The Most Insightful Post....

This is just the most insightful post, on lateness. Very sweet, and self-reflective.

One of the reasons I am pretty hard on late people now is that I was a notorious late-ster. (And I still sometimes miss meetings completely, because I forget them....)

My objection is the people who are ALWAYS late, but make excuses. (And I object because that used to be me). There is one guy in my department (his initials are Herbert Kitschelt) who is ALWAYS ten minutes late for faculty meetings. But Herbert never apologizes. He hates the chit-chat, late starting, time-wasting patter of the first ten minutes of faculty meetings. He is just straight up intentionally late.

No objections, no complaints from me. If you are late on purpose, and admit it, I actually find that perfectly admirable. But don't give me lame excuses.

Further, I should point out that Herbert is always precisely on time, and is in fact two minutes EARLY for small meetings where being late would actually hold other people up. It's just the big meetings, the stupid meetings, that he is late for.

It's the Platonic Travellers that bother me....