Never Late. Never. Never. Never.

National Blog Posting Month – September 2014 – Crunch

Prompt – Do you usually run late, early, or on-time?

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I’m one of those people. I’m rarely late.

I was raised by an early person. My mother was insistant that we needed to be 10-15 minutes early to everything, especially doctor appointments. ‘They might take us in early,’ she’d say (At least this is what I remember her saying). My memory is that we’d always be in the waiting room well past our appointment time. Waiting rooms are interminably dull. I hated being early, especially since I knew what I was waiting for would not be fun.

When I left home, I was a practiced early-arriver for everything. Always in class 5 minutes early – before the professor arrived. All appointments I was early for. Everything. Always early. Being just on time was being late.

It finally dawned on me that most things were not on time. Most ran late, or at best, were exactly on time. I think for every time I’ve gone early for an appointment, half those times I’ve waited past my appointment time. Maybe once or twice have I been brought back early.

And you know, doctors don’t give you a discount for being early, but they’ll be happy to penalize you for being late.

These days I take to heart that early doesn’t get kudos and a few minutes late seldom is a problem.

I’ve become an ‘exactly on timer,’ usually walking in the office door within 30 seconds of the appointment time.

Being consistently on time has it’s advantages. For one, people wait for you. They often are slightly concerned when you’re not on time and because of that, usually cut you slack for lateness.

I also don’t make other people feel uncomfortable because I’m sitting there waiting for them. I typically arrive to meetings at about the same time as my colleagues.

Being on time also saves me (most of the time) from terrible boredom. Waiting rooms are still dullsville, even if I can surf the web on my phone.

I think I’ve got it all figured out now. Always on time. Never late.

Well, until the snow flies anyway. Then all bets are off.