On 13/04/2013 11:14 AM, Cheri wrote:

>> My mother in law used to do that with the BiL when she cooked holiday
>> dinners. She would tell us one time and tell him it was one hour
>> earlier. He would still be late. It drove my FiL crazy because he was
>> always punctual.
>
> Yes, it is enough to drive punctual people crazy. I think the only
> solution for serial late arrivals is to just go ahead without them
> because they're usually not going to change.
>

I once suggested to my MiL that we go ahead and eat because it was a
shame to have perfectly done roast ruined. She wanted to wait a few
more minutes and they did show up. It always ruined dinners to have the
punctual FiL upset about the lateness and his schedule being disrupted.

I knew a grumpy old man who had no patience with the tardy types. He
didn't like his stepson much to begin with, but it was especially
annoying for him that the guy was always late. When they had dinner he
insisted that dinner be served at the time the son and his wife had been
invited for, and as soon as they were done he put the food away and
cleaned up the kitchen. When the guests finally showed up they were not
offered any food. FWIW... it didn't help the situation.

For most of the chronically tardy it is just a stupid little power trip
and they tend to get upset when people deny them that petty sort of
control over them, With the guy at work.... we had to go to an early
morning meeting at our head office meeting at our head office. It was
about 70 miles from our office and there is nasty rush hour traffic, We
normally started day shifts at 6 am but planned to come in early and
leave at 5:45. That would get us there before the bad rush and we would
have breakfast there. We told him what time were were leaving....
several times, and warned him that if he was not there we would go
without him.

We left the office at 5:45 and at 7:30 we were at the restaurant
across the road having breakfast. Then we went to across the road for
our meeting. He showed up late for the meeting and he was furious with
us for not waiting. We told him that he had said we were leaving at 5:45
with or without him and he wasn't there. He said we could have waited a
few minutes. As it turned out he wasn't even there for our normal 6 am
start. He had not shown up until 6:15, and then he got stuck in rush
hour traffic. If we had waited we would all have been wait.



The SiL that held everyone up on a European trip was indulged for far
too long. Everywhere we went and everything we did, we had to wait for
here. Then we arrived in Paris and she had some sort of meltdown. Didn't
like the hotel of the neighourhood, so she sat in her room and pouted.
We wasted a day making arrangements for another hotel. We finally got
into a better hotel and wanted to go for a walk. She asked if we could
wait for an hour while she had a bath. WTF.?? She had already wasted 24
hours of our time and now she wanted us to wait while she had a bath.

We relented... actually gave her and hour and a quarter. She didn't show
up. Other brother and SiL said he had to wait... 15, minutes, 30 minutes
after 45 I left and went off on my own. I got back at 6:30, jsut as she
was finally stepping out of her hotel room. She asked where the others
were and I said I thought they had gone for a walk. She went postal,
started yelling at me that we were supposed to wait for her. I looked at
her and said "That was 3-1/2 hours ago."

Some time later she whined to my wife about the incident (my wife had
not been able to go on that trip). SiL's version was "Do you know what
these guys did to me in Paris? We were supposed to go for a walk
together, but when I went down to the lobby to meet them they had
already gone without me." Apparently.... this was something that we
had done to her, and her version skipped over the fact that she had
wasted three days of my time on that trip, and that she had asked us to
wait an hour and then took 3 1/2 hours. As it turned out, she had had a
bath and a nap..... and had the nerve to be ****ed off at us for not
waiting for her......again.