My wife, Lorraine, has a reputation with our friends for always being late. It is not that she does this intentionally, but to be honest she is a little disorganized and easily distracted. An hour before we are going out she will start to do something that will “will only take 5 minutes”. Of course it doesn’t.
The next step is she realizes she is late and can become stressed and be short in her tone. Fortunately, I am at the other end of the scale and rarely get upset, I have learned to just ignore this and stay out of her way! Our friends have learned not to worry that she is late or just tell us an earlier time to meet if it’s important. Effectively, it is now institutionalized.
On flying around the US just recently I was having my usual bad experience with all the American Airlines and I thought ‘my goodness it is just like being married to Lorraine!’ They are always late. The people are always stressed and, therefore, always talk to you in a bad tone and treat you with contempt. On a recent flight to Milwaukee I turned up at the check in desk and the guy said “the flight is cancelled”. Nothing else, no sorry, no explanation of why, he didn’t even raise his head! His total signal was ‘I couldn’t care less about you’. I guess the reason that the airlines are always late is the same reason as Lorraine, disorganization and being distracted from the main goal, serving the customers.
I recently found this useful web site, DelayCast . It predicts delays in the flights. I mused over the fact this just reinforces and accepts that flights will be delayed and in fact, continues the institutionalization of this fact.
I am now working on a similar web site for our friends to predict how late Lorraine will be, however it’s proving to be a bit more complex than first imagined!
By COLIN SHAW | Published: FEBRUARY 10, 2009