Time and Responsibility

Time and Responsibility

In past blog entries, I have written about the various obstacles I have faced in taking care of my elderly parents and the various incidents involving caretakers. Today is yet another example of the types of bullshit I have had to contend with in taking care of my father. His caretaker was supposed to arrive at 2 p.m. She called in last minute and it took the company, Home Instead, three hours to find a replacement. Unfortunately, I had promised my son that I would take him to see Black Panther. My daughter took care of my dad for three hours while she waited for Home Instead to provide a caretaker. While my daughter loves the money she gets for doing this, families should not be placed in this position. Calling in at the last minute is irresponsible. Not providing a replacement caretaker in a timely manner to an elderly patient is irresponsible. This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened with this company or with their employees. I have had numerous conversations with this company regarding their incompetence, their failure to provide caretakers in a timely fashion, and the tardiness of their employees. The caretakers they send on the weekends are always late. We have had caretakers from this company who have shown up to work hungover, on drugs and starting fights with other caretakers, or who have failed to show up or call in at all, leaving my father without a caretaker. If it were up to me (and not my brother), I would have already replaced Home Instead with another company.

At the movie theatre, there were several patrons who came in late, cell phones blaring with flashlights, looking for a seat. This happens every single time I go to the movies. This causes patrons who were on time to have deal with these Johnny Come Latelys being in their way, blocking the screen, blinding them with their flashlights and forces them to have to move from their comfortable position to let these people pass to get to a seat. If you have a cell phone with a flashlight, undoubtedly you probably also have the Fandango app or access to it, or perhaps you simply looked up the movie times on the Internet. You know what time the movie starts! If that time doesn’t work for you, come to a later showing.

I have noticed also, that when I go to my hair salon to get my hair done, that the stylists often have clients who are late to their appointments, cancel last minute or never show up at all. I was once late to an appointment because I was stuck in traffic, but when I realized I was going to be late, I called the salon to let them know that I was stuck in traffic. I asked my stylist once how many of their clients were like me and tried to be on time to their appointments and she answered approximately 15%. 15%! That is ridiculous! Why do their clients not understand that their time is valuable too? They have other clients they need to see, or else they denied another client an appointment at that time because they were supposed to see the client who doesn’t value their time.

At my last job, several employees were routinely late. Nothing was ever said to them. In fact, it seems like the company preferred those employees that were routinely late and lazy as a Sunday over employees who actually arrived on time and worked. This seems to have become an acceptable trend these days. Everywhere I look, there are far more instances of people being late to something than people being on time and we just accept it. When did being fashionably late to a party become something that became acceptable for everything?

There are times when being late is unavoidable. Sometimes traffic causes you to be late. Sometimes other circumstances completely beyond your control cause you to be late. But there used to be a time when if that was the case, responsible people would call in advance to let people know. If you showed up late somewhere, you apologized for your tardiness and set to work doing whatever it was you were supposed to be doing because you have already inconvenienced the person enough. Persistent tardiness either lowered your grade (if in school) or was cause for termination (if at work). Now we just accept it. Ironic for a society that is always seeking to have faster Internet, faster food, faster cars, etc. In a world where everything is faster, why the hell are we so fucking slow?

Written: 02/24/18