I have previously waxed passionately and lyrically about professionals with whom you make appointments, only to be kept waiting for extensive periods as they take phone calls, clean up other matters or endeavour to show you how important they are.
Now, I understand there can always be something that crops up to prevent them seeing you at the appointed time but, when you have fought traffic and battled delays to get to them on time, it’s only polite that they should see you punctually.
There’s a by-product of the lockdown that’s becoming increasingly more common and damn well more annoying and that’s people who don’t turn up punctually to online meetings.
Invest $40 to turn your business into a money machine!
Discover the three black boxes to get your business really firing! Get it now
As a matter of course if I am the host I am online 5 minutes prior to the appointed hour and I apply the same rule if I am an invitee. If there are several late attendees the cumulative time that can be wasted is huge and I just don’t understand why my time should be wasted by other peoples’ tardiness or rudeness.
And by the same token, if I am attending an online seminar, I expect that it will begin at the appointed hour; I abhor the increasingly common practice where hosts say, “We’ll just give the latecomers a few more minutes to arrive!”
Why? Is not my time important too?
Let’s all keep to time… on time, all the time!
G’day Winston. I was invited to a seminar put on the Australasian Self-Storage Association in Hamilton, New Zealand. They were looking to drum up more members. The seminar was to start at 8:30am and finish at 4:00pm. However, because some of the invitees arrived late, they caved into them and set a new start time of 9am – much to the annoyance to the rest of us who were left sitting around waiting. This also meant that the day was going to end later than 4pm and because I had a flight to catch, I missed the last section of the seminar. I was so pissed off I decided not to become a member.
Exactly the problems that annoy me too Julian… and in your example business was lost! Dunno how many on line seminars I’ve been to since I wrote that comment but more (un)notable examples continue to harass me!