{"id":240,"date":"2009-11-13T11:31:59","date_gmt":"2009-11-13T11:31:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/everydayethics\/2009\/11\/habitual-lateness-an-ethical-or-etiquette-issue.html"},"modified":"2009-11-13T11:31:59","modified_gmt":"2009-11-13T11:31:59","slug":"habitual-lateness-an-ethical-or-etiquette-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/11\/habitual-lateness-an-ethical-or-etiquette-issue.html","title":{"rendered":"Habitual Lateness: An Ethical Or Etiquette Issue?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We all have that one friend or family member who&#8217;s guilty&#8211;they say they&#8217;ll meet you for dinner at a quarter to seven, and seven-thirty rolls around before you catch a glimpse of their apologetic face. No matter how often you glance irritably at your watch as they breeze in, no matter how obviously it irks you, they simply cannot be on time.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>If you don&#8217;t <i>have<\/i> that friend or relative, you probably <i>are<\/i> that friend or relative.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>What gives? And why does it matter?<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nI consider this a (minor) ethical issue. Abusing your friends&#8217;, family&#8217;s or co-workers&#8217; time and patience is a discourtesy that really should not stand. Of course, there are exceptions. If you&#8217;re a few minutes late once in a while, no biggie, but what about those folks who are regularly 10, 20, even 30 minutes or more tardy every time you arrange to see them? They leave you standing outside of restaurants in the cold, idling in cars in their front yards, make you think they&#8217;re standing you up for dates, and all around show you their low regard for your valuable time.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I&#8217;ve been guilty of tardiness a time or two, but being someone who can&#8217;t be counted upon, someone who shows such slight regard for others&#8217; feelings&#8211;well, they deserve a wag of my sanctimonious finger. Punctuality is a sign of a thoughtful, organized person. Lateness shows frantic last-minute hurry; it reflects ill on your capabilities. Whatever the cause&#8211;anxiety, poor time management skills, procrastination, failure to prioritize&#8211;the solution is courtesy and respect for others.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>What do you do if you have a friend who is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ehow.com\/how_2197161_deal-habitually-tardy-person.html\">habitually tardy<\/a>? I say you have to spell it out for them&#8211;it&#8217;s unacceptable, a slap in the face, and you aren&#8217;t going to take it anymore. It&#8217;s that, or start lying about what time you&#8217;re really meeting, and why should you have to play that game?&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>To sum up, fashionably late is hopelessly out of date.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><strong>Subscribe to receive updates from Everyday Ethics or&nbsp;<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EverydayEthics\"><strong>follow us on&nbsp;Twitter<\/strong><\/a><strong>!<\/strong><\/div>\n<div><b><br \/><\/b><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We all have that one friend or family member who&#8217;s guilty&#8211;they say they&#8217;ll meet you for dinner at a quarter to seven, and seven-thirty rolls around before you catch a glimpse of their apologetic face. No matter how often you glance irritably at your watch as they breeze in, no matter how obviously it irks&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[130,78,76,79,80],"class_list":["post-240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-hillary-fields","tag-etiquette","tag-friendship","tag-habitual-lateness","tag-lateness","tag-tardiness"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Habitual Lateness: An Ethical Or Etiquette Issue? - Everyday Ethics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/11\/habitual-lateness-an-ethical-or-etiquette-issue.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Habitual Lateness: An Ethical Or Etiquette Issue? - Everyday Ethics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We all have that one friend or family member who&#039;s guilty--they say they&#039;ll meet you for dinner at a quarter to seven, and seven-thirty rolls around before you catch a glimpse of their apologetic face. No matter how often you glance irritably at your watch as they breeze in, no matter how obviously it irks&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/11\/habitual-lateness-an-ethical-or-etiquette-issue.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Everyday Ethics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-11-13T11:31:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"hfields\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Habitual Lateness: An Ethical Or Etiquette Issue? - Everyday Ethics","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/11\/habitual-lateness-an-ethical-or-etiquette-issue.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Habitual Lateness: An Ethical Or Etiquette Issue? - Everyday Ethics","og_description":"We all have that one friend or family member who's guilty--they say they'll meet you for dinner at a quarter to seven, and seven-thirty rolls around before you catch a glimpse of their apologetic face. 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She attended St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she studied classics and philosophy, and then respectfully declined to spend the rest of her life in an ivory tower. Instead, she turned to the life of a writer and editor, penning three romance novels published by St. Martin's Press and contributing features to such periodicals as Cosmopolitan magazine. Her fascination with the moral dilemmas that crop up in everyday life--and the many intriguing ways people handle them--has always colored her writings. Now, that interest is leading her to take the discussion online; where, hopefully, the addition of reader feedback will bring these quotidian quandaries--and their potential solutions--vibrantly to life. When she's not plumbing the ethical mysteries of humanity, her passions include cooking (especially baking), origami, kittens, reading, watching really bad television and playing online scrabble. (And no, she doesn't cheat... much.)","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/author\/hfields"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}