Jane Macdougall is a writer based in Vancouver.
To the people who get all in a knot when someone is a few minutes late: Get over yourself.
Quit being so critical when someone arrives slightly after the appointed time.
Five minutes late isn’t high-handed judgment or callous disregard. It’s the difference between an Amazon delivery van blocking the alleyway, or missing a crosswalk light or two. It used to simply be the difference between watches.
Perhaps we should all be like the Japanese, in whose language the explanation for lateness translates to “lateness happened to me.” So, even in a notably codified culture, there’s clemency for tardiness. (Please don’t spoil it for me if this isn’t an accurate translation.)
Heaven forbid you live on Vancouver’s North Shore and have to contend with the mercurial, alternating, three-laned Lions Gate Bridge. A minute either way can massively affect arrival times. No one is really certain how this flow of traffic is managed.
It’s either handled by a fluctuating algorithm or an erratic five-year-old child switching the bridge traffic lights from two lanes southbound back to one lane, or vice versa. Sometimes, when traffic appears to be backed up all the way into Washington State, it seems that either the algorithm is faulty or the five-year-old is watching cartoons. And here’s a tip: visit the bathroom before you set out.
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The very idea that a frictional time difference shows disrespect for your precious time speaks of narcissism and megalomania. I mean, come on! Five minutes? Are you an astronaut with a panel of space geeks counting down to blast off? Unless I hear a prerecorded voice reciting numbers backward, we can presume that your schedule is just as – but not more – busy than anyone else’s. We used to call this courteous goodwill “grace.”
Herewith, an anecdote: I was meeting a friend at 2 p.m. on the aforementioned North Shore last Saturday. I left my house at 12:30, thinking I’d have time to do an errand at Home Depot beforehand.
The traffic gods chuckled.
I arrived at our meeting place at 2:20 p.m., the errand abandoned en route. Now, lest this make you all twitchy, my friend was updated before she’d even left home. When I related this frustrating episode to a different friend, he said, “Well, maybe you should have left earlier.”
I was aghast!
“Like what?” I asked him. “Like Friday? Should I have left on Friday!”
So, nearly two hours in transit count for nothing? Just so long as I evidence respect for someone else’s vaunted agenda.
If time travel were possible, I’d like to send the punctiliously punctual back in history before 1949, when the atomic clock became the gold standard of time keeping. Before that, everything was “11-ish, around noon, dinner time.”
Personally, I used to rely on the National Research Council official time signal on CBC Radio. Each day, “the beginning of the long dash…” signalled it was 10 a.m. Pacific time. Alas, on Oct. 9 of 2023, the CBC eliminated this useful tool.
The days before atomic time and iPhones were the glory days for the tardy, unrivalled except for prehistoric times. Can you imagine the satisfaction of your Neanderthal self replying to your Neanderthal boss? “Late? Ha! Prove it!”
And can you imagine a eulogy where the deceased’s most sterling characteristic was that he was reliably on the dot? “Good ol’ Chuck – never late a day in his life.” If this is the best they can do, I don’t think Chuck will be much missed.
Maybe we make too much of a thing about tardiness? Let’s agree that there’s a massive difference between being a few minutes late to arrive – I like to call it “post-punctual” – and being an hour late. A few minutes can simply be the difference between catching elevator two versus elevator one, whereas two hours late makes you Val Kilmer holding up an entire movie production.
And who wants to be Anna Wintour, anyway? Aside from her signature sunglasses, the infamous former editor-in-chief of Vogue is renowned for arriving at functions early. She describes herself as “horribly punctual; usually early.”
How do I tell my friend who is always late that she needs to change her ways?
In his book, When the Going Was Good, Graydon Carter, former editor of Vanity Fair, writes of his staff trying to get the jump on Condé Nast’s Wintour by scheduling meetings based on her weaponized arrival times. Yet, no matter when these meetings were scheduled, those dark sunglasses would loom into view at least a quarter-hour early – Wintour would “out-early” anyone. As Carter says, arriving early can be just as much of a power move as keeping people waiting.
Thank You for Being Late, by three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas Friedman, posits that the liminal space between a set meeting time and the arrival of the participants can be a gift. He says that, in this ever-faster world, the only way you can mint time is in those precious, found moments. Five or ten minutes here or there qualify as bonus time; a moment for calm reflection. Absolutely no apology is required, according to Friedman.
So, the next time you arrive for a lunch date five minutes early, recognize that it isn’t a contest; you’re not winning. And know that your five-minutes – heck, ten-minutes – late companion isn’t just playing street craps on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. They’re probably stuck in an Uber X that listed an inaccurate arrival time. Or stuck behind a truck sluicing out its load of concrete. Or grid-locked as a result of four cruise ships disgorging tourists simultaneously. Or dealing with a clingy two-year-old.
To those of you who find themselves running behind, I say: relax. Don’t kill yourself trying to achieve perfect punctuality. Lateness can “happen” to anyone and it doesn’t mean you’re a delinquent. I, too, choose to view those found moments as a gift, so thank you for being late.
