When I was younger, I was taught that if you were told to be somewhere or be ready at a certain time then you were to be arriving or be ready 10 minutes early. As they say, "If you are early, you are on time, if you are on time you are late, if you are late you are toast". Time management varies from culture to culture, but in America we typically are very time oriented and worried about always being on time. My parents are both type A kind of people who need all their ducks in a row and everything has to be perfect so I guess I was just born into this mindset. When I am running even remotely late my anxiety level starts to rise.
I have noticed recently that it seems as though other people were not taught the same things as I was. I have a friend who doesn't seem too worried about being late to class and if I pick them up they take their time getting out to my car. I pick them up at the same time every day so they should have their routine together to make sure that neither of us are waiting long. I have never actually been late, but in my mind, if I am not 10 or 15 minutes early I am going to be late. I thought, maybe this friend was an isolated situation where their family didn't really worry about time management as much as mine, I thought wrong.
I was with another friend recently who was staying at my house for the weekend. We had agreed that she would leave around 10:30 so she could make the long drive home and I could go into work. She set her alarm for 10, then snoozed it several times and didn't get out of bed until 10:40. Her car wasn't pulling out of the driveway until 11:20. I was frantically rearranging my schedule in my head to figure out how I was going to go through my day not on my usual schedule.
This kind of thing happens at my work too. I work at our student newspaper and part of my job involved receiving what feels like every email that has stories, design layouts, visual assignments, etc. It gets overwhelming sometimes. We have deadlines in place to make sure that we can meet our overall deadline to our printer. When someone misses their deadline it pushes my job further back because I can't do what I need to without that email. Take this weekend for example, someone forgot to send me their design layout and told me they'd get it to me when they woke up the next day (it was really late when they remembered). The next day comes and I don't have their layout so I text them asking for it and don't get it for another 2 hours. I couldn't work on that section for 2 hours because they missed their initial deadline (which was 2 days earlier).
Now I'm not trying to complain about my friends or coworkers. They are all fantastic people and I wouldn't let a few minutes break the strong friendships we have. I have definitely over committed myself to things and all my friends and coworkers know that I run on a tight schedule day to day. It feels to me like if any second of the day is put out of order then the whole day might fall apart. But I'd just like to ask others to respect my time a little more. It could be as simple as sending me a text saying that you are running a little behind and won't be ready for another 10 minutes or setting an alarm earlier to make sure you have all the time you need to get yourself out the door.
I know that I am not perfect either, I am late, I miss alarms, I take too long putting myself together in the morning; but when these things do happen I do my best to try and make sure everyone who needs to knows, even if they don't want to.
So just a PSA to everyone, please be ready on time, let people know if you're going to be late, and please be courteous of other people's time.