Time on My Hands
[Listen to Burt's reading of this column.]
As a rule, I’m an easy-going guy. Hardly anything gets my goat, ruffles my feathers or raises even a single hackle. I always try to put myself in the other fellow’s shoes, and am always prepared to give people the benefit of the doubt. There is only one area in which I give no quarter. If it were up to me, lack of punctuality would be a felony. And while I might not make it a capital crime, I wouldn’t think twice about tossing the terminally late in the cooler for 10 or 20 years; preferably in solitary confinement, so that they wouldn’t be distracted while mulling over their anti-social behavior.
Where punctuality is concerned, my motto is: Better half an hour early than 10 minutes late. They’re words I live by, and so should the rest of you.
When you live in Los Angeles, as I do, people are constantly arriving late and then using traffic as their excuse, as if they had no reason on earth to expect there might actually be other cars on the road. So, first they insult you by keeping you waiting, and then they follow up by insulting your intelligence. Do they imagine that I, who somehow managed to arrive on time, came by helicopter?
When my wife catches me fuming about these inconsiderate louts, she’ll invariably suggest I should always take along something to read. Being, like Professor Higgins, a very reasonable man, I point out that if I wanted to read, I’d have stayed home in my easy chair. Perhaps it’s a gender thing. Maybe women simply aren’t aware that when people keep you waiting, they might just as well spit in your eye. It’s their way of saying that they’re more important than you, and that you’re lucky they bothered showing up at all.
How do I know this? Easy. These same people are never late when they’re going to meet their boss or a potential employer or somebody from whom they want to borrow money.
Take Marilyn Monroe. When she became a star, she was notorious for her tardiness. She would regularly keep an entire movie company standing around waiting for her to show up three or four hours late. People would rationalize her boorishness. They’d say she was nervous, even frightened, about facing the camera. So how was it that she was absolutely punctual during those years she was a starlet, with small roles in movies like “The Asphalt Jungle” and “All About Eve”? It was only when she became the 800-pound gorilla and couldn’t be fired that, all of a sudden, she developed this phobia where punctuality was concerned.
Recently, I was supposed to meet a guy for lunch at noon. By 12:15, I began to fret. Did he think we were supposed to get together at 12:30? By 12:40, I figured he’d gone to a different deli. If only I’d heeded my wife’s counsel and brought along some reading material, I could have made a decent dent in “War and Peace.”
When I got home, I phoned the guy. He said he’d forgotten. It seems that for some bizarre reason this fool keeps two appointment books. He’d made a notation in one, but not the other, and of course the other was the one he’d looked at that morning. That was bad enough, but what really floored me was his cavalier manner. Where was the note of hysteria in his voice? Where was the stammering apology? Where, at the very least, were the lies? It would have killed this yutz to tell me he’d rushed his wife to the hospital or his dog to the vet because one of them had choked on a chicken bone?!
The plain truth is that people who are late think they’re entitled to be late. And what exactly is it that makes these folks think they’re so special? Well, they must be, mustn’t they? After all, people are always waiting for them to show up.
Better late than never? I think not.
Television writer Burt Prelutsky is the author of %%AMAZON=1581825714 ‘Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco (101 Reasons Why I’m Happy I Left the Left)’%%
I enjoyed the column…. But I just want to know one thing, Prelutsky – wuz you ever late?
Burt;
Do people a favour. Tell them up front that you’re OCD on the subject of timing. Warn them you’ll go apeshit if they’re late.
Then do it.
I have exactly the same condition. I had girlfriend that was perpetualy late, when I explained that I was perpetualy 10 Min early and that I waited for her 20 min., she improved greatly – sometimes communication is everything.
Oh Burt sweetie, you must be kin to my husband. He can’t abide people who are late, and when we go somewhere, you can bet we’ll arrive long before anyone else does. My father was the same way, so I was well-trained when we married!
Preach it, brother.
What gets me are the people who are not only late for work on a regular basis, but late the same amount of time. I mean, if you’re consistently showing up at your job 10 minutes after you’re supposed to be there, how hard is it to figure out that you need to get started 10 minutes earlier?
This is especially irksome to me because I work at a high school. We spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of man-hours on ‘tardiness abatement’ programs aimed at getting the students to class on time. Yet not a single one of those programs contemplates even suggesting that the teachers might set a better example by being on time themselves.
I’m delighted to know that I’m not the only person, as my wife would like to believe, who thinks punctuality is a virtue. To answer Brooklyn’s question: Yes, I have been late–always due to unforeseen events, such as accidents on the freeway–but very rarely. And I am always extremely apologetic on those occasions. In this matter, if in no others, I definitely practice what I preach.
Regards, Burt Prelutsky
When I married I was a 20 minute early person, my wife a 5 minute late person, so we met in the middle: now we arrive on time.
Hm..
How does one say, “Thank you so much for showing such public disdain for accommodating a [disability]..?”
Oops.. Wait.. Maybe one just did.
I can’t blame the guy. Who wants to eat lunch with a blowhard like Prelutsky?
Tsk tsk, Tony Blare. Didn’t you mother ever tell you that if you can’t say something nice about someone, you should say nothing at all or, at the very least, say something clever and amusing?
Burt Prelutsky