Just Keep Waiting
I absolutely cannot stand being late. Because of this, I always try to make sure I arrive at my destination at least a few minutes early. But then I end up budgeting too much time to get to my destination, so I plan to leave early enough so that I'm a few minutes early, even if something happens. But then I want to make sure I'm ready to leave on time, so I'm always paying attention to the time, and I always make sure I'm done with whatever I'm doing at least a little bit before I'm supposed to leave. But then I'm just waiting to leave, so I just leave a few minutes early. Then I end up at my destination a half an hour early. This is just how I operate.
A few nights ago, some friends and I were going to go see a play. You could pick up two tickets per person and they were free, so two of us went to get tickets and the other two said they'd meet us at the play. They were handing out tickets at 11:00 PM for the midnight show, and since it was the last performance, I wanted to try to get there by 11:45. Of course, I got there at 11:30. After taking the time to make a pit stop and use a restroom. So I sat there and waited for a half an hour to get the tickets.
Then when we had the tickets, the two of us hung out and killed time for a while before our friends were going to meet us there. But at 11:52, I got a phone call from the other two saying that they were just getting in the car, quite a bit away. Now, I had already gone through the trouble of leaving where we were early to make sure everyone had tickets, and I damn well wasn't going to risk not getting a good seat for myself (or a seat at all). So I walked across the street from the theater, put the extra two tickets under the tire of an SUV parked on the street, and told my friends that they should look there for their tickets. My other friend and I went inside right before they let people in, and we got good seats.
A bit later (after the doors had opened and most seats were taken but before the show started), my other two friends came into the theater. They found the tickets (there was the slight possibility someone would see me putting the tickets there and take them, or the owners of the SUV would come back and drive it away, leaving the tickets to fly away in the breeze), but they had terrible seats. And there I was, sitting there in my good seats, thinking about how amusing the whole situation was.
The moral of the story is that I will go out of my way and spend a significant portion of my free time to make sure everything works out so that you don't have to, but if you're even one minute late, I will gladly toss the tickets in the air and leave you in the dust.
- Induced Homomorphism
A few nights ago, some friends and I were going to go see a play. You could pick up two tickets per person and they were free, so two of us went to get tickets and the other two said they'd meet us at the play. They were handing out tickets at 11:00 PM for the midnight show, and since it was the last performance, I wanted to try to get there by 11:45. Of course, I got there at 11:30. After taking the time to make a pit stop and use a restroom. So I sat there and waited for a half an hour to get the tickets.
Then when we had the tickets, the two of us hung out and killed time for a while before our friends were going to meet us there. But at 11:52, I got a phone call from the other two saying that they were just getting in the car, quite a bit away. Now, I had already gone through the trouble of leaving where we were early to make sure everyone had tickets, and I damn well wasn't going to risk not getting a good seat for myself (or a seat at all). So I walked across the street from the theater, put the extra two tickets under the tire of an SUV parked on the street, and told my friends that they should look there for their tickets. My other friend and I went inside right before they let people in, and we got good seats.
A bit later (after the doors had opened and most seats were taken but before the show started), my other two friends came into the theater. They found the tickets (there was the slight possibility someone would see me putting the tickets there and take them, or the owners of the SUV would come back and drive it away, leaving the tickets to fly away in the breeze), but they had terrible seats. And there I was, sitting there in my good seats, thinking about how amusing the whole situation was.
The moral of the story is that I will go out of my way and spend a significant portion of my free time to make sure everything works out so that you don't have to, but if you're even one minute late, I will gladly toss the tickets in the air and leave you in the dust.
- Induced Homomorphism
posted by Induced Homomorphism @ 11:05 AM
3 Comments:
At 3:12 PM,
Nance said…
I hear you. I absolutely abhor chronically late people. I have a family member who is late to everything, no matter what. I detest that. Why on earth should everyone else have to wait for her just because she can't get her act together? She always has at least two excuses, but they're never anything that anyone else hasn't had to contend with. It's as if she's under the impression that her life is somehow much more complex than everyone else's. News flash: not so much.
At 5:04 PM,
Induced Homomorphism said…
My dad always used to make us an hour late to Hanukkah dinner, so I started telling him that dinner was an hour earlier than it really was. We finally started getting there just on time, until he found out, and then he always called them and asked them directly. And they tell him the right time. ::sigh::
I was once in New York and supposed to meet some people for lunch. The subway was running late, and so I stepped above ground to find my phone ringing. I was apparently one minute late (and just around the corner), so my friend Brian was calling to find out where the hell I was. When I got there, my boyfriend at the time was waiting with him and said, "Brian seemed really worried when you were late."
That's because Brian knows that I'm usually fifteen minutes early. And if I feel like I might be late (i.e. there's a small chance I'll be late, but likely I'll only be five minutes early), I still call to warn the others that I'm running late. So when I didn't call him, he thought that something must be wrong. Of course he figured that I was probably okay, but it was still very uncharacteristic of me.
I was one minute late to breakfast today, I still felt a little off. Not guilty, but just not quite right :-p
At 9:11 AM,
jenomena said…
I also hate late people! I don't do nearly all the mental planning to be early that you do, but I get very antsy when it's close to the time I need to leave and I usually leave early. And I'm also the person to call if I think I might be late. Case in point: I always get to work 5 minutes early, and last week it looked like I was going to just be on time, so I called ahead to let them know I was running a little behind--when I got to work, the gal I talked to was like "You got here that quickly?!" and I was all "Well, I really wasn't that far away, I called just in case I was late..."
I like that you stuck the tickets under the SUV tire and they found them. That's amusing :-)
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