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?
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.
ReplyDeleteI 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.
ReplyDeleteI 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.