'Social' Intelligence: Why you SHOULDN'T be late

Punctuality is a feat of utmost importance in today’s business world; a trait of immense value to both investors and bakers alike (*NB* as opposed to ‘baked alive’).

A characteristic so important, in fact, that it has caused the demise of many businesses and rulers (and since this is NOT an essay, I shall NOT footnote any of them, please feel free to do your own research).

You would think then that it would make sense for people to maintain and improve their punctuality in their everyday interaction with others so that they could develop and foster both personal and business relationships.

Well, think again.

Let us adopt a very simple example.

It’s Saturday night and you are meeting your friends to go out ‘for a drink’ (we all know what THAT means…).

You are to meet up at 21:00 at Bedford Place.

Being eighteen, you think that being punctual is ‘uber uncool-yo’ and so decide to show up 20 minutes late.

It had started raining at 21:01 (and, pray, do not tell me that that’s impossible and unbelievable…that’s English weather we’re talking about- the very definition of impossible and unbelievable).

Now, there’re several things that your lateness might lead to:

A) Since your friends like you so much, they have decided to wait for you in the rain, hoping that you won’t be that late. They are wrong, obviously. Also, since they are wetter than Holy Hell (bad reference? Sue me), they no longer like you as much, obviously.

Next time round you decide that they will wait for you again and are, once more, as late as a PI claim past limitation (a tiny bit better than above, no?).

You keep doing that until one day you grow up into a fine man with incredible business acumen and…no punctuality. None at all.

You approach your good old uni chaps as you are looking for reliable people to start a business with. But guess what; they are not interested as they know that, regardless of how cunning and smart you are, your lack of punctuality will mean a slow and painful death for a joint business venture.

 B) You friends get incredibly annoyed and leave without you. They never call you or want to go out with you ever again. How uber- cool is that, yo?

Let’s face it, being late means being blatantly disrespectful- it really is as simple as that. It means that you cannot be bothered to be organised enough to leave a bit early and spare a bit of your precious time so that you do not waste someone else’s.

Let me re- phrase the above in a pragmatic and somewhat logical manner:

Time is money.

You waste the person’s time by being late.

Ergo, you waste that person’s money by being late.

In today’s economic crisis, no- one likes wasting money.

So, I do hope that next time you’re thinking of being late, you won’t simply say

To Hell With It!