The Reality of Punctuality

Your mindset begins at an early age and is shaped by your environment. Look at the way you dress. You probably dress similar to your friends when you go out after work or on the weekend, but you are influenced by advertisements, television, the internet, celebrity photos, your friends, family and the movies.

You want to be stylish and in being stylish, being practical usually takes a back seat to fashion. Do women really want to walk on hard floors and concrete on 3 inch heels? Shaped by their environment, they want the appearance of long legs, the power perceived with height, and the attention of possible companions. That's fine; I'm not knocking that at all. I like a woman wearing heels. Even in the Men's magazines, the scantily dressed or even nude models are wearing heels. Is it sexy?

Now, let's pick on the guys. You will mortgage your mother when you're young and want to drive a "hot" car. You will wear too much cologne, because you want to "smell good" and impress others. (Some men never grow out of the "smell good" syndrome, reeking of a fragrance in later years.)

I'm only mentioning these things to kind of get you to admit that you have a tendency to follow the crowd to proclaim your individuality. The influences are more deeply rooted than fashion, transportation, taste (or lack of) in music, the food you consume, and where you go to relax. We are way past, what the Harvard professor and Austrian Finance Minister, Joseph Alios Schumpeter called "The Information Age", we have entered the communication age.

Look around you and you'll see cell phones in heavy use, along with iPods and P.D.A.s everywhere. Even when we are not talking, we are communicating. Your eyes, ears, nose, and your skin are all taking in the landscape and its sights, sounds, and smells. When someone walks by you wearing too much fragrance, they are communicating with you and everyone else they encounter. Hearing a baby cry communicates attention needed. Someone looking at you with a scowl on their face is definitely communicating something to you and even the breeze sends you a message.

You haven't said a word, but communication never stops. Choices are yours when it comes to communicating. It's common that a school uses a bell to signal that the school day is to begin or has just ended. A teacher may ring a bell to calm young students down and get their attention.

If you ignore those simple signals, there are usually repercussions to deal with in one manner or another. In the working world, being punctual is sometimes highly demanded. Other times being punctual is not required.

If you're meeting a friend for coffee and the two of you agree to rendezvous at 10 o'clock, it's no big deal if one of you shows up 5 minutes before and the other shows up 5 minutes after the agreed upon time.

Meeting that same person at a movie theatre may cause a bit of a problem, well, maybe not 5 minutes, but 20 minutes could result in some tensions. How conscious are you of your promptness? Some people seem to want you to accept their lack of respect of your time by saying something like, "Oh, sorry I'm late, but I can never make it anywhere on time."

What's worse, is when there are three of you meeting and one of the three, apologizes for the third running-behind person by saying, "Oh, don't worry, he'll show up. He's always a few minutes late." Meeting casually with someone can make the clock and punctuality less of a concern, but crossover into the business and work world and a whole different matter of time exists.

Different people create different situations.

1) The person who makes it to work on time, only to throw their stuff on their desk and immediately head off to the restroom... to essentially finish, getting dressed for the workday.

2) The worker who comes in on time, but "really needs" a coffee and proceeds to disappear to the coffee shop, your office kitchen and then eventually makes it back to their desk after stopping to chat with co-workers along the way.

3) Running late, the worker doesn't call, but shows up late like nothing is out of the ordinary.

4) The chronic apologizer who keeps muttering, "I'm sorry I'm late, I'm sorry I'm late" and then proceeds to spew excuses.

5) The attitude employee who isn't late everyday, but often enough to be noticed, but thinks they're doing you a favor by showing up. I've witnessed this with top salesmen in a company. For some reason, making the company money (which is their job), gives them the privilege to bend the office hours to their liking.

6) If you have a business and an employee is repeatedly late, it's just like stealing in a stealth sort of way. Chipping away at the workday and getting away with it.

7) The other side of the day is the worker who, 30 minutes before closing, begins packing up their desk for the day in anticipation of getting out the door "on-time" on your dime.

8) Calling if you're going to be late is polite, but some people call on a regular basis, thinking that as long as they call, all is well.

9) On the other side, there's the worker who shows up early everyday and is in no hurry to run out of the door at quitting time, but willing to stay as long as it takes to get the job done.

This is just a small sampling, but as an employer you have to think back to the original hiring of an employee, when they were almost begging to work for you, but have shifted gears to their liking now that their "in" with the company.

As an employee, you have to weigh your own character. What would you do if you lost your current job because of tardiness? How many paychecks or pay periods can you go without? Being punctual is professional and if you want to be professional, you should be punctual. Some of the underlying problems with people who are habitually late to work, I think, stems from disinterest in what they're doing.

Tell someone that you'll give them fifty-thousand dollars in cash if they show up tomorrow at 5 a.m. And they'll probably camp-out in the parking garage of the building. This is called incentive. So, perhaps there's no incentive for an employee to be on time, but docking their pay, using a time-card machine, or having someone write down the times that employees come to work. This may seem petty, but it's petty CASH. Now, you have documentation to make a hiring/firing decision and when there are written or electronic records, there's no denying it.

It is your business to control the company till. It's your money. As an employee, it's up to you to be on-time or late for work, but I suggest early. The worst excuse is when someone says, "Oh, there was heavy traffic, that's why I was late." There's traffic everyday, anticipate it to be heavy, because if it isn't heavy, you'll get to work early and if it is heavy, you'll probably get to work on time.

I'll share what was said to me, many years ago by a very large well-known company executive, "Don't worry, if you're late to work, no problem, we can find someone who can make it to work on time." Due to the nature of broadcasting and the early hours that such a career demands, I am not kidding when I say that I sleep with a lamp on, in the room and set 3 alarms.

I did it when I was in the big leagues and I do it to this day, Monday through Friday in my current work situation. I'm like a kid, I hate to go to bed at night and can't wait to get up in the morning, because I really enjoy my life and the things that I do, but I set the alarms and sleep with the lamp on, as a way to insure my promptness.

Getting to work ahead of schedule will set you apart from the pack and it may come in handy as a little leverage, like in the case of a down-sizing and a manager has to make a decision as to who stays and who goes. Alarm clocks are cheap, but finding great jobs is just too much work.

I'm not bragging, but I come to work hours before my first obligation to the company. I enjoy the quiet, I get a lot done in those couple of hours before others arrive, and I really enjoy everyday of my life.

Recently, it rained and everyone came into the office late, even those who start in the afternoon and all I heard all day was about how the rain delayed them or traffic was bad. Traffic and weather have been hazards for those trying to get to work for over a century. Reevaluate your priorities, options, and goals and decide what the smart thing to do about Father Time is.

Lazz Laszlo is a former Investment Executive and Radio & Television Financial Reporter with many entrepreneurial endeavors to his credit. He spends his time as an emcee, public speaker, enjoying life and writing about business, travel, retirement, strategy, and pleasure. To learn more, please visit Lazz's website; http://www.925-wage-slave-alternatives.com

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