How Do You Get People To Actually Show Up On Time?

No one can be exactly on time, and we all make mistakes now and again. Still, there are large numbers of people who cannot manage to show up when they say they will. How do you solve this problem?

I’ve never put a lot of effort into friends who are consistently late. I don’t mean 5, 10, or even 15 minutes late, but over an hour (at least). I think it’s easy enough to just ignore that problem because you can’t change people, but there will always be situations where you have to interact with people who just suck at being on time.

For the past few days I’ve been trying to sell some old portable hard drives on Craigslist and gotten a reasonable amount of interest. While some people call, say they want to meet at a certain time, and then show up at that time, more people pick a time and then do not show up at all. Most people, so far, have expected me to wait for them. One person got very angry with me when I wouldn’t sell him a drive because he showed up six hours late and I’d already gone to bed. Obviously this guy was a little nuts, but most people just don’t show up and think it’s fine.

How do you handle people like this? And what’s a good way to know if they’re perpetually late to avoid them altogether?


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