This Post Will Go Live at 6:42

How to get people to be on time.

This post will be terse (finally!), but the bloviation could be life-changing for you.

You probably have friends and colleagues who are reliably unreliable at being on time. For those of us who view punctuality as a key way to be considerate, others’ chronic tardiness can be maddening, not to mention vexing. Do we show up on time and knowingly waste precious time? Or do we plan on being late and thereby reward bad behavior?

Here’s a solution: Set meeting times that end in a number other than “0” or “5.” Chronic offenders are used to assuming that 7:30 means that most people won’t show up until 7:35, which means the earliest things will get going is 7:40, so as long as they’re there by 7:45 offering a yeah-I-suck hello, all is well. But 7:26? Or 7:33? Society has no standards for such situations. The oddly precise time induces just enough fear of missing the boat to throw laggards for a loop.

I learned this approach from the great jazz drummer Joe Farnsworth. (Drummers, after all, are used to keeping time.) If he can make it work with loosey-goosey cats who swing to their own rhythms, I figured I can probably make it work in my world. It’s now expected among my Runner’s World colleagues that anal Scott will suggest meeting in the lobby at 6:52 or 7:18 or what have you for group walks to the media center on marathon race mornings.

There are limitations to this method. If you ever find yourself spending a month in Kenya, where appointment times are treated like the opening bid in a negotiation and being an hour late isn’t even worth comment, picking an odd meeting time isn’t going to suddenly make people obsess over a few minutes here or there. So, when in Iten, etc.

Here in the States, there’s at least one Terse Bloviation subscriber who is immune to chronological coercion. Saying that you’ll be at their house to run at 7:42 instead of 7:30 will still result in them taking your arrival to mean it’s time to start thinking about what to wear on the run.

This problem is heightened when you’re meeting elsewhere, because this person doesn’t have a smartphone and therefore can’t do you the courtesy of letting you know they’re going to be discourteously late. With such recalcitrants, it’s better to resign yourself to having extra time for warm-up drills while waiting for the inevitable leisurely arrival and “Hey, sorry I’m late” greeting.

Of course, apologies are meaningful only if they lead to changed behavior. But that’s the subject of another post. For now, I need to wrap this up, because I promised the dog we’d go for a walk at 4:38.