By: Nanju Francisco
Picture this scenario: Someone had asked to meet you to discuss something important. He or she could be a colleague, a friend, or a casual acquaintance. You tried to accommodate his or her request and dumped other personal stuff just to meet that person. Your appointment was set at 10:00 a.m. You went to the appointed place, 30 minutes earlier, just to make sure that you wouldn’t be late for your meeting.
Then, time passed quickly. Before you knew it, it was already 10:00 a.m. You looked at your watch and then it was 10:15 a.m. Still trying to be kind and generous with your time, you sat quietly at the table and tried to read the menu before you to kill time. The next time you looked at your watch, it was already 10:45 a.m. You grabbed your mobile and tried to call that person you were supposed to meet at that restaurant. For whatever reason, you could not contact that person because the mobile was “out of coverage area.” How would you feel?
For sure, you would feel annoyed, disappointed and upset because this person had wasted your time and efforts and did not have the decency to inform you that he or she would not be able to meet you. The least that this person could do was to call you and apologize if she or he could not meet you as a sign of respect and courtesy. Yet, a lot of people do not respect other people’s time by coming late to work or to their appointments or meetings.
I have to admit that I get disappointed and upset whenever someone would make an appointment with me, only not to show up or show up so late. If I have a meeting, what I always do is to leave the house two hours earlier and go to the place of meeting one hour earlier to make sure that I would not keep the person waiting for me. It is always better for me to wait than to make other people wait.
As a journalist, I learned how to be patient and to wait for people for hours, sometimes even up to five hours just to get an interview with a celebrity or government official! It was no fun waiting and sitting outside the gate for five hours just to get a story for my newspaper but it thought me the value of being punctual and why it is important to respect other people’s time.
So, why is it important to be always punctual?
As the old saying goes, “Time is Gold.” Respect other people’s time by being punctual and you can rest assured that they will do the same for you.