Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
March 1, 2019 9:02 AM   Subscribe

Clock-time no longer measures our temporal relationship to nature, but instead regulates our daily activities in relationship to capitalism. Clocks tell us when we need to go to work, when it’s time for lunch, when we need to wake up, when we really should go to sleep. We don’t do those things when we want to, we do them when others have determined they should be done. Those others aren’t the sun, stars, planets and moon of the pagan and animist worlds, but the bosses, the owners, the managers, and the bankers for whom we work.
posted by Gordafarin (105 comments total) 37 users marked this as a favorite
 
I spent some time in Soviet Russia when I was a kid. They had clocks too.
posted by w0mbat at 9:15 AM on March 1, 2019 [31 favorites]


Noon, the point where the sun is half-way through its progression in the sky, is completely different from 12:00 pm. Well, I followed the link to the solar calculator and discovered there's an alarming 6 minute difference between 12:00 and solar noon for me today... Which, now I don't obsess about precise timings, doesn't bother me in the slightest.
posted by Hadrian at 9:17 AM on March 1, 2019 [6 favorites]


Tell your mates to meet you at the bar when the sun sets, or after they’ve eaten dinner; ask your lover if you can meet them just after the moon rises, or after they’re done with work. And see how your relationship with them changes and expands when “lateness” isn’t an issue.

This essay sounds like an elaborate excuse made up by somebody who's always late to justify being disrespectful of others' time.
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 9:19 AM on March 1, 2019 [58 favorites]


We don’t do those things when we want to, we do them when others have determined they should be done.

We never did. And you know what? My boss is easier to bargain with than a drought, or a flood, or a hostile group also hunting and gathering where me and my troupe are, and might decide to try to kill us whether we're a real threat now or might become one in a decade.

And let's talk about clocks in relation to socialism and communism. Someone is still telling you when to show up to work, even when the person doing it doesn't own the building.

And let's talk about how much privilege it belies to even talk about "reclaiming your time" from the capitalists who tell you what to do, and who has the privilege to use their social networks and race to skate by when they decline to do as they're told by either their capitalist boss OR their comrade boss.

JFC it's been a while since I've read a lazier screed that has a nice design aesthetic. It's a good thing that it wasn't until the end that the writer unveiled himself as a "theorist" who "hates Empire" because I wouldn't have bothered reading it, and the design is fairly nice, at least.
posted by tclark at 9:20 AM on March 1, 2019 [15 favorites]


Man this is definitely going to be the hottest essay of the 1500s, I can tell without even reading it.
posted by GuyZero at 9:27 AM on March 1, 2019 [15 favorites]


I Ctrl+F'd, but didn't find any mention of daylight savings time in the article. How can you write an article about time, society, and capitalism and not mention DST?!

Especially since it's about nine days until a lot of us are going to have to spring forward. I've also been especially aware of how many days until DST this year, because I've been trying to go to bed and wake up five minutes earlier each day in order to make the transition smoother.
posted by FJT at 9:28 AM on March 1, 2019 [10 favorites]


Human society is not separate from nature. Using clocks to connect with other people IS "measuring our temporal relationship to nature." We are not unnatural beings, and our cities are just termite colonies writ large.
posted by rikschell at 9:29 AM on March 1, 2019 [9 favorites]


I've been reading a lot of Medieval history recently. It's astonishing how many kings and queens died in their late forties. Living to sixty was fairly rare. And these were the people who at the time enjoyed the highest quality of life.

I'll take whatever tradeoffs that come with having a clock.
posted by JamesBay at 9:29 AM on March 1, 2019 [4 favorites]


I appreciated this post, not because the essay is actually on point (as others in this thread have noted), but because it gave me pause to think about how I view time, and in that moment, I also contemplated what it would be like to invite a lover to meet me just after the moon rises...
posted by darkstar at 9:29 AM on March 1, 2019 [14 favorites]


The fact that clocks are used by capitalism to enforce its tyranny seems like a good reason for smashing capitalism, not my clock.
posted by howfar at 9:32 AM on March 1, 2019 [21 favorites]


Oh for science's FUCKING SAKE, did this guy make a Black Phillip reference Crossfit T-Shirt? I didn't even scroll that far after seeing his "getting in touch with my inner noble savage" face paint bio.
posted by tclark at 9:35 AM on March 1, 2019 [6 favorites]


I love trains. Clocks are essential to trains. QED.

On the other hand wrist, living one’s life ruled by clocks while ignoring the sun is a recipe for anxiety, depression, poor sleep, and associated maladies.

In summation, everybody should take naps.
posted by Celsius1414 at 9:36 AM on March 1, 2019 [14 favorites]


It’s 12:44 as I write this. Maybe it’s 2.17pm or 10 am for you?

The clocks have been striking thirteen all day
posted by chavenet at 9:45 AM on March 1, 2019 [6 favorites]


clocks used to tell me when to wake up, eat and get ready for bed, but now it's the cabal led by my three year old son and his little sister. Their exact connection to capitalism is presently unclear, but I will report back as facts on the ground develop.
posted by skewed at 9:49 AM on March 1, 2019 [41 favorites]


I spent some time in Soviet Russia when I was a kid. They had clocks too.
"I," said Gletkin in his usual correct voice, "was sixteen years old when I learnt that the hour was divided into minutes. In my village, when the peasants had to travel to town, they would go to the railway station at sunrise and lie down to sleep in the waiting-room until the train came, which was usually at about midday; sometimes it only came in the evening or next morning. These are the peasants who now work in our factories. For example, in my village is now the biggest steel-rail factory in the world. In the first year, the foremen would lie down to sleep between two emptyings of the blast furnace, until they were shot. In all other countries, the peasants had one or two hundred years to develop the habit of industrial precision and of the handling of machines. Here they only had ten years. If we didn’t sack them and shoot them for every trifle, the whole country would come to a standstill, and the peasants would lie down to sleep in the factory yards until grass grew out of the chimneys and everything became as it was before. Last year a women’s delegation came to us from Manchester in England. They were shown everything, and afterwards they wrote indignant articles, saying that the textile workers in Manchester would never stand such treatment. I have read that the cotton industry in Manchester is two hundred years old. I have also read, what the treatment of the workers there was like two hundred years ago, when it started. You, Comrade Rubashov, have just used the same arguments as this women's delegation from Manchester. You, of course, know better than these women. So one may wonder at your using the same arguments. But then, you have something in common with them: you were given a watch as a child."
-Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon
posted by jackbishop at 9:50 AM on March 1, 2019 [28 favorites]


A good time to mention the book Longitude, and the problem of developing a clock precise enough that a ship at sea can determine its location. Here, a clock is used as a measure against the sun, which can literally be a matter of life and death for a ship.
posted by SPrintF at 9:52 AM on March 1, 2019 [12 favorites]


In a couple places where I have worked, clocking in even one minute late had a severe penalty, but you were also barred by the computer software from clocking in even one minute early. Being sure to clock in at EXACTLY the correct minute, which was during a shift change and therefore involved competing with a lot of other people for use of the computer, was stressful as hell. Especially since the timestamp on your clock-in would be to the second, not the minute. So you were PERPETUALLY slightly late. It was kind of Orwellian IMO.

Basically, companies aren't going to pay you to come in early but god forbid you're late because then you're wasting company time. And I mean, wasting company time? That's so disrespectful it's practically insubordination, goddamn it!

I have a ton of trouble with time management, though. So maybe this kind of thing doesn't make other people so anxious. Time management does genuinely stress me out on a day-to-day basis, and how precises it is in a capitalistic system doesn't help. That said, some amount of time management is necessary just to live in a society, especially a large and complex one, so.
posted by rue72 at 9:54 AM on March 1, 2019 [23 favorites]


As somebody who grew up in oft-overcast northern latitudes ... good luck using the sun or moon to tell you anything precise when it's light for 18 hours or dark for a million unending years. And when it's dark, you have to GO OUTSIDE IN THE COLD to look for the moon, which is not recommended.

I like clocks. (I also liked the article in the post, mostly as a provocation to myself.)

Also, this was a nice summary of the history of timekeeping devices:

On preview, seconding Longitude.

(edited to add hyperlink)
posted by verschollen at 9:56 AM on March 1, 2019 [3 favorites]


Man this is definitely going to be the hottest essay of the 1500s, I can tell without even reading it.

My first thought was "Oh look, another undergrad just discovered Hume."

I like how this entire "radical" website has a 20% off all orders banner.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:56 AM on March 1, 2019 [6 favorites]


Tick-tock tick-tock
Goes the big clock
And to me it seems to say

Hurry up, child
Get your work done
So you can go out to play


These were the lyrics to one of the songs in my piano book as a child. It haunts me to this day.
posted by slipthought at 10:15 AM on March 1, 2019 [3 favorites]


I feel like my sense of time passing has been fully calibrated to youtube video lengths.
Do I have time for an entire 'closer look' segment or just Seth Meyer's opening bit?
Conversely

posted by es_de_bah at 10:16 AM on March 1, 2019


rue72, I wonder if we used the same time system, as I recall similar problems around can't log in early (i.e., accurately), but don't you dare be late! I was in a unique situation (contractor) so it didn't affect me much as the rules were different for me, but I recall thinking "how the heck do the regular employees use this garbage?" Also on more than one occasion I got angry emails about how my time logged in one system differed from my time logged in another system by 0.01 hours. That's a difference of 36 seconds over an entire month for those keeping score at home.

Bringing it back to the article, having agreed-upon time isn't necessarily a bad thing, but pretending that we can schedule and optimize life down to the minute is a very modern form of insanity.
posted by Tehhund at 10:33 AM on March 1, 2019 [4 favorites]


I spent some time in Soviet Russia when I was a kid. They had clocks too.

I visited Kashgar, in far western Xinjiang province in China, about 10 years ago. By geography, it should be a few time zones off of Beijing time. But by administrative fiat, China has a single time zone for the entire country. There is a local time in Kashgar, 3 hours behind Beijing, and most people use it for most things. However, the trains and buses, which are operated by the government, have to run on Beijing time.

When taking a bus from Kashgar, as a naive visitor, you go to the bus station and get on the bus at the Beijing time that it says on the ticket. The bus then drives two or three blocks away and parks on the side of the street and waits for 3 hours for Kashgar time to catch up with the Beijing time on the bus ticket. Once those 3 hours are up, and the rest of the bus passengers have arrived, the bus departs for the second time, but this time for real.
posted by msbrauer at 10:39 AM on March 1, 2019 [29 favorites]


How soon we forget what a privilege it is to be freed from the tyranny of the planets! Filiphagous Saturn and his lewd ring! Bloated Jupiter taunting us with mesmerizing anticyclonic storms! Mars, whose inhospitable clime kills every goddamn robot we send to visit him! And Venus!? Don't get me started! Who even knows what schemes she's plotting under that noxious cloud cover! and ok sure Mercury is cool but it doesn't matter because we all know that when push comes to shove, they all let THE FICKLE MOON call the shots and to hell with anyone who wants us to go back to the days when we were all beholden to tides and eclipses and werewolves!!

FUCK THE PLANETS. CLOCKS FOREVER. PBO OUT
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:40 AM on March 1, 2019 [24 favorites]


I'd argue that clocks as they are currently used are not rigorous and rational enough. SWATCH INTERNET TIME 4 EVA
I will accept French Revolutionary Time as a viable alternative
posted by phooky at 10:46 AM on March 1, 2019 [5 favorites]


The thing is, even in premodern Europe a peasant in the fields would have heard the church bells tolling the hour (and for praying the angelus at dawn, noon and sunset). Even Romans tolled bells at the forum for prima (dawn), tertia, sexta and nona (sunset) hours. Similarly for the mu'addhin's calls to prayer.
posted by sukeban at 10:48 AM on March 1, 2019 [11 favorites]


Tehhund, the system I had in mind was POSI, which is software for restaurants. Was it the same for you? What was especially Orwellian about the situation was that company policy was that three tardies equaled one "no call no show," and even one "no call no show" was a fireable offense. But you literally couldn't log in until the exact second your shift was due to start. So you'd have to be hovering over the computer trying to log in -- along with every other person in the shift change -- AND you'd better hope that your boss didn't decide to be a dick and hold the seconds you were unavoidably tardy because of the login processing time (or god forbid someone else got to the computer first) against you. The managers had an informal 30 second grace period, so that if you logged in at 00:00:29 you were still considered "on time" but that was not formal policy and if they decided they didn't want to give you that grace, well...

The other thing was that, in that job, the specific restaurant that I worked in was in California, and the labor laws there are relatively strict. So people needed to log out for at least fifteen minutes every four hours for a break, or else the company could be hit with a fine. So you'd have people sprinting frantically to the computers trying to log out before they went over the four hours, too. If you didn't make it, there would be hell to pay -- literally a fireable offense, too, although most of the blowback for that seemed to fall on the managers rather than directly on staff. There was even a huge television screen in the kitchen that showed real-time stats and the whole right-hand corner was dedicated to ticking down how much time people had before mandatory logout or before going to overtime, and believe me, people paid CLOSE attention.

Oh god and the scheduling wars in restaurants. You'd think that in a job like that, time wouldn't be SUCH a huge issue, since the whole point is to get customers to feel comfortable eating/drinking/socializing -- all the "human stuff" that the writer of TFA talks about as not being dictated by the clock. But nope, time is a constant bone of contention there, and the battles can get really precise -- at least in my experience.
posted by rue72 at 10:52 AM on March 1, 2019 [10 favorites]


"This essay sounds like an elaborate excuse made up by somebody who's always late to justify being disrespectful of others' time."

Ahh, the eternal battle between clock-disciples and the late people. The thing that gets me about this is that a conflict between someone obsessed with scheduling is disrespectful of the late person's time as well. I think the worst monkey wrench to throw in here is to consider either an act of disrespect.

Anyhow, I do feel the tyranny of the clock, I can't help but think of even sleep during workweek days as a kind of twisted unpaid labor away for home, I have to consider waking up and getting to work on when I go to sleep, which creates a disgusting equation where I can either sleep to be a more awake worker the next day, or I can maximize the time I get to live and enjoy life instead.

The article though seemed more preoccupied just with the history and practice of timekeeping, the thing I hate about time or timekeeping isn't that we measure what we experience as time, like, I'm not mad at clocks, I'm mad at having to live my life in such a way where often my life is regulated or shaped by the use of a clock joined with threats of capitalism. Maybe I just will never get over being penalized for taking a bathroom break that was 1.5 minutes too long while also being chastised for having completed too much work satisfactorily quickly already today.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:54 AM on March 1, 2019 [11 favorites]


Am I the only one who read the section heading "The Tyranny of Clock-Time" and immediately thought we would (or maybe should) be getting a rant along the lines of "EARTH HAS 4 CORNER SIMULTANEOUS 4-DAY TIME CUBE WITHIN SINGLE ROTATION."?
posted by solotoro at 10:55 AM on March 1, 2019 [16 favorites]


we would (or maybe should) be getting a rant

Timecube was 4000% better than this weak-sauce essay.
posted by GuyZero at 11:00 AM on March 1, 2019 [5 favorites]


In a couple places where I have worked, clocking in even one minute late had a severe penalty, but you were also barred by the computer software from clocking in even one minute early.

My first week in the warehouse, I was docked a quarter-hour pay because I clocked in at 8:38 and clocked out for lunch at 12:07. Turns out that they rounded each time to the nearest quarter hour, rather than computing the elapsed time and then rounding. That was very useful to know, as I then clocked in at 8:37, had lunch from 11:53 to 1:07, and clocked out at 5:23 - a total of 28 free minutes!
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 11:01 AM on March 1, 2019 [13 favorites]


One of the best things about being on holiday is the shift from clock-time to event-time. Ah, sweet meanderings. Doesn't work so well when dealing with a multi-stage commute involving three different transit systems.

I do chafe against heavily time-structured days though. Not so much due to capitalist agendas than as mechanisms of general behavioural control. I blame JG Ballard's 'Chronopolis', it hit a nerve at an early age. I am wristwatch resistant to this day.
posted by freya_lamb at 11:18 AM on March 1, 2019 [7 favorites]


If you have one clock, you know exactly what time it is. If you have two, you are not so sure...

ok, not so true anymore since all clocks are set by magic , but it used to be dang it!
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:29 AM on March 1, 2019 [5 favorites]


rue72, nope - this was healthcare, not restaurants. Not quite as insane as your system but I hear you.

I can't help but think of even sleep during workweek days as a kind of twisted unpaid labor away for home, I have to consider waking up and getting to work on when I go to sleep, which creates a disgusting equation where I can either sleep to be a more awake worker the next day, or I can maximize the time I get to live and enjoy life instead.

So much this. My bedtime is determined by work. My waking time is determined by work. Time after work is "my" time, but I can't have too much of it or else I'll be tired for work! Time in the morning is almost entirely spent getting ready for work. I realize that with electric light we're already pretty out of sync with the sun, but I'd give a lot to be able to set my schedule according to what I feel is beneficial. This may not be capitalism's fault, but it's certainly not helping us move to a system that focuses on our unique needs as individuals.
posted by Tehhund at 11:41 AM on March 1, 2019 [11 favorites]


If you find yourself perpetually late, perhaps try leaving earlier.
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 11:54 AM on March 1, 2019 [17 favorites]


I remember having this realization. I was in 7th grade and having a mixed manic/depressive bipolar episode. I ripped up a bunch of dollar bills and threw them in the air. I was then sent out to the hall, where I smashed my wristwatch against the floor.
posted by fiercecupcake at 12:05 PM on March 1, 2019 [6 favorites]


I was then sent out to the hall, where I smashed my wristwatch against the floor.

And despite all that rage you were still just a rat in a cage.
posted by GuyZero at 12:07 PM on March 1, 2019 [6 favorites]


I guess I just don't see how a few minutes out of a casual social meetup makes that much of a difference, or how it adds up to "disrespect."
posted by witchen

Because your friend, whom you agreed to meet at 11, has now been waiting 9 minutes for you -- which is cutting into the rest of their time, after your meeting. If you left the house at 10:30, you'd have time even to corral the dog or get stuck in traffic and still meet them at the appointed time.

I'm not bothered by reading a book for 9 minutes when I show up 9 minutes early. I am bothered by reading a book for 9 minutes of the time I thought I was spending with you.
posted by fiercecupcake at 12:14 PM on March 1, 2019 [11 favorites]


My first thought was "Oh look, another undergrad just discovered Hume."

More like discovered E.P. Thompson's 1967 essay Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism.
posted by thelonius at 12:17 PM on March 1, 2019 [7 favorites]


Well luckily everybody has phones now so they can be simultaneously haughty about over-exact meeting times and entertained while they stew over it.
posted by Celsius1414 at 12:20 PM on March 1, 2019 [8 favorites]


"Today, you're just late, but eventually you will betray me."

Anthony Bourdain said that, which honestly surprise me now a bit since I never thought of him being strict on time.
posted by FJT at 12:26 PM on March 1, 2019 [4 favorites]


He was strict on Trust which being late for intense food service is a betrayal of. You’re letting the rest of the team down.
posted by Celsius1414 at 12:32 PM on March 1, 2019 [8 favorites]


My attitude towards time and clocks depends on the exact scenario and has evolved over time (since people got cell phones).

Employee work hours: We have "core hours" when people are expected to be there. People arriving early or late ~15 minutes is fine unless there's a meeting. Beyond 15 minutes I expect some sort of contact, but I'm looking more for predictability than a "you're late! gotcha!" sort of thing. Shift work where you punch a clock or track people's exact time to the minute is pretty much bullshit if you're using it as a punishment.
Meetings (work, classes, clubs): Those need to start on time because we should respect other people's time.
Meeting friends: Depends on the friend and what we said up front. I come from a pre-internet age where OF COURSE I will bring a book to any meeting place because the person might show up 30 minutes late and we have no way to contact each other. I still have that habit. If I'm meeting a friend for a drink, being annoyed they are late is sort of against the whole idea of a fun relaxing meeting.

I would certainly love to live in a less time-focused world overall but one size doesn't fit all. Sometimes exact time is important, sometimes it isn't.
posted by freecellwizard at 12:46 PM on March 1, 2019 [3 favorites]


also being chastised for having completed too much work satisfactorily quickly already today.

Completed _too much_ work? My job is basically to bail out the ocean. The notion that I could do too much or be too fast is so utterly alien...
posted by GuyZero at 12:54 PM on March 1, 2019 [1 favorite]


I have never worn a watch.

I tried several times starting in Jr. high, but I couldn't stand it. When I was resolute in my attempts, I unconsciously took it off and left it places if I let down my guard for just a few moments.

So I gave up, but my partner used to play this game when we were both awake in the middle of the night and there were no obvious time cues, where she would ask me what time it was and I would guess, and I was never off by more than five minutes. Then she would laugh and point out that I was more of a prisoner of time than anyone who merely looked at a watch constantly the way she did.
posted by jamjam at 1:00 PM on March 1, 2019 [2 favorites]


Time clocks.

"Men cannot be treated as units in operations of political arithmetic because they behave like the symbols for zero and the infinite, which dislocate all mathematical operations."

- Arthur Koestler, Crossman
posted by clavdivs at 1:03 PM on March 1, 2019


I happen to know they love reading and books, so why are they not enjoying a few quiet moments at the coffee shop with a book??

Maybe they're not in the mood? I'm not sure it's very fair to expect someone to be happy to spend their time not as they have chosen to, but as your convenience dictates.

I'm also a little surprised by the implication that punctual people are only that way because they're chill with seeing their dogs crushed by traffic.
posted by howfar at 1:17 PM on March 1, 2019 [20 favorites]


"In fact, modern clocks were developed specifically out of a need to record and translate astrological information and signaling regular intervals. The specific pre-cursors of our clocks are water wheels..."
(From link)

Lewis Mumford posited this in 1966.
"...The automation of time, in the clock, is the pattern of all larger systems of automation."
Mumford, 'Myth of the Machine's, pg. 286
posted by clavdivs at 1:50 PM on March 1, 2019


witchen,

I'm completely with you on this but this is a lost cause. From experience I know that when it comes to being late in social settings, there really are Two Kinds Of People and communication is simply not possible with the Time Keepers.

Look at the responses you're getting: it's "disrespectful", "cutting into the rest of their time", "as your convenience dictates", etc. For you and me this kind of thinking is just alien and almost reads as parody. I can't even imagine a friend being late to meet for drinks and thinking these things about them.

If I'm meeting a friend for a drink, being annoyed they are late is sort of against the whole idea of a fun relaxing meeting.
freecellwizard

Precisely.

But as experience has shown me some people really do think that way, as odd as it is to me, and never the twain shall meet.
posted by Sangermaine at 2:03 PM on March 1, 2019 [8 favorites]


I hate to be late for anything. I would rather go to the airport an extra hour earlier if it means I eliminate the likelihood of having to feel rushed at any point of the excursion. When invited to dinner or a game at a friend’s house, I have to resist the urge to get there early, and with folks I’m not really close friends with, I will wait in my car for 10-15 minutes out of sight of the house until the time arrives, so that I can ring their doorbell exactly on time.

For my lectures, I watch my phone clock and start the class exactly on time, finishing within a minute or so of the end time, as well.

So yes, I am a respecter of clock time. But I tend not to get too stressed out when other people are late (within reason).

HOWEVER...

Back in 2003, I was spending a week stating in the home of a professional colleague overseas. He was our organization’s current Regional Director and was retiring, and I was stepping into the position. He worked from home, and I was there to pick his brains as part of my training.

Every day, he and his wife had a standing engagement to take an afternoon stroll by the beach (southern Spain — noice!) at 3pm after their siestas and invited me along. And every day, at ten minutes to three, he would be standing in the front doorway to their apartment, glowering at his wife, who would always make him stand there until three o’clock. At which point, she would stop whatever she was doing, and walk through the doorway with a smile. You could tell this was a thing they had been doing a while.

The second day it happened, I asked him if there were a time constraint. Did we need to get back in time for an appointment or something else? “No..” he said. “I just don’t like being late.” :-|

As much as I respect clock time and being early, I swear to gawd, this infuriated me. If anyone stood in the doorway like that and gave me the stink-eye, trying to pressure me to leave ten minutes before we had agreed to leave, FOR A RELAXING WALK ALONG THE BEACH, well, I would not have found it a very relaxing experience.

For the rest of the week, I followed his wife’s example and ignored him standing in the doorway until 3pm. We were never late for our walks.
posted by darkstar at 2:09 PM on March 1, 2019 [5 favorites]


If the time thing weren’t enough on its own, the willingness to make sweeping moral judgments on the basis of nine minutes alone makes me glad that I don’t have any truck with wrapping my identity up in being punctual or any truck with people who do. They sound intolerant and intolerable on so many levels.
posted by invitapriore at 2:13 PM on March 1, 2019 [6 favorites]


I understand that sometimes people are late. I just object to the idea that it's somehow appallingly judgemental to not like it. As if having feelings about other people's behaviour is just cramping their style. Sometimes things we do annoy people, that's life; but insisting that other people are prigs just because their feelings don't accord with your desires really isn't very nice. I'm sorry, but it's not.
posted by howfar at 2:17 PM on March 1, 2019 [14 favorites]


I really don’t mind late people as long as I know you’re a late person. I had a friend in high school where the rule was to multiply whatever they said by 3. If they said they’d be there in 15 minutes, it’d be 45. 1 hour meant 3. I am in general an on time person and if I’m meeting someone who’s always 10 minutes late, I’ll plan to be there 10 minutes after we planned.
posted by LizBoBiz at 2:19 PM on March 1, 2019 [2 favorites]


I really don’t mind late people as long as I know you’re a late person.

>"Elizabeth Taylor was notorious for being late, and my father learned to allow for the inevitable three to four hours of delay. Thus, in Japan, when he was told that his plane had to leave the airport by 4 p.m., he, in turn, told Elizabeth she must be at the plane for a prompt noontime takeoff. She got there at five minutes past 4."
posted by BWA at 2:25 PM on March 1, 2019


I understand that sometimes people are late. I just object to the idea that it's somehow appallingly judgemental to not like it.

If your friend is 10 minutes late for drinks...so what? Why does it matter?

I think this is the fundamental difference: for some people punctuality is an end unto itself rather than a means to an end. Their answer to “So what?” is “Because they’re late!”
posted by Sangermaine at 2:26 PM on March 1, 2019 [3 favorites]


People think that being late is just something that happens but if I consistently give somebody 80% of what I owe them then they explode, like geez, settle down, I owed you money, I gave you money, what's the problem?
posted by GuyZero at 2:27 PM on March 1, 2019 [14 favorites]




Clock jokes? Don't make me link the Russian 25 or 6 to 4 tribute band again. I'll do it.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:29 PM on March 1, 2019 [3 favorites]


If your friend is 10 minutes late for drinks...so what? Why does it matter?

To reply to this not sarcastically, it's because you made an agreement. Some people get upset when other people break verbal agreements. What a shock!
posted by GuyZero at 2:39 PM on March 1, 2019 [13 favorites]


I have really poor time management and it's been a huge problem. Lots of disciplinary action in school, including being suspended multiple times, missed a lot of things I wanted to go to, struggled in classes because I couldn't get to lectures reliably (or even to finals reliably), have lost jobs and been at least reprimanded at literally every place I've worked, and obviously friends are not too delighted with it. It sucks and it's something that I've worked on a lot, but I'm legitimately terrible at predicting and managing time and am still late more often than not. If I'm supposed to be doing the same thing or going to the same place day after day, I can usually start correctly estimating the time I'll need to complete the task or get to the location only after about a month or two. It takes a lot of repetition and trial and error. It's a constant life stress but some people's brains just don't work like others'. I get that it's irritating to have someone be late but I find the complete intolerance for tardiness from otherwise pretty tolerant people bewildering.
posted by rue72 at 2:46 PM on March 1, 2019 [7 favorites]


Sometimes things we do annoy people, that's life; but insisting that other people are prigs just because their feelings don't accord with your desires really isn't very nice. I'm sorry, but it's not.

Meanwhile, as one person above stated, they're expecting that other people build extra time into their transit schedules to account for unplanned events that might result in them being late, with apparently no consideration of the fact that people getting to a place early to keep their friend from filing this instance away in their Grudge Drawer under the "Disrespect" file is the same exact time imposition that they're objecting to on their end. Except it's worse, because everyone who isn't punctual is subject to your disapproval, when they're all having a great time hanging out with each other and not getting mad all the time about the fact that someone didn't navigate the extremely complex system we call the world so as to arrive right on the dot. If that's the alternative, I'm feeling pretty good about "not nice" (lol).

In fact, I'm confident that a world where everyone prioritized being on time to that extent would be one of much greater amounts of wasted time and pointless ill-will between people.
posted by invitapriore at 2:48 PM on March 1, 2019 [5 favorites]


In fact, I'm confident that a world where everyone prioritized being on time to that extent would be one of much greater amounts of wasted time and pointless ill-will between people.

Given that 90% of countries in the world have {$countryname}-time as an expression meaning that people will be late, you're in luck and you do not live in that world.
posted by GuyZero at 2:59 PM on March 1, 2019 [1 favorite]


The thing is, the world doesn't really divide into "the late" and "the timekeepers". Everyone is late sometimes, and most people are very forgiving of lateness most of the time. It's this insistence that anyone who ever, reasonably or unreasonably, gets annoyed by someone else's lateness, is a monster with a grudge drawer. People are complex, sometimes we're dicks by being late and sometimes we're dicks about being late: we contain multitudes of dicks. Being a nice person isn't about being perfect, it's just about being flexible enough to see things from the other person's point of view.

I have habits that irrationally annoy certain people I know, and I try not to do them when they're around, because I know it will annoy them. And I feel a bit bad if I annoy them accidentally anyway. But then I say sorry and we all move on. I guess I could insist that their irrational annoyance is a judgemental affront and insist they get over it, but, again, I don't think that would be very nice.
posted by howfar at 3:00 PM on March 1, 2019 [14 favorites]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_time
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Caribbean%20time
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Spanish%20Time
posted by GuyZero at 3:01 PM on March 1, 2019 [1 favorite]


The thing is, the world doesn't really divide into "the late" and "the timekeepers".

do you want a credit on the spec script I'm going to write about this premise or nah
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:09 PM on March 1, 2019 [4 favorites]


I'm just glad we use the sensible 24-hour clock here in the Netherlands, none of this am/pm bullshit!
posted by Pendragon at 3:14 PM on March 1, 2019 [3 favorites]


Now here is something that I really am pathetically petty about... people insisting that the are such times as 12:00 AM and PM. No! Noon and midnight! Otherwise it is ambiguous and oxymoronic! I don't care that I can always infer it from context anyway! You will smart for this!
posted by howfar at 3:24 PM on March 1, 2019 [4 favorites]


I, a perpetually late person, am that way because I can't bring myself to make the kinds of sacrifices needed to be on time or early.

So you consider your inconvenience in getting somewhere early and waiting for other people to show up is worse than your counterpart's inconvenience in getting there on time and waiting for you? Or the sacrifices you'd have to make to get somewhere on time or early are bigger than the sacrifices everyone else seems to put up with?

I'm asking honestly. Have you actually thought about how other people get places on time, and decided that you have it worse?
posted by tclark at 3:35 PM on March 1, 2019 [11 favorites]


But as experience has shown me some people really do think that way, as odd as it is to me, and never the twain shall meet.

Which is why we need clocks to keep the twains running on time.
posted by Celsius1414 at 3:39 PM on March 1, 2019 [13 favorites]


And who's to say that everything I was doing up to 10:40 wasn't equally (if not more) important and demanding?

The important thing is you agreed to 11:00 and you didn't make it. When you agreed to 11 you also implicitly agreed to doing certain things at 10 and 10:30 to make sure you were on time.

I'm perpetually late too, but I recognize that this is a personal failing, because I'm lazy and bad at time management. Making excuses is just juvenile
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 3:53 PM on March 1, 2019 [11 favorites]


So I am sympathetic to people who are late a lot because I have been there. I have sinned and I am not casting any stones here.

I recognize that this is a personal failing, because I'm lazy and bad at time management

The thing people do where they say they'll do one thing and then do a different thing is so complex and multi-faceted that it defies any one explanation. That is definitely one reason. Sometimes people feel social pressure to say they're going to do things they have no desire to do. Sometimes people are overwhelmed. Some people just have bad executive function. But making out like no one should care is weird. If no one cares then why set a time?
posted by GuyZero at 3:57 PM on March 1, 2019 [4 favorites]


I am the latest person. Absolutely. Aside from some weird mental blocks about knowing I'm supposed to be somewhere at a certain time or that a certain day is special and the inability to connect that knowledge to the real world reliably, the thing that most drives my lateness is an inability to estimate the length of tasks. Plus a complete lack of contingency planning. ADHD for the win, even as "mild" as mine is.
posted by maxwelton at 4:30 PM on March 1, 2019


Having lived in tropical subsistence farming communities, I can completely confirm that equating punctuality and the other "work ethic" traits like diligence and ambition with"morality" and "respect for others" is most definitely a cultural value.

The System is what requires Productivity and Efficiency, forcing the humans to adopt those as important.

Sure historically these were required for Survival, especially in very cold climates.

But it is too bad that those with the freedom to live without regard to clock and calendar way are shamed for making that decision.
posted by goinWhereTheClimateSuitsMyClothes at 4:49 PM on March 1, 2019 [6 favorites]


I think it depends. For the creative and knowledge workers, which is an elite societal class, punctuality has a lower cultural priority. I think this social fact says a lot about people's ideas or internalized prejudices about class and time as a resource and how social relations and politics affect that.
posted by polymodus at 4:51 PM on March 1, 2019


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_time
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Caribbean%20time
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Spanish%20Time



I’ve heard Papua New Guinean friends (and many expats who work there) refer with a laugh to “PNG time” in a similar way.

As noted above, there are rich cultural themes behind the use of these terms, some of which are related to conflicts in event-vs-time orientation and difference in social pressure to agree to something even when there is no intention to do it, and some of which are related to attitudes of cultural superiority...

Anyway, when I was living and working in North Africa, I often heard French expats use the term “rendez-vous Arabe” to describe a pre-arranged appointment or meeting with an Arab national that may or may not be attended by that person, and if they do, it could well be hours after the originally agreed-upon time.

But my favorite permutation I’ve ever encountered was while spending a few weeks working in an Amazigh (Berber) village in the Sahara. I had agreed to meet with a local Amazigh friend at a particular time the next afternoon. Well, I overslept from my siesta the next day, and by the time I finally set out to visit him, I was a full hour late.

About halfway to his house, I met him walking over the hill coming toward me. I clasped my hand over my mouth in jovial embarrassment at my tardiness. In reply, he smiled broadly and shouted, in a delightful play on words, “Ah! Un vrai rendez-vous Berbère!!”*

*Ah! A real Berber meeting!
posted by darkstar at 5:13 PM on March 1, 2019 [8 favorites]


More like discovered E.P. Thompson's 1967 essay Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism.
I mean it's clear the author of the FPP link didn't actually read Marx, who has significant prior art on the subject. And if he'd actually read Hume he'd probably not have bothered writing that essay, so . . . sure, maybe Thompson was the catalyst? He sure doesn't bother citing anything. The author, I mean, not Thompson.

As someone who actually went from being really disorganized and therefore often late to somewhat organized and also fairly punctual, I actually resent chronically late people quite a bit.

Late sometimes is expected. Late all the time means you are unwilling to make the kind of sacrifices I regularly make, to (among other things) respect other people's time. I'm sure some people have neurological reasons for this but for a lot of people I think it's just not actually respecting other people's time. I am also selfish, so I get it, but clearly our priorities don't match, and I'd prefer to be around people who can strike a balance between not being too put out and not regularly inconveniencing their friends/coworkers because they can't be arsed to leave a little padding in their schedule.

God, there's something I don't miss about California.

Finally, in the age of appified piecework for the sharing economy, it's no longer the clock, it's the fucking stopwatch.
posted by aspersioncast at 5:49 PM on March 1, 2019 [6 favorites]


But it is too bad that those with the freedom to live without regard to clock and calendar way are shamed for making that decision.

Is anyone doing that? I don't think there can be any reasonable objection to anyone living on whatever schedule or lack thereof they prefer. But most people aren't able to, and we have to respect that.

I am lucky enough to be able to live that way (outside of office hours), but most of my friends are parents with full-time jobs too, these days. So if I agree to meet someone at 1:00pm tomorrow, even though it didn't really matter to me whether it was 12:00 noon or 2:30pm or whenever, I feel it's respectful of me to be diligent about being on time and accepting of them being late quite often. Because I know how it goes for people who have more complicated lives than mine.

Equally, though, I know people who really don't have much to do in a day, who still manage to not show up when agreed, even after being offered a wide range of times to their convenience, and still manage to be very late to a movie so we have to shuffle in after it starts. And yeah, I tolerate that in the people I like, and we ignore it or laugh it off or whatever, but it's still qualitatively different from my interaction with and impression of the person with a busy life.

Which I guess is really just me repeating that there's no "Punctual people are all like this, but Late people are all like this". Time controls our lives to varying degrees. Usually, in my personal (and accordingly very limited) experience, freedom from time has some degree of identifiable correlation to gender, race or ethnicity, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, social class, financial resources etc - and, of course, they are (by and large) the sort of correlations you'd expect in our fairly oppressive society. But even so, we're still all just individuals undergoing a variety of somewhat unpredictable reactions to a range of often tricky situations.

The idea that there's a great divide on punctuality (with the antagonism that suggests) rather than just lots of human variation, seems like the sort of error it is easy for our subjective experience of the world to bias us towards. It seems like the sort of idea that isn't really right, but which people adopt because it fits with a particular pattern in their experience. I mean, I guess it does no great harm, but I think a more nuanced understanding is more useful and more accurate.
posted by howfar at 6:46 PM on March 1, 2019 [6 favorites]


'Chronoplolis' & 'Repent, Harlequin...' are those swell old timey things;

In recenter things, Todd's time phone App in BoJack is kinda funny...
posted by ovvl at 7:32 PM on March 1, 2019


I don't intend to sound too dismissive or argumentative, but based on your comments so far you don't come across as someone feeling like crap about it.
posted by tclark at 8:28 PM on March 1, 2019 [9 favorites]


Holy moving goalposts, Batman.
posted by tclark at 9:19 PM on March 1, 2019 [6 favorites]


Sometimes I'm late.
Sometimes I'm early.
Mostly I'm right on time.

Obviously you can't trust me.
posted by BlueHorse at 10:32 PM on March 1, 2019 [2 favorites]


The symptom of capitalism is that people (myself included), take it upon ourselves in the moment to judge people for being late. We don't care why they're late, we judge them for being late, in the psychological sense of being judgmental versus being nonjudgmental. I would point to that dynamic as the most toxic thing and in an enlightened and freer society we would shed that the way we shed many other harmful ways of relating to one another.
posted by polymodus at 10:33 PM on March 1, 2019 [3 favorites]


Look at the responses you're getting: it's "disrespectful", "cutting into the rest of their time", "as your convenience dictates", etc. For you and me this kind of thinking is just alien and almost reads as parody. I can't even imagine a friend being late to meet for drinks and thinking these things about them.

If your friend is 10 minutes late to meet up, it's not a big deal. The people talking about disrespect and everything are not talking about someone being 10 minutes late for drinks.

They're talking about the friend who is 10 minutes late every single time, and every time has an excuse about how their dog got out and would have run into traffic, or some other life-or-death emergency that kept them from getting there on time. It's not an isolated incident, it's a habitual failure. It's the person who's late for the twentieth time that gets this kind of response.

When you keep agreeing to meet at 11, and show up at 11:10 over and over, you're showing you just don't care enough to find that ten minutes, to fix whatever's causing this to happen, even when you can obviously tell it's a pattern. You're not taking up ten minutes of my time waiting, you're taking up ten minutes of my time every day. It adds up.
posted by kafziel at 11:25 PM on March 1, 2019 [9 favorites]


That's an attribution fallacy. If somebody keeps failing and my reason is they don't care, I'm essentializing their behavior. Modern psychology, I would hope, has gone beyond that level of reasoning about people's needs and motivations.

The alternative is to just work it out pragmatically. If someone has difficulty being punctual, we work it out in advance, which might mean actually discussing it with them (giving feedback), but could also mean not dealing with them at all. Setting our boundaries doesn't mean we have to pass judgment on their attitude, which can be a pernicious form of psychological control.
posted by polymodus at 12:28 AM on March 2, 2019 [5 favorites]


Sometimes being late has impacts you can't see and aren't told about. If you leave someone waiting alone in a public space where they are subject to harassment or fear of harassment, they may have a really miserable time and not tell you directly. Context is everything here, but if somebody asks you to be on time, please just do it.

I say this as someone who used to be habitually late for everything. It's a difficult change to make, but you have to come around on this if you want to interact with a large segment of the population or, say, ever have kids.
posted by phooky at 12:58 AM on March 2, 2019 [8 favorites]


"I spent some time in Soviet Russia when I was a kid. They had clocks too." - that's probably because the Soviet Union was a monopolistic state capitalist country. Really.
posted by holist at 1:44 AM on March 2, 2019 [3 favorites]


I think one takeaway from this thread could be that it's unfair to judge people for what you assume their motivations are. People make it sound as though someone is chronically late because they're indifferent to someone else's needs, or they feel no true guilt about it, because if they did they would change their behavior. How tidy!

I am perpetually late to everything in my life, and it stresses me out to no end. Like others, being perpetually late has sometimes cost me jobs and other very real things. My lateness is the product of habits formed over a lifetime of rampant ADD, combined with an inability to estimate the time needed to do things. I've gotten better over the years, but it's still a real struggle, not just laziness or disrespect.

But it's not just the time it takes to get somewhere, it's the time it takes for me to get ready. You'd think after decades of showers I'd know how long one takes me, but even that seems to vary. Pretty much every single time I step out of the shower I'll be astounded by how short or how long it was compared to my expectations. Or just the time it takes to know when to, say, put on my shoes and head out the door. Do I leave at 10:40 or 10:30? Oh, it's 10:39 already.

There are often very practical and effective solutions suggested for the chronically-late. These remind me of earnest attempts in my youth to instill good habits: buy a planner (forget to buy said planner), write stuff down (forget to have something to write on). It goes on. I'm sure to the punctual these sound like empty excuses, but I'm sure there's more to me than just a rude disregard for others' time.

Fortunately, I think it's been a few years since I had a friendship that depended on any kind of precise punctuality. I never really have to say I'm meeting someone at a particular time on the dot. I'll say "I'll let you know when I'm leaving" (or vice versa) and then we'll see where we're at as we approach the roughly agreed-upon time. Sometimes I will arrive at a place 20 minutes before the other person, sometimes it's the other way around. It hasn't been an issue in a while. It never feels disrespectful to me; they're just running late. Will this be the state of my friendships forever? Who knows.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 2:03 AM on March 2, 2019 [10 favorites]


It's a difficult change to make, but you have to come around on this if you want to interact with a large segment of the population or, say, ever have kids.

There's a reason why the article is about capitalism. Shoulding people, "You have to come around on this", benefits capitalist ideology. It is an example of the harm the author describes; shoulding is social coercion.

If the justification for shoulding people is because of social norms "large segment of the population", then that's the anti-capitalist objection to the harms and unfreedom of social conformity. Social conformity arguments are fallacious because they hide political difference.

Similarly, if the justification is about reproductive power and control, in particular phrased in problematic language such as "ever having kids", that is also ceding personal-political decisions and choices to the logic of neoliberal capital. A world in which people should be on time if they ever want to have children or a family or a spouse… describes a patriarchal and authoritarian society using a status-quo argument. Which again, echoes back to the article and the problem of the domination of capital.

So let me be clear, I don't necessarily find the article the best articulation of these issues. But the problem of time and capital has had substantial writing, I don't know, maybe people could go look at Foucault or something, there's a long list of standard arguments and attitudes that the literature has sought to deconstruct. If people disagree with the article, there's plenty of other literature out there from a long lineage of scholarly writing.
posted by polymodus at 2:04 AM on March 2, 2019 [6 favorites]


This happens to be in another tab in my phone... it has been there for weeks and I keep returning to it, and it's relevant to this discussion. I particularly like the idea of "a federation of independent times".
posted by holist at 4:18 AM on March 2, 2019 [1 favorite]


When I tell you "come over for dinner at 6" and you show up at 7, you're not eating with us. Not because I'm Beholden To The Man, but because young children have strong circadian clocks and if dinner or bedtime is too late, my toddler will have meltdown after meltdown and be up all night. This may be "problematic language" to you, but this is not the logic of neoliberal capital; it's the biological constraints of small people who don't have very much emotional or physical control over themselves yet.

Coordinated time is a social construct. Yes, it can be used for harm. It can also, like the harassment issue I mentioned, be used to avoid harm. But clocks primarily exist to allow humans to coordinate with each other. I once spent two months on 28-hour days, with six "days" to the week. It was really fun, I had a a great time, and I always used a clock because I still interacted with other people, and needed to know when they would be around, and I wanted to respect how they chose to use their time.

You can claim it's "social coercion" to be asked to show up on time. Sure, it is! It exists for very real and practical reasons. If you don't understand why someone is asking you to show up at a given time, you should ask. Not everyone's schedule is determined by a job. Politics do not exempt us from listening.
posted by phooky at 6:08 AM on March 2, 2019 [15 favorites]


I'm finding it a little weird that we're defining "late" as like, 9 minutes. I don't even consider that late. Sometimes the bus is stuck in traffic or whatever. Even if you're always nine minutes late, whatever, it's a short amount of time.

On the other hand, I find people who are always half an hour or 45 minutes or more late to be incredibly annoying, because that's just selfish. They aren't willing to put in the required effort to be on time, and they leave me sitting there. And that's a long time to be sitting there, without a book because I didn't plan on reading because I planned to be with you!

I am actually a naturally late person, ADHD, once had to run to work leaving the floor covered in pins because I knocked over the box of pins and definitely did not have time to pick them all up.
So I now add ten minutes to everything I do mentally so I'm never late, which sometimes leads to me being ten or fifteen or even twenty minutes early, but that's cool because I know I have exactly fifteen minutes to waste so I can plan accordingly.

Because it's not kind to leave my friends standing around somewhere waiting for me.


(BUT you know whats worse? Turning up to my house an hour earlier than agreed OMG I'm still half dressed and haven't done the dishes or hoovered and why are you here).
posted by stillnocturnal at 7:25 AM on March 2, 2019 [10 favorites]


Yeah, 10-15 or even 20 minutes is traffic or an accident or an unexpectedly long time at a red light or difficulty finding a place to park.

If you are consistently a half hour to 45 minutes late to meet me, EVERY SINGLE TIME, we are going to have a discussion because I get that it's hard for you but my time matters too so let's figure something out. I've done this with a particular friend who knows I'm not judging him but he needs to let me know if he's going to meet me on Regular Time or Mark Time. That way I know if I have an extra 45 minutes to get stuff done or hang out with my dog or something before I need to leave to meet him.

My brother, on the other hand, has made it perfectly clear that the reason he's always (HOURS) late is because he just can't be arsed to make the effort because, and I quote, he doesn't like being told what to do. Well fuck that, then, I guess I just won't do stuff with you.
posted by cooker girl at 11:09 AM on March 2, 2019 [6 favorites]


BUT you know whats worse? Turning up to my house an hour earlier than agreed OMG I'm still half dressed and haven't done the dishes or hoovered and why are you here

Oh lord yes — if there’s common ground that the punctual and consistently late can find, it’s shared hatred of the Early Bastards.
posted by Celsius1414 at 12:10 PM on March 2, 2019 [4 favorites]


You can claim it's "social coercion" to be asked to show up on time. Sure, it is!

Asking people isn't social coercion. Demanding people and using verbal psychological premises and tactics of the form, People/You Should X, is an authoritarian and autocratic way of relating. But this is so suffused in contemporary culture, that people don't even think of it this way. It is a kind of prejudice. I'm not immune to that either, but I'm willing to point it out as a fundamental thing that happens.

If one thinks of it as a neurodiversity issue then people can be a lot more empathic. We don't tell people it's their fault or they don't care, for being where they are in their lives. We don't should them because that has long term costs for short-term social gains. We do encourage people to take responsibility for their own behaviors. That's the general idea.
posted by polymodus at 12:18 PM on March 2, 2019 [2 favorites]


Coordinated time is a social construct. … clocks primarily exist to allow humans to coordinate with each other.

This would be a very problematic reading of Foucault and others. Time is the social construct, whereas coordination is what deserves critical inquiry deconstruction. The argument that coordination time is useful for human coordination, or even "is useful", can be recognized as the kind of circular logical fallacy that oppressive ideologies employ to justify their social structures. That is the target of critique. Whereas if the argument is, idea/technology X lets humans/society function, then that is a reading that has zero to do with post-Marxist lenses, because that's the kind of normal and normative conception of time that everyone in modernity has been taught anyways. Either Foucault and Althusser and all those long-winded people had something new to say, or they didn't, and any statement about understanding the nature of time in a political context demonstrates an application of what they said or not.
posted by polymodus at 12:34 PM on March 2, 2019


When I tell you "come over for dinner at 6" and you show up at 7, you're not eating with us. Not because I'm Beholden To The Man, but because young children have strong circadian clocks and if dinner or bedtime is too late, my toddler will have meltdown after meltdown and be up all night. This may be "problematic language" to you, but this is not the logic of neoliberal capital; it's the biological constraints of small people who don't have very much emotional or physical control over themselves yet.

This is irrelevant from the idea:
but you have to come around on this if you want to … ever have kids.

Which says, people who do not conform to someone else's expectations about time will not ever have children. That is so pernicious and disrespectful, and what makes it even more offensive is changing the words and describing a different, narrow, and hypothetical scenario in order to make some deflective point without having to consider the impact of the original generalized wording.
posted by polymodus at 12:52 PM on March 2, 2019 [3 favorites]


Here are my old man opinions.

* Being a bit late, even routinely so, is not a moral failing. Being an hour without acknowledging it is a crime.

* I have enjoyed the construct of invitations of the form "show up at X time for the event at Y time", which provides a whole range of acceptable arrival times in which no one has to worry about being rude.

* calling people a few minutes in advance to let them know you will be late is a good way to ease tensions.

* I'm surprised that no one has brought up the impossible imprecision of the start times for pop music concerts, as they seem deliberately designed to decriminate against the precise and to create a horrible zone of ambiguity.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:17 PM on March 2, 2019 [4 favorites]


There's also this interesting duality in this thread where parents need people to be on time for them because of the constraints imposed by children, but at the same time those parents are in possession of an erratic being who has no control over scheduling.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:21 PM on March 2, 2019 [5 favorites]


Yep, parenting does complicate things; it seems (from the outside) like the absolute job from hell that you can never quit combined with being madly in love with a person who you also think you might accidentally kill. I recognise that it has approximately commensurate rewards, but it is really tough, and I think people going through it need our help and compassion.

I think parenting should be seen as a public good, even though parenthood is a personal choice with a variable impact on others. Now that the children are here, they need care and attention and stimulation to have a decent chance in life, and our contribution to helping that happen is valuable to us all. Maybe think of it as not helping the parents so much as helping the children, who, as they will no doubt remark one day, didn't ask to be born.

I just really want everyone to be nice to their friends right now is all.
posted by howfar at 2:04 PM on March 2, 2019 [3 favorites]


Ironically, technology that has made improved our lives has also played a large role in messing up our natural time schedules. Electricity has brought us wonderful conveniences and entertainment, but enables us to work around the clock. A great thing if you're in the ER hoping a loved one's life will be saved, not so great if you're working rotating shifts and have to work graveyard shift every few weeks or months. Cellphones and computers enable us to be oncall 24 hours a day--think how irritated some people get when they call your cell and you (gasp!) didn't pick up. You'd better have a good excuse. True downtime is getting harder and harder to secure for ourselves.
posted by Misslisa at 1:22 PM on March 3, 2019 [1 favorite]


i'm a hyper-punctual person, so i'm coming at this as that kind of person... i'm surprised by how things are like "the on-timies" and the "latecomers." if you have a friend who is constantly late... how do you not build that into your expectations? at that time you start to recognize it as a form of disability, in the literal sense of the word, because it's pretty clear that they can't be on time. what do you do in such situations? you accommodate. as someone who needs accommodations in many other aspects of my life, i am extremely grateful to people who accommodate me, and the idea that my failings and shortcomings may be experienced by others as what people seem to be thinking here – unconscientiousness, disregard for others, etc. – is a constant anxiety/fear. just because the DSM doesn't hasn't yet come up with some new "disordered-time disorder" or something doesn't mean that you shouldn't be able to tell yourself when something is a constant and chronic problem. in which case you're sort of being the inconsiderate one. and if that's not the case, then your friend may just be sort of an ass who doesn't actually care
posted by LeviQayin at 9:29 PM on March 3, 2019 [2 favorites]


In my experience, the People Of The Clock vs. The Clock-Free divide among the Gen X-or-younger demographic is just another name for Parents vs. Non Parents.

I'm having this issue with my sister right now. She's married and has no kids. I'm a divorced single mom with shared custody of two little ones. If I want to drive over to her town with the kids to see her for a weekend, or if she wants to come over to my place, I NEEEEEED to plan it at least a couple of weeks in advance because see above re: custody schedule. My sister, on the other hand, doesn't like committing whole weekends in advance because "Who knows what might come up at the last minute?"

The upshot is that we don't get to meet up. I've let her know that I'd love to drive over or have her visit, so please let me know which weekends she has free. She declines to tell me in advance, but once in a while, she'll call me on a Friday asking if I have the weekend free for her to visit, and invariably my weekend is already booked. I'm sure she feels as rejected by me as I do by her.

It's a fucking nightmare. And I cannot help feeling like this is entirely her fault. The People Of The Clock don't adhere to its rule just on a whim - we do it because we have unavoidable obligations and demands that FORCE us to adhere to schedules. Not so for the Clock-Free folks, whose non-adherence is a privilege and personal preference.
posted by MiraK at 7:39 AM on March 4, 2019 [4 favorites]


just another name for Parents vs. Non Parents.

Yep. Not only am I planned weeks in advance, my wife is a high-school teacher so the routine of her schedule means we often have the entire year's vacations and trips planned in January. I think we maybe have summer 2020 planned already too.
posted by GuyZero at 7:56 AM on March 4, 2019 [1 favorite]


Not so for the Clock-Free folks, whose non-adherence is a privilege and personal preference.

That might be true for your sister, but surely isn't true for folks whose "clock-free" existence stems from irregular and unpredictable work schedules, chronic illness/disability (whether theirs or a dependent's), lack of reliable transportation, or other unpredictable obligations....
posted by mosst at 12:36 PM on March 4, 2019 [3 favorites]


Ah yes this all reminds me of that young woman I was seeing who was always weirdly early or hugely late, would make plans then forget about them entirely, and who was generally inconsistent in all ways. I felt sorry for her, I thought wow, it must be really hard to live like that. Turns out she had significant "unpredictable obligations" : primarily her husband, his work schedule.
posted by some loser at 12:44 PM on March 4, 2019 [3 favorites]


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