How to Deal With Chronic Tardiness

If you're close with someone who's always late, you've undoubtedly spent more time than you'd like to admit waiting for her. It can be frustrating, even enraging. Fortunately there are ways of dealing with chronic tardiness. They might not change the behavior of people prone to lateness, but they'll equip you with a smarter way of handling this character flaw.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Understand why some people are more likely to be late than others. Some despise authority and live by their own rules, while others are just overscheduled, absent minded or a little bit on the self indulgent side. Figuring out why your friend or family member is always late can help you decide how to deal with it.

2. Tell your chronically tardy companion how you feel about the lateness. This is a good strategy if your friend or family member is merely absent minded and doesn't understand the impact of his lateness on your life. A very self absorbed person might not react to your comments.

3. Set some rules. Tell your late friend that you don't have time to wait for more than 15 minutes beyond your agreed upon time. Then leave as soon as you've hit that point. Getting stood up a few times is a fair consequence to the chronically late behavior.

4. Lie about when you want to meet or when the party, school play or other event is starting. If it starts at 6 pm, say it starts at 5:30 pm. Then, if you're lucky, the latecomer will arrive at 6:15 pm.

5. Call before you leave for your date to make sure the person is on her way, too.

6. Send the offender a free, anonymous lateness citation at NeverBeLateAgain.com.

Resources

• Visit NeverBeLateAgain.com