Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No, you are not "running late", you are rude & selfish

gregsavage.com.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 132 posts

Re: No, you are not "running late", you are rude & selfish

#81

Post by radu_floricica »

patio11 wrote: post #78
guelo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geez, everything is a liberal conspiracy to some people. If you don't believe there are differences in punctuality between cultures then you just haven't experienced those cultures.

The line I called out was about "valuing relationships", which is both viscerally offensive to me and has no defensibly true meaning. It is like saying whites love their kids more than blacks do. It is too poorly constructed to even be wrong.

Sometimes I am really disappointed in HN's vote quality. This comment was downvoted to 0, even though it is a perceptive call on a not very rational habit. Yet, your grandparent comment was a blanket attack, unclear and probably much wider then you intended... and it's at score 7.

Re: No, you are not "running late", you are rude & selfish

#82

Post by mike-cardwell »

If I agree to meet someone at a certain time, I make sure I arrive early so as not to keep them waiting. I'd rather arrive early and wait, then arrive late and keep the other person waiting.

That is the only polite way to behave when meeting up with somebody.

Re: No, you are not "running late", you are rude & selfish

#83

Post by mike-cardwell »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #82

If I agree to meet someone at a certain time, I make sure I arrive early so as not to keep them waiting. I'd rather arrive early and wait, then arrive late and keep the other person waiting. That is the only polite way to behave when meeting up with somebody.

Also, if an event finishes at a set time of say 8pm, and I'm being picked up. I don't tell the person to pick me up at 8pm. I add maybe 10 minutes on top to make sure I'm out and ready and waiting when they arrive.

Re: No, you are not "running late", you are rude & selfish

#85

Post by [deleted] »

btilly wrote: post #22

I'm reminded of a talk at a medical conference about patient interaction. The talk was scheduled. People showed up. No speaker was visible. The doors closed. People sat there. Finally someone got unhappy enough to leave. Discovered that the doors were locked. Soon the whole room was up in arms. Then the speaker got up from the first row, went to the stage, and said, "I did this because no words are as effective as de…

[deleted]

Re: No, you are not "running late", you are rude & selfish

#86

Post by kelnos »

martinkallstrom wrote: post #52
megablast wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone is late, that is no problem, stuff happens. When someone is always late, that is rude and inconsiderate.

Perhaps the same way dyslectics (sp?) are inconsiderate by always being unable to spell correctly. From time to time, it would be acceptable. Consider that for the person that is always late, it is probably a bigger problem than for you. She has to endure it in all parts of her life. Assuming that the problem is that she simply doesn't care is as ignorant as assuming that a dyslectic simply doesn't care to learn how…

Analogy failure.

You can't just compare two things that on the surface may vaguely seem the same, and just assert they are the exact same thing.

Dyslexia is a recognized medical (psychological?) condition. Being chronically late is just rudeness, plain and simple. If you constantly lose track of the time, buy a watch. Set an alarm. Use a smartphone with a calendar that will remind you of things. Take responsibility for your actions and don't try to excuse the inexcusable as some sort of "condition."

Re: No, you are not "running late", you are rude & selfish

#87

Post by etherael »

tjmc wrote: post #70

This post is “very Sydney” as they say there. I lived there for 5 years and deliberate lateness was very much a part of the culture – a social signal that your time was more important than someone else’s. I fondly remember a quarterly kickoff meeting where my boss ripped one of the more pretentious reps a new one as she sidled in 30 minutes late. It didn’t happen again. Having said that - finding parking, catching pu…

Sydney is strange that way, populated largely by people doing very little and thus the idea of being particularly concerned about punctuality strikes them as novel, and yet there are still quite a few bastions of people who steadfastly refuse to just meander along with the herd.

These two segments of the local population always seem to grate on one another, this is a good case study of exactly how.

Re: No, you are not "running late", you are rude & selfish

#88

Post by kelnos »

joelmichael wrote: post #55
elbenshira wrote: post #7

Interestingly, this is mostly an American (and a also a Western) problem. In most of the world (South America, Middle East, Africa, East Asia, etc), "on time" ranges anywhere between 30 minutes to 3 hours later. We grade our personal productivity level much more than other cultures. Other cultures value other things such as community and relationships at a higher level than we do. A story: I was invited to an Indian…

We have the concept of "fashionably late" in the US, too. A late night party might be scheduled to start at 7 or 8, but people might not show up until 9 or 10.

I feel like that's a bit less severe and not really the same thing. For an open-ended party, people will trickle in as they feel like it, and no harm is done. For 8pm dinner reservations, one is expected to arrive and be ready to be seated by 8pm, for example.

Re: No, you are not "running late", you are rude & selfish

#89

Post by roel_v »

martinkallstrom wrote: post #52
megablast wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone is late, that is no problem, stuff happens. When someone is always late, that is rude and inconsiderate.

Perhaps the same way dyslectics (sp?) are inconsiderate by always being unable to spell correctly. From time to time, it would be acceptable. Consider that for the person that is always late, it is probably a bigger problem than for you. She has to endure it in all parts of her life. Assuming that the problem is that she simply doesn't care is as ignorant as assuming that a dyslectic simply doesn't care to learn how…

Yeah, that poor burglar, always breaking into houses which sucks for the people who live there, but consider how hard it is on him! Never knowing for sure how much loot there's going to be, and sleeping bad because you're always afraid the police will come to arrest you! Sure it sucks when your wedding ring is stolen, but he has to endure it in all parts of his life!

Snarkiness aside, being late is not a medical/neurological issue, or something that just /happens' to people. It's a character flaw that only exists because the person who has it doesn't have the will or willpower to change it. It affect everybody he/she interacts with yet through sheer arrogance and self-centeredness, nothing is done about it. No sugar coating on this one - I'm willing to accept that a minority of fat people do genuinely have medical issues, and that dyslectics truly have malfunctioning brains, but for people that are chronically too late, we shouldn't make excuses.

(not meant as an attack, if it sounds hostile it's because I've wound myself up over the this the last two weeks at least a dozen times. People are actually surprised when you're on time, or try to make it to appointments even when there are some minor obstacles! That attitude is so morally corrupt it makes me angry, luckily every now and then I meet someone who's not like this (like this morning) and then my blood pressure can go down again ;) )

Re: No, you are not "running late", you are rude & selfish

#90

Post by etherael »

wyclif wrote: post #80
tjmc wrote: post #70

This post is “very Sydney” as they say there. I lived there for 5 years and deliberate lateness was very much a part of the culture – a social signal that your time was more important than someone else’s. I fondly remember a quarterly kickoff meeting where my boss ripped one of the more pretentious reps a new one as she sidled in 30 minutes late. It didn’t happen again. Having said that - finding parking, catching pu…

Off-topic, but what do you think makes public transport in Sydney so bad? You're suggesting that it's so bad that it creates a kind of built-in lateness for most events?

Cityrail is heavily unionised, to the extent that it's not that rare of an occurrence that you will see staff standing at the ticket machines when you go to buy a ticket to stop you from doing so ( this seems to be their alternative to striking ).

This is in response to wage and staff concerns mostly, and I believe that the fares for the train services at least in Sydney are mandated to be fixed at a certain level unless they pass some kind of bureaucratic process. So, the union won't let the budget slide in the direction of infrastructure spending rather than wages and staff spending, simultaneously the fare fixing keeps the pool of money for the system fairly static.

Thus, infrastructure projects in public transport are glacial / non existent depending on your point of view, for about the past fifteen years I have been hearing about a line being added between Epping and Parramatta that is still yet to be completed, I'm not sure it's even been started.

The fact that the public transport is so bad results in people that really need to keep a tight schedule attempting to minimise their reliance on said system, they'll get a car or move some place very close to their place of work (thus perhaps contributing to the ridiculous rents and real estate prices in Sydney). The less people use it, the less people complain about it, the less reason the tragically inefficient system has to actually improve, and frankly it would probably take the threat of armed invasion to get them to pull their shit together at any rate.

Post reply on HN