Is it worse to be late, or a serial rescheduler?

I ran into this situation late last year trying to have a celebratory dinner with some friends. They had rescheduled (a whopping 4 times) which really annoys me, and then they were angry when we were late (45 minutes, ouch). Neither of us meant it deliberately, but I found it an interesting predicament.

I queried Twitter to try to find a common answer:

serialorlate

If a person is late to meet you the consequence is normally that you have less time to talk, especially if you have another meeting afterwards – but it doesn’t generally disrupt you that much unless you have a lot to get through.

If you are a serial rescheduler though you are in practice hoarding a number of time-slots in the person’s schedule that often can’t be themselves rescheduled. This means that you are missing out on potential opportunities and because you often reschedule at the last minute nothing can be done about it. “Oh I can’t meet you then because I’m meeting this other guy…”

What do you think? Is it worse to be late, or a serial rescheduler?

1,976 people have read this since it was posted January 2009. Keep reading?

ross hill photo avatar

I'm Ross Hill (ross@rosshill.com.au). Join 4,275 people following @rosshill on Twitter.

I organize Mindful* and light up Yammer enterprise social networks across Asia Pacific.

You might like to subscribe to my premium newsletter called Field Notes ($5/mo).