Punctuality Is Having a Moment

June 12, 2022 3:05 AM

In 2022, it’s no longer fashionable to be fashionably late, a change that seems to have arisen from a pandemic now in its third year. [NYT / Archive]
posted by ellieBOA (44 comments total)

Chad Orzel, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Union College and the author of a recently published book, “A Brief History of Timekeeping,” said an adherence to punctuality has been on an upward slope for millenniums.

Wow sources. Do you have any actual research presented here? Or did someone make up the headline and order a word count.

Merriam-Webster's defines punctuality as ...

Never forget that your reason for living is to work for capitalism.
posted by adept256 at 4:22 AM on June 12, 2022 [14 favorites]

This is like when my teachers told me that you had to wear trainers or nobody would take you seriously. Except my teacher wasn’t a newspaper owned by capitalist-defending interests
posted by The River Ivel at 4:43 AM on June 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

X axis has what, three millenniums at most marked on it. Not much of a graph area to infer a reliable slope.
posted by filtergik at 4:51 AM on June 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

Frankly, I think it's rather silly to suggest that capitalism is the only possible explanation for preferring punctuality. I prefer it (from myself, and from others) because it respects people's time, and makes engagements (of any kind) more productive (not necessarily in capitalist terms) and less disruptive to the rest of my day.

But, yeah. This article is a bunch of anecdotes, sourced (like so much in the New York Times) from a myopic NYC/LA bubble, and then brazenly generalized to US culture as a whole. "This extremely small, extremely non-random, and probably cherry-picked sample of people thinks that people are more punctual lately" does not equal "punctuality is having a moment".
posted by escape from the potato planet at 4:54 AM on June 12, 2022 [33 favorites]

My pathological, aggressive punctuality was probably beaten in to me by both employers and the educational system. Don’t tell me your party starts at 7 if you don’t want me rolling up at 6:59. I don’t wanna get fired from our friendship.
posted by Devils Rancher at 4:54 AM on June 12, 2022 [34 favorites]

Speaking as a committed Type B, this — and I cannot stress this enough — is violence.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:55 AM on June 12, 2022 [18 favorites]

I grew up in Iceland, where being on time is good, but being early is considered rude. I mostly live in Finland now, where being on time is good, and being late is considered rude.

I now arrive on time for everything, as my instinctive behavior and learned behavior conflict heavily. This means that I usually arrive early, and kinda walk aimlessly around for a bit until the exact moment.

At first, it was kinda stressful, but now I enjoy my aimless walks.
posted by Kattullus at 5:07 AM on June 12, 2022 [30 favorites]

Oh, and punctuality is, if I recall correctly, an early 20th century phenomenon. During World War One, the wearing of wristwatches became commonplace, first among officers, and then later soldiers, to coordinate mass infantry advances so that they would be following behind the artillery barrages, and not rushing into them. After the war, mass manufactured watches became relatively cheap in industrialized countries, and punctuality spread through society from there.
posted by Kattullus at 5:16 AM on June 12, 2022 [11 favorites]

I have a useless talent.

I used to be a factory foreman, which meant I'd have to be first at the factory every morning. So I got an alarm clock and set it for 5am. Then a habit began to form. I was waking up at 4:59 every morning, moments before the alarm went off.

This was annoying. I figured I must be subconsciously peeking at the clock in the night, so I turned the clock away. Still, I woke up at 4:59am. I set it for 5:05am, that just meant I woke up at 5:04. Same thing if I set it for 4:55.

I thought it might be the kookaburras, raucous birds who always laugh at the dawn. 'WAKE UP HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH GO TO WORK HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA'. Bastards. But when I moved away from the river to where I couldn't hear them, I was still waking up moments before the alarm.

I find myself reaching for the oven mitts before the timer goes off. The bell at city hall which tolls every hour, I can hum the call and get the response within seconds. I switch on the evening news the moment the station fanfare begins.

I have an exquistely honed sense of time bordering on clairvoyance. EVEN SO, unless I'm supposed to be the guy holding the ring, if you're offended by my lateness, perhaps you don't know me well enough to invite me to things.
posted by adept256 at 5:29 AM on June 12, 2022 [28 favorites]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure war was the first human activity that required large-scale punctuality. Nobody wants to be alone when storming the castle.
posted by SPrintF at 6:14 AM on June 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

Well, if it's a trend being reported on in the NYT Style section, it must be true.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment to get anime eye surgery. It's what all the zoomers are getting these days, I hear.
posted by AlSweigart at 6:17 AM on June 12, 2022 [7 favorites]

After deleting many words, I'll just say: author does not prove their point. Author did add proof to my refusal to subscribe to NYT, as well as not reading anything they produce. They may have been the paper of record once, but that's long gone.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 6:42 AM on June 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

if you're offended by my lateness, perhaps you don't know me well enough to invite me to things.
I think I'm going to carve this into my forehead.
posted by Don Pepino at 6:53 AM on June 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

I thought it was kind of interesting that "earlier dinner times" was lumped in with punctuality in this trend piece. Not sure if that correlation actually holds, but I prefer punctuality and eating dinner early, while my partner is less concerned with timeliness and sometimes eats dinner after I go to bed, so my anecdata does not contradict it.

I would say more but I want to be on time for my slot at the local pool. I guess wanting to get my full stretch of splashing around in the water and reading in the sunshine is just my capitalist, military industrial complex conditioning showing. :)
posted by the primroses were over at 6:57 AM on June 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

war was the first human activity that required large-scale punctuality

Nah, it's religion. Clocks were invented so the faithful would get up in order to pray, before dawn. Can't disappoint your deity by sleeping in.
posted by Rash at 7:00 AM on June 12, 2022 [9 favorites]

Nothing makes me dismiss a person faster than tardiness. Consistent tardiness? I'll pass on any relationship, thanks. I've never known a consistently tardy person worth my time.
posted by dobbs at 7:03 AM on June 12, 2022 [7 favorites]

How about people who are often but not always tardy? Off the list?
posted by Don Pepino at 7:09 AM on June 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

Nothing makes me dismiss a person faster than tardiness. Consistent tardiness? I'll pass on any relationship, thanks. I've never known a consistently tardy person worth my time.

I used to feel similarly. And I'm still not a fan of tardiness – but, having been close to a couple of people with executive function issues (mainly ADHD), I've come to be more forgiving of it.

These friends of mine don't mean to be habitually late. In fact, they carry around quite a bit of guilt and shame over it. They don't do it on purpose, and they don't do it from a lack of respect.

But their brains just aren't built for the tightly scheduled lifestyles that modern technology has made possible. They honestly just lose track of time, because their brains are constantly suggesting other things for them to pay attention to.

I'm still friends with these people, but I take their ways into account. If I want to meet up at 6:30, then I make plans to meet at 6:00. (Or I figure out a way to use the time productively – reading, getting minor tasks done on my phone, catching up on email, etc.) And if there are activities that require punctuality, I do those activities with other friends.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 7:28 AM on June 12, 2022 [25 favorites]

I usually arrive early, and kinda walk aimlessly around for a bit until the exact moment.

Ha, I do the same thing!
posted by aramaic at 7:30 AM on June 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

if you're offended by my lateness, perhaps you don't know me well enough to invite me to things.

I tell my partner we have to be at [event] 45 minutes prior to the time we should show, and that always gets us out the door (just barely) on time.

I wouldn't be offended by your lateness. But, if the event was something time sensitive, I might send you a personal invite with an earlier time to have you show up at the appropriate time.

Of course, now that you know my trick, I can't invite you to anything.

(On preview: What potato planet said a bit more eloquently. JINX!)
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 7:31 AM on June 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

I’m largely unconcerned with keeping accurate time for myself, but if I’m supposed to be somewhere at a specified time, I’m gonna do exactly that, to the best of my ability.

How late is “fashionably late”? Five minutes? Fifteen? Seven and three-quarters? We need some specifics here, people!
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 8:06 AM on June 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

As fashions go, there's no specific answer. I've heard people talk of planning to arrive 2 hours late into parties, for instance.

For those intending but failing to show up on time, sometimes it's just their set of time management skills that could use improvement.
posted by grokus at 8:16 AM on June 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

if you're offended by my lateness, perhaps

I'm not offended so much as not interested in organizing my life around it. Every now and then, no problem. But if it comes to feel like habit on your part ...

A. don't expect me to meet you outside the venue,

B. don't expect me to save you a seat inside the venue past a certain point of not treating strangers (who aren't late) disrespectfully

C. if you want to just meet me in a bookstore or a record store or somewhere else where the browsing is good, I guess I'll see you when I see you.
posted by philip-random at 8:39 AM on June 12, 2022 [9 favorites]

My work means I get to visit a lot of colleges and universities. I try to learn the local cultures of each, which set off the similarities. One small cultural detail is class and meeting timing.

Some schools insist on things starting on the dot. If class starts at 2 pm, it starts then. Others have a five minute buffer.

...yet this information was gather pre-COVID. I'm not sure how any have changed since.
posted by doctornemo at 8:49 AM on June 12, 2022

This article is a bunch of anecdotes, sourced (like so much in the New York Times) from a myopic NYC/LA bubble, and then brazenly generalized to US culture as a whole.

Yup. Classic NYT style piece. "I talked with a Yale friend, then checked with someone from Goldman Sachs. This is a thing now!"
posted by doctornemo at 8:49 AM on June 12, 2022 [14 favorites]

In my previous job, no one was ever on time, to a degree where they changed the schedules to 15 minutes past rather than on the hour, but that just meant people would be there half past or later. (I have no idea why they thought it would work).

In my current job, the general consensus is that you start on time, and if something goes wrong, as in there is a technical problem, it is embarrassing, even if it isn't your fault. It isn't good if things drag out either.

Mostly I prefer the current job culture. There is a clear demarcation of when you are at work and when you are not. You don't waste time, but get to the point right away. Our students are less stressed than at other universities. You can plan! One thing happens at four, another at six. But... the reason for the loose culture at the old place was that getting immersed in a given problem was encouraged. You could be standing in a workshop with colleagues and students and studying something, and stay till you found a solution, even if that was six hours later. You could get into a creative flow. And then your granddad's birthday would have to wait. I kind of miss that, sometimes.
posted by mumimor at 8:55 AM on June 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

I've heard people talk of planning to arrive 2 hours late into parties, for instance

For long, purely social gatherings (such as parties or musical events)...this is often a reasonable policy.

Being punctual, I've often made the mistake of showing up at the advertised start time. Which means that you get to awkwardly graze on crudités with the one random couple who also showed up on time, or be on an empty dancefloor listening to the crappy DJ who begged to play the opening set for free, or watch a band assemble a drum set and do sound check (musical performances never ever start on time).

In my experience, workplace culture around punctuality varies tremendously. One of the positive things about my last job: meetings always started at the scheduled time, and rarely ran past the scheduled end time. This is in stark contrast to my other old job, where people would start filtering into the meeting room 10–15 minutes late, then shoot the shit for another 15 minutes, then run well past the scheduled end time. When it comes to work-related meetings, give me punctual any day.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:07 AM on June 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

So this article at the start was all, "Now that you are stuck at home on Zoom in pandemuc, there's no excuse to be late to meetings any more." Which is legit, but I dunno of that applying in IRL 2022?
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:07 AM on June 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

How does this new theory jive with their other recent theory. Remember the theory about how millenials don't want to stamp labels on cans for 15c an hour, proving forever that they're the layabout wastrels we always knew they were.
posted by adept256 at 10:20 AM on June 12, 2022

“People are implicitly asking, ‘Why am I going back to the workplace? There better be a reason to spend all this money on gas or trains for commuting; it better be worth it to risk getting Covid when I’ve proved I can work efficiently from home,’” she said. This could translate, she said, into a culture of: “I’m here to get things done, not to chitchat.”

me, furious that I have to come back in to work despite rising COVID rates, the increased chance of dying in a car crash, that I have to deal with traffic at all, because my job is something that was being performed competently fully remote, because of my lingering symptoms of social anxiety, in a generally pissy, anti-social mood because of all of this: "At least we're all on time!"

this fucking exec-level consultant know-nothing who operates in a completely different sphere whose life is infinitely more convenient, who is paid so much fucking more to provide out-of-touch consulting, who is so incomprehensibly brazen that they fucking market themselves as a 'cultural norm shifter': "Seems like people value time more now!"
posted by paimapi at 11:34 AM on June 12, 2022 [17 favorites]

I’m late because of the F train, not because of my ADHD. I know how to set alarms and minimize distractions, but that doesn’t help when the train whimsically decides not to go into Manhattan.
posted by betweenthebars at 11:39 AM on June 12, 2022 [10 favorites]

I moved from a culture where we were expected to be on time to one where you were expected to be at least an hour late. After several years I have adjusted, but it makes meeting friends from the old world a little spicy as I rush to respect their preferred timing.
posted by Braeburn at 12:34 PM on June 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

I've heard people talk of planning to arrive 2 hours late into parties, for instance

Yes, going to parties on time is bizarre—or rather, not all parties with an advertised start time have an expectation of punctuality. If it's a party party, and not say, a dinner party where being on time is expected and food is served within a certain window, then I'm not showing up before 11pm. OK maybe 10 at a push, but still the fun doesn't really start until much later. It's called "disco napping" for a reason!
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 5:00 PM on June 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm still friends with these people, but I take their ways into account. If I want to meet up at 6:30, then I make plans to meet at 6:00. (Or I figure out a way to use the time productively – reading, getting minor tasks done on my phone, catching up on email, etc.) And if there are activities that require punctuality, I do those activities with other friends.

Yeah, this is about where I've landed with the few friends for whom the cost of admission seems worth it. It's still something that's unlikely to make you a social hit with me if I don't already have reason to like you. I really don't like hanging around outside a venue alone and I don't know why a person would think I should do that for their convenience.
posted by praemunire at 5:19 PM on June 12, 2022 [5 favorites]

However I mostly came to this thread to offer up one of the most metal book titles of the last few years: Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire.
posted by praemunire at 5:19 PM on June 12, 2022 [7 favorites]

Wow sources. Do you have any actual research presented here?

There's an old reporter's joke, "A trend is two examples plus a deadline." She's got her examples, what's the problem?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure war was the first human activity that required large-scale punctuality. Nobody wants to be alone when storming the castle.

We leave at 9:30. Ish.
posted by mark k at 6:11 PM on June 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

but still the fun doesn't really start until much later

You know why it doesn't start until later? Because motherfuckers haven't shown up yet, because they all think they're too important to put in the social effort of gathering on time. Guess what, SOMEONE has to be the first one to show - people deciding that it should never be them because they're too cool to deal with that is aggravating as shit, because the more people act this way, the worse it becomes. It's some prisoner's dilemma shit, f'real.
posted by FatherDagon at 7:44 AM on June 13, 2022 [14 favorites]

I can see society becoming more punctual as we carry many clocks on our person and that are set via atomic magic. Even in like 2004, if you had one clock you knew exactly what time it was. If you had two, you weren't quite so sure...
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:05 AM on June 13, 2022

You know why it doesn't start until later? Because motherfuckers haven't shown up yet, because they all think they're too important to put in the social effort of gathering on time. Guess what, SOMEONE has to be the first one to show

Okay, fine! Be on time to the fucking thing if you insist. That's a party misdemeanor*. You know you're doing it so you can get your maximum jollies saying over and over and over again, "Hey, take a load off! Sit with us! Enjoy your party!" while I'm running around frantically setting stuff out and doing all the stuff the host does during the first half hour of the party because nobody comes right on time. Or, alternatively and much, much worse, "Can I help? Can I help? Really, what can I do, you're doing so much!" quickly followed by, "How do you want me to do it? Is this good? Can you come look at what I did and make sure it's good?" (Thank you! Shit is catching on fire in the kitchen, now, because you have dragged me away from the actual work.)

If you show up early with loose-leaf tea but no tea ball or appropriate tea pot and then ask me to dig out my set-up when you know perfectly well that I never drink tea and won't have any of that but it's your personal mission to introduce a nice tea tradition to all parties? That's a party felony. You are a party felon.

If you show up neither early nor on time but you CALL on the fucking PHONE to TELL me you're not showing up at your usual earlyass time? That's more than a crime. It is a supernatural evil deed beyond the capabilities of a mere mortal, and you are a party demon. Get thee from me, out into the outer darkness. Go thou among the wailers and the gnashers of teeth. Maybe there's something you can do to help them! Ask them 20 times in quick succession!

*Except in the case of the party helper people who have hosted before yourselves and know what it's like. You heroes size up the situation, accept the drink I'm handing you, and go sit quietly out of the way and entertain yourselves until others begin to arrive or you (omg, thank you) ask me no questions but simply set about working beside me, efficiently doing what needs to be done--which is usually wrangling party criminals.
posted by Don Pepino at 10:30 AM on June 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

I just don't get the showing up late to parties being considered normal thing. I don't understand why, if everyone knows the 'real' party doesn't start until 10, the party invites don't just say 'come at 10'. If you invite me to come to a party that starts at 8, I'll be sitting in my car around the corner at 7:45 waiting for it to be time to arrive.

An old boss of mine absolutely insisted on timeliness for meetings of any sort. If a meeting was scheduled for 10:00 am, it started at 10:00 am, not 10:00:30 am and it finished on the dot of the scheduled meeting time, or earlier if possible (so nobody had time to muck around or the business of the meeting didn't get finished). I had fun watching people struggle to get through the exacting task of walking down a corridor and into a conference room to be there at a specific time.

I don't hate people just because they're incapable of being on time, (well, I generally do hate people, but I don't hate them MORE for being late) but it does frustrate me hugely when (in my mind) they care so little about my time that they're happy to knowingly and deliberately have me waste it sitting around waiting for them to be late. I absolutely refute any suggestion there is any trend toward people being more punctual since COVID or at any time in living memory. I make this statement based on the same scientific standard as the one used in the article.
posted by dg at 5:54 PM on June 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

If a meeting was scheduled for 10:00 am, it started at 10:00

Back when I had real-world meetings (ha!) I was the guy who would arrive at the scheduled time, see that nobody else was there, wait ten minutes and then leave.

...so then they'd have to send someone to come get me so the meeting could start, and I'd quietly point out the badge log showing I was there, waited, and left. Only had to do it like three times before the lateness problem fixed itself. I never cared why they were late, nor what they had to do to make sure they weren't late, only that they stopped being late.

Even better, one day when a VP got me in trouble with HR for not badging in at the requisite time, I also got to be the guy who pointed out his query was set for 8am, and I was routinely arriving at 7:30am in order to leave a half hour earlier to catch my bus (permitted by company policy). Forcing him to make a written apology to put in my personnel record was fucking gold.
posted by aramaic at 6:12 PM on June 13, 2022 [10 favorites]

My anecdotal evidence is that in Australia - time sense has gotten worse post-Covid when it comes to IRL.

I had a series of face to face appointments over three days - people were turning up early, late, the day before, the day after - total chaos. When I asked why they had turned up at the wrong time -
"I put it in Outlook and did not check the confirmation email which was different",
"I had so many appointments the next day, that I put it in for the day before to remind me that it was the next day, but I forgot that it was meant to be the next day
" 'I wanted to be early so I set the time for half an hour earlier but forgot that it was actually on the hour.' 'But you were an hour early?' 'Yeah, so when I got here an hour early, I thought it was for my appointment.'"
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 6:46 PM on June 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

> If you invite me to come to a party that starts at 8, I'll be sitting in my car around the corner at 7:45 waiting for it to be time to arrive.

Same, and then I'll walk in the door at 8:00 and claim the best seat on the sofa and not move until 10:00 when I leave because it's past my bedtime. (I don't get invited to many parties.)
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:11 PM on June 16, 2022 [6 favorites]

If the Native American tribes involved in King Phillip’s war had had wristwatches, they might have driven the Pilgrims back into the sea.
posted by Devils Rancher at 10:16 AM on June 17, 2022