How long would you be willing to wait for someone getting late? The general rule is 10 to 30 minutes tops…
Punctuality is not a virtue that all people have. We all try to be respectful of other people’s time; it’s a resource too valuable to waste without a second thought. We all know that people have lives and responsibilities to attend to, so we try not to keep them waiting unnecessarily.
When we make a doctor’s appointment, we’re there a few minutes early. When we make plans with friends, we all show up at the right time. However, sometimes the unexpected happens, and we are forced to be late for an appointment that we already had. Traffic gets crazy, the bus doesn’t show up on time, we can’t find our keys anywhere… It happens, but it is still something that we try to avoid. And if we can’t avoid it, we make sure to let the person waiting for us know that we are going to be a little late. It’s a basic form of showing respect when it becomes difficult to honour the previous arrangement. We do it for them, and they do it for us.
This is why it becomes so annoying when someone doesn’t respect our own time, especially if we are talking about an appointment in a specific place. We all try to be respectful, and what we ask in return is that same kind of respect. A kind of respect that wasn’t shown to a customer at a tattoo shop.
The customer told on r/AIO that they made an appointment at a tattoo shop at eleven in the morning. The shop called to say they had to move it to twelve, and the customer was fine with that. However, upon getting to the shop for the appointment, no one was there. They were about to leave when the receptionist showed up and told them to wait. They sat and waited… and waited… for two and a half hours! The receptionist tried to apologize and said that the previous customer booked for a single tattoo and ended up choosing to get six instead. It was too late, though. The customer’s time had already been wasted, and their arrangement hadn’t been honoured. They were still willing to wait a long time, but enough is enough.


