People who can never be on time!!! (rant)

[MaggieTheCat]

My husband and I have this one friend, K, who is NEVER on time. I don't care if we're getting together at our place to play D&D, going out to a movie, or catching a FREAKING PLANE. He is NEVER on time and it pisses me off to no end. We have talked to him about it and even have started telling him a time earlier than we actually want to meet so that hopefully, if we tell him 11:30, he'll arrive at noon, which is when we want to meet in the first place. He's STILL late even when we do this.

Just today, we were hosting D&D at our place. We always meet at noon. We have met at noon for the last several months. This is not something new. Right at noon, we get a text from K saying he's going to be AN HOUR LATE. At 1:30, he finally shows up. Why the delay? Because he realized, as he was walking out the door at 11:30, that he wanted to have kebobs for dinner tonight and he needed to cut and marinate the meat before coming over to our place. So apparently it took him over an hour to do that.

Okay, first of all, unless you're cutting up ten pounds of meat, it doesn't take an hour to cut anything into chunks and make a marinade for it. Second, I find it seriously inconsiderate of him to hold everyone else up because of something he forgot. If I was in the same situation, I wouldn't have said, "Oh jeez, I need to cut up the meat before I leave or else I won't have dinner tonight" (which is what he told us,) I would have said, "Oh jeez, I forgot to cut up the meat for tonight. I guess I'll be having leftovers or throwing a frozen pizza in the oven or stopping at Sonic." And it's not like this guy can't afford to stop and grab dinner out or has health issues that prevents him from doing so.

What's worse, because he was over an hour late, he somehow decided it would be okay to stay an extra hour and a half past when the others left hanging out with us and playing on our Wii. Look, I'm tired, and now I'm cranky. When I host, I clean the apartment and I make food for everyone. So I got up early this morning to prep everything, not to mention get the actual game ready (since I'm the DM.) When we're done, we're done and I want to relax for the rest of the evening. But I'm too nice for my own good and wouldn't tell him to get out.

Okay, sorry for the rant, but I was seriously peeved at K when he left.

[Nyoibo]

WE've got a guy in our gaming group like that, one thing that our DM uses is on time XP and if they're too late we start and thier character is NPC'd until they get there, and they get no XP for what's been done so far, they get the hint sometimes when they're 2 levels below everyone else.

[Stormraven]

I've seen that often as well. Worse is when the person in question is the host. They don't have to do anything except be at their place on time. (Okay, they'll likely want to clean and such, but we're gamers - we've seen worse). Sometimes they couldn't even manage that.

[Mytical]

Yeah, things like that can be rather frustrating. Some people can not take a hint to go home either. For some of my relatives .. I've turned out the lights, told them good night, and went into my bedroom. Woke up FOUR HOURS later, and they were STILL THERE. I work nights, so it was still daylight, guess that they thought it was no big deal. Here is something to try to handle late people (Besides the bonus xp for showing up early).

Serve any food/drinks at the beginning..first come first serve. If you run out before they arrive, tough for them. Initiate a 'anybody who is late cleans up afterward' thing. Don't single them out, make it stick for anybody who is late. Or.."Late people go on food/snack runs" and the like. Eventually they will get the point. Don't figure up spoils from the game at the end. Wait till the next game session, and have a 'drawing' (numbered tiles or such). Whoever draws 1 gets first pick, etc. Whoever is last arriving gets last picks.

Of course that only applies to the gaming sessions, sure you can be inventive for other times.

[powerboy]

We have a guy like that in my ghost hunting group. When it is a team meeting or just a get together. Then he'll show up an hour late.

[DrFaroohk]

That's like my biggest pet peeve of all time. Being late. Why is it so hard to be on time? It takes like 2 minutes of planning.


Here's how to never be late:

1) Figure out exactly how much time you need to arrive there. Include time it takes to get ready, driving time, stops, all that.

2) Allow half-again that much time. If it's gonna take you an hour to get somewhere, allow 90 minutes.


Voila! The beautiful thing about this method is that even if you are still late, no one will fault you for it, because you took more than enough precautions and the reasons were probably beyond your control.