Dave Smith wrote:

> A friend of my wife's is divorced and lives close to us. We used to invite her for
> dinner once in a while but got fed up with her being late all the time. Usually
> she is at least an hour late. Last year she was two hours late for Thanksgiving
> dinner. We had spoken to her at 4 pm. and told her dinner was at 6 and come early
> for drinks. When she didn't show we called to make sure she was ok, but there was
> no answer. When she finally showed up we found out that after we hd spoken to her
> she drove to a town about 20 miles away for a craft show. The next time she was
> invited for dinner she was late. The only reason she was invited that time was
> that she was at the house and we had a roast in the oven. Just as I put the
> Yorkshire puddings in the oven she had to run home to feed her cats. It's a three
> minute drive to her house. She was gone for over an hour. We just went ahead
> with dinner and never invited her again. Curiously, she has developed a habit of
> dropping by our house in time to be invited to stay for dinner, but we don't
> bother inviting her to stay.


I have a theory about these people who are always late and manage to be
late even when everything is put into place so they won't be late. (My
example is my mother. Knowing my mother was always late and not wishing
to be inconvenienced, I started inviting her to come ahead of time.
When she discovered that she might have to wait a few minutes when she
arrived, she started coming even later.) I believe that deep down
subconsciously, they get off on having other people sit around waiting
for them. It makes them feel important. They go on and on about how
horrible they feel, and they may be genuinely disappointed that they
missed the beginning of the party or the first course, but the allure of
having everyone depending on them and waiting for them is so great that
they can't resist it.


I arrived at this theory the time a woman I worked with (volunteer
organization) was apologizing for being late and screwing up. My first
polite impulse was to tell her how it was okay, but it wasn't okay. I
was royally inconvenienced. I looked at her blankly while trying to
think of how to respond. Then she segueed somehow into how hard she
works and how important it was for her to set priorities. That's when
it hit me. For her, coming late had nothing to do with actually being
busy, it was about getting the recognition for how hard she works from
me because she didn't feel like she was getting it anywhere else. This
was her way of telling me that my time and inconvenience waiting for her
wasn't as important as all the other important things she does. As long
as I'm sitting around waiting for her, she can pump herself up with
importance that someone needs her and depends on her and can't do a
thing without her. If told her that I didn't mind waiting, she could
still tell herself that I was waiting. If I yelled at her and made a
big deal of it, all the better. It pumps her up more to know that I
minded so much. When I looked at her blankly, she spelled it out for me.


--Lia