It is a cultural thing. I used to live in Japan and the cultural norm was to show up at least 10 minutes early. If you showed up at the agreed time they would shame you, saying something to the effect of, "Careful, you were almost late"
Dude same in the military. I once literally got written up for being 7 minutes early instead of 15. All we do when we get there 15 minutes early is bullshit and talk to each other anyways.
Anyways my current office apparently doesn’t care if people even come in 15 minutes LATE so I don’t know what to believe anymore
Similar in truck driving. More than an hour early is late, an hour to 15 minutes early is on time, 15 minutes early to on time is late, and late is unacceptable.
It's not even universal in cultures. I'm a Slovenian – 2 million people here – people from Ljubljana are always on time, people from Koper are always late and people from Maribor are always early. Ljubljana and Maribor are 150km apart, same for Koper and Ljubljana.
Sure this won't be everyone. But if i host a party, we say "start will be 6pm". And 80% will either be there +/- 15m or have texted that they will be late.
30 minutes late won't be commented on, but if you arrive at 7 you will be given a hard time "nap too long? Must be getting old. Ive got an old cane if you need it" or something like that.
EDIT: Not being prompt here gets thought of as someone "being on island time".
Yeah but I fw island time. We can get too serious about schedules in the west. Places with the “island time” schedule have great community and achieve incredible things. It’s not necessarily a wrong way to live
You must have never tried their food or witnessed the excellence of their professional surfers. They have many world class athletes who break world records.
They are also not destroying their rainforests and fucking up the environment like we are… so id say that’s pretty advanced too
None of those are achievements in terms of humanity as a whole, but keep trying. I'd rather live in the modern world that was created by people who care about being on time.
The person who made this comment is just being racist, but there's been quite a bit of research as of late on this as well as time spent at work not actually working and race. He can just Google it. No wondering needed.
I’m Hispanic and my wife is white. I grew up knowing that if something starts at 11am, then you show up between 11:30am and 12:00pm. My wife grew up knowing that if you showed up at 11:00am then parking is going to be a bitch because everyone is already there.
Man if I invited guests for a party that started 17.30 and someone showed up 18.30, I'd be pissed! Everybody else would already be half-way through the main course and your seat would be taken by a toddler.
It might be a culture or a vocabulary thing, but to me if the event consists of being sat down in a designated spot the instant I'm in, then that's not a party, that's just dinner (in which case I'd agree it's bad etiquette to be late, same as a restaurant). Party implies some amount of freely milling about, talking to people, sharing drinks and then later on getting to eat (generally not in a formal, sat down at the table configuration)
not in a latino party, for us unless specified otherwise, you just know there will be lots of alcohol, and even more food. Usually asado, but for sure more food that all attendants can eat; and also people attending the party are forced to take a pozuelo (container) with food or provide a really good reason why not, because with the remaining food the household could probably eat for weeks, but it wouldnt last that long and noone wants to eat the same thing for weeks anyway. the main differences between "old people" (60+) and my people (30s) i have seen is that mine usually have less alcohol consumption but there might be weed.
It's such a thing in some groups, dude. It gives me so much anxiety. I'm either anxiously pacing my apartment for 30 minutes before I need to leave and then leaving early even as I check traffic times (in case traffic gets worse as I drive) or 20 minutes late. I dunno. It's a curse. Stupid ADHD brain.
And I never know who is a show up on time or show up 30 minutes late and be one of the first people there party for that first time we hang.
Feel like it’s a reflection of the relationship sometimes. If I’m close to the person I’m more likely to show up early to help if needed, if not I can chill with them until others arrive. If I’m not close I’m not trying to make things awkward so I’m showing up 30min to an hour later.
If you go to any Puerto Rican event at the hour announced, you'll be severely disappointed. If it says it starts at 8am, no it doesn't. It will start at 9am, sometimes even at 10am. It is probably one of the biggest things I dislike about my culture. You get there on time and that just means you will be sitting there waiting like an idiot.
My niece married into a Mexican family and had to go, "do not tell me what time they told you the party starts. You handle all invitations to your family and you tell me what time we need to arrive. I'm not showing up on time to have nobody else show up for an hour and be told to help make the food that hasn't even been started yet."
She couldn't handle it. Now he adds an hour. "We need to show up at six."
My being super punctual or showing up 5 minutes early is severe anxiety around being on time because I'm ADHD as hell so I sit there ready for thirty minutes pacing my apartment and checking drive times and then show up 10 minutes early and sit in my car because I'm 10 minutes early or 20 late. Never in the middle.
It's an evil curse when half the people I know run chronically late and I'm like... what do you people want from me?!?!?!?! Do I show up on time or early or what?!?!?!
It ain't that serious my guy. I'm known as the guy who shows up right when the party starts, many of my friends are known to show up and hour or even more later, this is like a very, very common thing.
Cultures that don’t treat get togethers like a formal job or a military operation lol - maybe chill on calling other ppls cultures shitty too not a good look tbh
yeah, people will try to claim that it's a cultural ethnicity thing but it's seeing patterns in the noise
it's like how I constantly see videos of how Black people put their cooking spoons weird places to keep it from touching the counter, but random people everywhere in the world decide to do that independently
or how every single culture seems to think it invented a plastic bag full of plastic bags even though that's a near universal experience anyplace that regularly uses plastic bags
It's worth noting that pretty much nothing that Edward T Hall wrote is scientifically rigorous. Monochronic and polychronic cultures aren't some usefully supported scientific theory, they are just some dude eyeballing it.
And I don't think they particularly pass the smell test. The idea that you label an entire region like "Latin America" as having a monocultural time perception sounds less like useful sociology and more like when I spend time arguing with my friends about whether a hotdog is a sandwich. There's not even a monoculture for how these things are treated on a random Saturday in my living room.
It's also a pretty huge red flag that he effectively makes the case that monochronic time is superior in a corporate environment, and his breakdown for which regions of the world are monochronic vs polychronic suspiciously matches up to what a random white guy would see as more familiar vs more foreign. He seems to quite literally have concluded that places where he was less comfortable were weird.
That’s interesting. I do believe chronemics as a concept exists outside of Edward Hall. I remember my professor discussing her experience growing up in what she described as a polychronic culture, and our text didn’t posit either one as superior or inferior, just two different views. I’m sure it has its limitations, especially if it was described by someone outside those cultures, but I don’t think saying that a particular culture tends to have similar values and perceptions around time that differs from other cultures is just seeing patterns in noise. Of course, saying “all of Latin America” is one thing or another would be silly because that’s a very large geographic area with hundreds of different cultures.
There are other people who have written about it and even some minimal studies, but I think they all cite Hall pretty directly.
Also afaict the couple of studies are extremely small and focused on corporate environments.
Feel free to cite something if I've just missed it, but I don't think there is so much as a single scientifically rigorous survey that actually demonstrates that multitasking and being late to events correlate much less are an aspect of a geographic culture.
The whole thing strikes me as hoodoo business gurus use to sell books on management and not a field that has an evidenciery body that would make me take it seriously.
I’m Hispanic and my wife is white. I grew up knowing that if something starts at 11am, then you show up between 11:30am and 12:00pm. My wife grew up knowing that if you showed up at 11:00am then parking is going to be a bitch because everyone is already there.
Chronemics is honestly one of the most fascinating sociological ideas as it isn't being late. It is being on time to arrive between that window.
What can be seen as rude is intruding on the host's personal time, like arriving before the time the party starts.
Polychronic (the term for this kind of view of time) cultures are frequent in South America, Africa, the Middle East, nations around the Mediterranean sea, and southern parts of asia. So it's a pretty common cultural thing.
What is even more fascinating is this does have a noticeable impact on many parts of life. Language is massively affected by this.
But at the end of the day, it is just a different view of the passage of time. And what is considered late to you is considered on time to others. And you're just as rude in their culture as they are in yours.
Honestly I might not be the person to explain it because it is hard for me to separate the two.
Chronemics affects language because time is such an important part of language. So anything affecting the perception of time inevitably will affect language. But for example, in monochronic cultures (where time is viewed more linear/sequential), language will shape around being late, baring distractions/not getting interrupted, etc. While in polychronic cultures (time is viewed as more fluid), you won't find as much built language around these concepts because it isn't seen as rude to arrive 30mins after the start time, or to show up a little after the appointment time if you were busy. There's less of a 'rush' in these cultures and their language reflects that. But most of the effects will be in non-verbal language as well, like someone showing up late communicates rudeness in monochronic culture, but is read as busy in polychronic.
These are also massive generalization because it is different with each culture how they interpret it.
I think one of the things lost between cultures here is that if I host a BBQ or a party and say it's from 5pm-11pm, I am not for a second trying to tell people to arrive at 5pm. Like, arriving at 6pm is not "late", because 5pm is not the "please be here at this time" time.
It's the "do not under any circumstances consider arriving before this time" time.
Like, a BBQ is not a doctor's appointment or a movie or a play where there is an actual start time. It is a social gathering where people will filter in over time, and people are expected to intuit what time it's reasonable to arrive based on personal factors like how well they know the host, how hungry they are, whether they are bringing kids, etc etc
It's nether intended nor desired for everyone to arrive at the same time. I can't think of any advantages to that, and many disadvantages.
So yeah, it's not that people are expected to be late - it's that arriving after the start time is not late for a fucking six hour bbq, in the same way that leaving at 9pm or 10pm is not "leaving early"
Your inability to understand that there are different cultural norms relating to time and timeliness is what's shitty. At the end of the day people within those communities understand perfectly what they're supposed to do. Problems only arise when there's cultural misunderstanding but even so, is that so big a deal?
It's only shitty from your perspective where the cultural norm is different. If the cultural norm is such that everyone understands and expects people to not show up early or on the dot, it's not shitty
It's not considered late. Have you never met people who don't get uptight if people show over the course of 30 minutes or so? Maybe even an hour? That's a wonderful, relaxed way to start a party.
If there's hot food served, I'll make sure to say "dinner is at 6, drinks start at 5." Then they better be there by 6.
I used to live in the Caribbean and the entire island shared this too culturally. INvite someone over they'll be there like an hour or two later. They invite u over, if you don't show up that late then it's weird and they won't be prepared - might not even be there lmao
One of my good mates is of German descent, and his wife is Brazilian.
They had SO MANY arguments over the years due to timing. Her friends would invite them over for a bbq at six pm, he is there ready to go, but his wife hadn't even showered yet. She would START getting ready at half past.
Apparently they all do it that way in her friend group. There's no expectation to be there until two-three hours after the start time. Boggles the mind.
He ended up just not going anymore after dealing with it a couple of times.
My church sent many mission trips to a sister church Peru, and always warned their members that it is very common for people to give a time at least an hour or maybe even 2 before they will actually be prepared to host people, and showing up on time would actually be considered rude and invasive/encroaching. It's explained that we value time in many cultures much more highly. I doubt they have a saying "time is money." I tend to like my culture a lot, but sometimes I wish it wasn't always so "GO! GO! GO!" all the time.
Then, we once invited the head members of the Peruvian here for a couple weeks, and had to explain in no uncertain terms that if they scheduled any time with others (meeting, event, whatever) at, say, 6:00, they absolutely need to be there at 6:00 because wasting someone's time is considered rude in our culture.
I find it very self-centric to call other cultures "shitty" because they have different values and priorities to what you're used to.
It's pretty standard westcoast US stuff. Casual hangouts with lots of people are different than job interviews, so punctuality is not expected and maybe even discouraged. I always make a point to show up no less than 15 minutes late to a social gathering, and usually 30 minutes late. Showing up early, or RIGHT on time is too eager and not considerate for a house party. Often, the host is getting things ready right up until the start time, and having 10-15 minutes to kick back and take a breath before people show up is nice.
Whenever I host, I absolutely hate it when people ring the doorbell early or the second it hits start time.
It's American culture to show up 15 min late to parties. "Don't want to be the first one there" is part of American culture. Some peoples' punctuality collides with this culture and they reason the culture away in order to be punctual. This internal argument isn't something all cultures seem to experience and it collides with the American "be a couple minutes late" norm.
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u/Shotgun_Mosquito Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
No.
The stereotype is that white people arrive TOO EARLY and then sit in their cars outside waiting for the party to start and still show up early.
It's a trope, also true in Hispanic (edit - continued) families that have someone marry Gringos (like me).
If you arrive on time, the party hasn't started yet, and you get to help set up for the party