John Linton .....is that there is never anyone else around to appreciate your courtesy.....something that I have continued to notice over the years stretching back to my late teens. All three of my daughters have commented on this inherent commercial rudeness and just plain don't give a damn about other people attitude - they obviously inherited at least one of their father's characteristics of being unfailingly punctual.....fortunately they didn't inherit most of the others.
It is an ongoing irritation to me in business (I long ago gave up expecting anyone, other than my father in law, to ever be on time for any social engagement) as it indicates that people don't care about their relationships with Exetel which means our business is unimportant to them. While I can understand that Exetel's size is far less than their other customers in many cases I think that just makes it worse as does their "sorry I'm/we're late we....." further indicating that our importance is not worth making any sensible effort to not waste our time. I have always used punctuality as a significant gauge of the level of importance attached to our business by suppliers and have never found that gauge to be wrong. I suppose some people don't mean to be offensive - they have just become so used to being late they don't consider it as any sort of discourtesy - perhaps the stupider of such people think it makes them look busy and important?
Because there is absolutely no point in ever expecting people who are late for appointments to ever change their rudeness - it obviously came from their childhood's bad parenting and sub standard education - I have made it work to my/my company's advantage in two ways. Firstly, if I had traveled to a meeting and the person was not immediately available I would wait ten minutes and then leave and not continue any further contact. Perhaps I lost a sale doing that but I assumed the gross lack of courtesy was a reasonable indication that I was not going to win it anyway so I was in fact cutting down on my/my employer's time being wasted pursuing a sale I was never going to get.
Similarly, if some one was visiting me in the course of business and was late, by any amount of time, I would change my/the company on whose behalf I was acting requirements to a much tougher line. This usually became taking 10% or more, depending on the degree of lateness from the lowest price I had previously been prepared to pay and use the 'righteous anger' that the lateness engendered to tenaciously stick to that reduced cost. Perhaps because I am such a poor negotiator this rudeness on the part of suppliers has turned out, over many years, to have been a major plus - it certainly has done so in Exetel's buying in more than a few instances.
So why are so many people so incredibly rude to consider being late and wasting another person's time so trivial they do it as a matter of course? Perhaps more people should, like me, take the trouble to 'punish' them for their gross discourtesy and make them see that they aren't so much more important than other people?
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23 - The day in April that few people know about - that explains a great deal about modern 'society'.