My makeup artist lives two hours away from the shoot location and she texted me saying she was leaving at 8am to make the 10am call time. She didn’t give herself any time in case she got lost, which she did and showed up 30 minutes late, leaving me, the designer, and the model just sitting around waiting for her to show up. It made me look bad because I brought her in to do hair and makeup. And on top of that she took two hours doing hair and only left me 45 minutes to shoot. As much as I love the girl, it really makes me not want to ask her to assist me on a shoot again.

I had to stop using an intern because I sat outside his house calling him and knocking on his door for 20 minutes. We were picking him up to take on a photo shoot. He knew what time we were picking him up and once he realized I was calling him, he took another five minutes to leave the house. I never asked him to help on a shoot again.

It seems like such common sense to be on time but so many people just don’t get it.

As someone who’s been working diligently to change my relationship with time for meetings, I’ll just add a tip that’s working for me in the event it may help others who can have difficulty with timeliness:

You may not experience the feeling of time and schedules until there’s great pressure (see http://visual-spatial.org and deadline-driven artists). That means it’s important to create new habits and not rely on “feeling” as a sensor because it’s not giving you information until it’s too late. Enter every meeting in your calendar with a buffer of time needed to get there. Then set alarms on every event in in your calendar to give you an extra chunk of time on top of that. The new habit is intellectual and feels unnatural. That’s the point. Once you do it enough, you develop a new feeling.

15 minutes is plenty early if you ask me, and if you arrive earlier than that, find a cool place to hang out, get caught up, etc. until it’s closer to meeting time.

I think it depends a lot on the number of people that you make waiting for you. If you are the keynote speaker you shouldn’t be late, period. If it is a one on one business meeting, one can be late if the previous meeting required more time. If someone repeatedly shows up late in a meeting where 5 people are waiting for him/her, well in that case he/she should adapt. If your meeting partner(s) will be late as well probably, as over here in Argentina the average delay is 30 minutes, then you just live with that and adopt.

End of the story for me is that you should not let artificial rules about how it should be (you should not be late) stand in the way of personal respect, both as the late arriver as well as the waiting party.

This morning I found myself sitting by myself in a conference room for over 15 minutes…no phone call…and a slight apology due to the skiff of snow we had on the ground. Arrgggh.

I used to feel like I wasted a lot of time sitting and waiting at places when I was always way too early, but knowing a few of those people who are always 5 minutes late for everything, I’d rather lose time than respect. Time I get a new batch of the next day.

Thanks for the reminder.

Another moment that solidified it for me was one time when my brother-in-law and I were waiting for my sister to get ready [also back in the 90's]. We merely had to be at a family function over Christmas break. Up until that point, I always considered family functions as highly flexible with regard to arrival times. But my brother-in-law was getting very antsy and I asked why, he said, “Someone tells you to be somewhere at a certain time, you be there.” He absolutely HATES being late. Of course, I had heard that sentence before, but for some reason, at that moment it hit me like a ton of bricks.

There’s a stand-up comic routine about this. I think it might be Ellen.

She goes, “What do people always say when they’re late? ‘*sigh* Sorry. Traffic.’” holding her hand to her forehead.

I go, ‘WE’RE here. Ya think we teleported through the traffic? Maybe landed our chopper in the back?’”

So true.

I realized just how disrespectful being late is. It’s impolite. It’s obnoxious and downright rude. It sends the message that you believe your time is more valuable than others’. Frankly, it sends a big “F.U.” to those you are meeting with. I also paints your superiors and peers in a bad light. They hired you [or partnered with you], have spoken highly of you to these people, and are relying on you to be on time and portray a good image of the organization. Being late makes it look like your superiors hired some chucklehead loser who can’t even make a meeting. Being late has nothing but ill effects, across the board, to you and many around you.

It’s amazing how many people don’t realize this. I’ve conveyed these concepts to people I know are chronically late and they look at me perplexed – like it never dawned on them how utterly insolent it is. Some of these people are 40 years old and have never had the word “Manager” in their title. Do you think a manager is going to promote [or higher for a freelance job] the person who is reliable and consistently on time, or Mr. Tardy?

This post was filled me with a touch of self-loathing and a renewed challenge to be better and as good as most of the people posting here. But I was moved to write at the kindness and compassion you showed to in your comment to @Jonathan on February 5th at 4.47pm:

“I’ve been there, and done worse. If I could tell you one thing, it would be this: you are not a loser, and you can change.

:)”

I have even greater respect for what you say because genuinely your motivation seem to be to help and not condemn…

Thanks for the lesson and the further lesson in how to impart a lesson with grace.
Saqib