Friday, March 9, 2012

Being On Time

I like to be on time. Whether it is to an appointment or with a project. I hate being late. I get embarrassed. I want to be the on-time person.

Today I had a project due. It had no particular deadline but I said I would have it done by Friday in a meeting with a few people.  Last night I worked very hard to get it to a point where all I had to do was put the pieces together in Acrobat. Well, that is where all heck broke loose.

I worked for two to three hours and the stupid project kept coming out too large to email as an attachment. I kept putting together the project over and over to no avail.

I had a doctors appointment late in the afternoon and now I was totally stressed out that I didn't send the project before the appointment. While I was at the appointment, waiting for the doctor, I figured out the problem!  I had saved a scanned document at too high a dpi. That made the document too big to email. As soon as I got home I fixed the problem and got the project to the client.

I still was embarrassed that it was late. Also, I didn't need to spend so much time on one task today.

I have one client who is always late to meetings, phone calls, etc. I used to sit there and fume. Then I realized I could just charge him. If we were scheduled to meet at 2 pm and he showed up at 2:20 I am now relaxed. My clock started at 2:00. If he wanted to pay me sit and wait, well better for me!

How do you feel about being on-time?

2 comments:

  1. I find that being on time reflects my word. If I say I will be here or there at a particular time, one should do everything possible to fulfill a committment which to me = your word. It is also a trust factor in my book. I have a hard time trusting people that are late all the time. To me they are not dependable at all and therefore my respect also slips for them. I can't fathom how people can be late in the current business climate. But that is my personal opinion.

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  2. I agree completely. I want to be on time. If I'm making a commitment to someone to be there, I'm wasting their time if I'm late, and I find that rude.

    I don't appreciate people who are late if it impacts my schedule either. Many times if someone is showing up at the house and we're doing something at the house, it's not a worry because we're not in a hurry to get anywhere. But when you're impacting someone else's schedule, it's only courteous to be on time.

    With two children, I always factor in the extra time to get them in the car and a few minutes just in case there's an unexpected incident (like a dirty diaper.) In most cases, this has us arriving a few minutes early. But I'd far rather be early than late to a commitment.

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