#365DaysOfWriting – Day Forty-Five
It’s rude to keep a person waiting.
I have been guilty of that on occasion, but more often than not I make it a point to reach places before time, not just on time. It’s bad manners to be late – and not only for meetings or interviews, even for parties, dinners and so forth.
You need to value the other person’s time.
Even if they don’t value it themselves. Yes. In India, we have this bad habit of adding half an hour/one hour to the arrival time. Not kosher. A classic dialogue is, “हाँ, ७:३० की पार्टी हैं तो ८:३० से पहले चालु नहीं होगी।” (Hey, if it’s a 7:30 party, it’s not going to start before 8:30.) I’ve never understood that logic. You just assume that the host himself is going to start the party late? Then why put a time at all? Why have a party at all? It angers me no end, this attitude.
“Yeah, I’m leaving in 5 minutes.” *Takes 30 minutes*
This I have no right to get angry at because I’ve done it myself. Especially while talking to my mother after a late night office party, I sometimes tell her that I’m leaving in 5 minutes, but thanks to the many conversations that happen after the party, I take about 20 minutes to leave. I’m trying to improve on that. Again, it pays to tell the truth. If you know that conversations after an event will take time, tell the person waiting that you’ll take 30 minutes to leave. They may not appreciate you for spending so much time at that party, but at least they’ll know you’re honest.
Procrastination is the largest country in the world.
The population is too damn high! It’s something we’ve been guilty of since childhood. Whether it’s homework, a college project, or a work deadline, we tend to put things off till the last minute. Why is that so? Couldn’t we just finish off the work beforehand and have all that spare time to ourselves? I’ll tell you why that doesn’t happen. In my opinion, we humans fear that the work may never get over and we may never get that precious ‘recreation time’ we so desire. So we push it till the very last minute till we’re FORCED to do it, and then we know that the work will not continue beyond the deadline. But in the interim, aren’t we keeping our lives waiting? And I think that’s a huge crime.
