Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Stood Up

What is it with my generation and the inability to follow through on commitments?

Seriously. I'm selling my car. I get an email this morning that says, "I am in town until 6 and am interested in your car. Please call me at..." So I call. I figure since he is leaving town at 6, that by the time I get home from work at 5:30, there won't be enough time, so I tell him to just meet me at work at 5. I write down his cell, he writes down mine, we've got a plan.

So 5 rolls around. I head outside to park my car in a better location. I talk to some co-workers in the parking lot for a few minutes. 5:10 - I call to see if he needs directions and get voicemail. 5:15 - I move my car to an even better spot. 5:20 - I call again, get the voicemail and leave a message saying I am on my way home and he can call for the address if he is still interested. 5:25 - He calls and says he isn't coming. Um, thanks. Glad that I spent 25 minutes moving my car to different places in the parking lot.

When I was subletting the basement suite of the house I was renting a year ago, I got the same type of thing. People would make appointments to stop by and then not show up. It's the most aggravating thing in the world. Seriously, EVERYONE has cell phones these days... I know because I can tell from seeing your number on my call display. So if you're not going to show up, just have the common courtesy to pick up the phone and let whoever is expecting you know, so they aren't waiting around. There seems to be this attitude that other people's time isn't as important as your own.

And while I'm working up a good rant here... WHY do people always show up late when you have a specified time to meet them? If we say "let's meet at 10," why do I have to wait half an hour? Seriously, my friends, you know who you are... some of you I've started intentionally showing up 15 minutes late. And the crazy thing is that I've still had to sit around and wait for you.

Okay, I'm done. Just know that when you deal with me, if you stand me up, that will be the last time. And if you show up late, you go on my list of people that I have to convert time for. (Yes, I actually have a friend and when we make plans, I'll ask "is this 6 my time, or 6 in 'Bob' Standard Time?")

2 comments:

Pink Lemonade said...

Bob Standard Time, hahaha, that's great! I think some people live in an alternate time zone that is somehow crossed with an alternate reality. I always marvel at people who cannot estimate how long any given task or drive will take them in real minutes. I wonder if they think the rest of us are just anal?

Pink Lemonade said...

This just got posted to xkcd and seems appropriate to the topic.