I Can’t Cope With Lateness

I can’t cope with lateness. When someone sends me a message that reads “sorry, just running late”, my heart sinks, my ears set on fire (figuratively of course), and the frustration, believe me, is real. I have a really tangible, physical reaction to people being late. 

I’m not completely unreasonable. I understand that traffic happens and unpredictable things happen and sometimes circumstances are just out of your control, now that’s okay (just about). 

But lateness as a result of just not setting off on time, just not getting organised or just not planning, that’s lateness I just can’t cope with. I don’t understand it?! If you’re a person that’s late, I’d really love to talk to you because I just don’t know how you do it 😂. I’m a planner and a pepper and a “do-it-the-night-before-er”. It just makes sense to me, but as I’m learning, it doesn’t make sense to everyone else and some people, sometimes (maybe all the time) are just late.

Inspiration for this particular post has come because I find myself sitting in the car park at Wollaton Hall and Deer Park, which is lovely by the way, there’s a smattering of squirrels frolicking about in front of me, because I’m waiting for my friends. They’re late. And not five minutes late by the way. Twenty minutes late. That’s a lot in my book. And I’m sitting here fuming and asking myself AITA? 

So unable to answer that, I figured I have a choice here. I can either be frustrated with the fact that they’re late, and let that taint the day or I can turn this into a small joy, so I’ve opted for the latter. 

Which means I’m not going to have a 20 minute rant about my feelings on lateness, I think I’ve almost said enough about this already and instead, I’m going to take a moment to enjoy the complete appropriateness of the collective noun for squirrels, which is by the way, “scurry”. 

A scurry of squirrels.

But I’m still pretty cross about the late thing. It poses a real dilemma for me. I’m sure, mainly because I pick good people and my friends are great people, that this was just one of those things. Something to do with missing shoes and a last minute car seat swap. These are normal things that happen and definitely can make anyone late. So the rational side of me, completely gets it, understands it wasn’t intentional and even recognises that this isn’t a big deal.

But the other side of me is having a meltdown. So AITA? If I’m honest, I do think it’s something I need to work on. I don’t like being this frustrated by lateness. To put it bluntly, it sucks. So I might have to slip this on to my self improvement to do list or even make it a resolution for 2025. 

Maybe if that goes well, the next time someone is late, my ears will just get warm, not set on fire. Maybe next time I won’t have to ask AITA 🤞🏻.

 I’ll keep you posted on my progress.