually late enough that even if it’s just me showing up to their house for brunch I’ll aim for 15-30 minutes late, once when we were running early we intentionally parked a ways away and hung out in the car for a while before showing up. I try to tune for the people, some people I know are really late, so I try not to be on time, some people are more on time, so I try more to be on time. It’s pretty complicated, but it’s all about knowing people. I guess it’s the whole platinum rule thing, right? The Golden Rule is do unto others as you’d be done by, but the Platinum Rule is do unto others as you know they want to be done by… Not that I’m that good at it or anything. I usually run 5-10 minutes late unless I think it matters. I’ll try to remember that you’re an on-time person.
I’m also a procrastinator. I meant to respond to your request for help saying that we were full-up this weekend, but if you still need help next weekend I could come up. It sounds like you don’t want to deal with more help, but if you change your mind you can email me and I’d be happy to come up and run boxes. My CRV isn’t huge inside, but it’s got more trunk room than your Prius.
And don’t push yourself, dude, it’s about the lizard.
We actually finished getting stuff out of storage. Noah is totally awesome like that. At this point it’s just unpacking and sorting and normal chore type stuff. I’ll be dandy handling all that on my own. I don’t need to lift boxes from the garage to elsewhere in the house if they are heavy–I just take more trips. It’s a little annoying, but not too bad and it means I get to do stuff entirely on my own which makes me happier.
Thanks for the offer though.
You know, I can totally see where you’re coming from in regards to people offering to help then behaving badly and your seeming like a total bitch. It just doesn’t compute. If someone offers to HELP me, that doesn’t mean they get a free pass on behaving as they should. You’re not indebted to that person because the help was voluntarily given.
I agree – habitual tardiness (while I know some folks just cannot seem to help it) is quite disrespectful and totally irritating. I’ve become more lax in that area over the past few years, but most gatherings/parties I attend involve people who are the same way. It’s usually not a big deal if you’re late. However, if there is something specific scheduled for a specific time – dude… I’ll give you a little while. Then I’m starting without you!
This is hard right now because there are a lot of things I can’t do for myself. This is making me dependent on other people in ways I normally refuse to be dependent. This means that I am at the mercy of people who may or may not show up exactly when they say they will or who may or may not fulfill what I think they have agreed to. This is making me even more touchy and inflexible about people following through because I am vulnerable. I hate this. I want to go back to doing things for myself. I want to not need anyone anymore.
In the first years of my injury after my accident, I encountered this a lot. I think the feeling of a loss of control over one’s life is one of the hardest things about becoming physically dependent on others. I hate it, too.
I try to do the 15 early, no later than 15 late thing and call when I know it will be later than that. I’m aware of it more with you, because you have stated your preferences to me loudly and clearly before. heh.