A Reddit user has provoked a discussion about whether setting a boundary amounts to deception regarding a friend who is chronically late. The 20-year-old woman, who posted on Reddit’s r/AmItheAsshole, said her friend always arrives between 45 minutes and one hour late to meetups, even after having several conversations and apologizing.
The poster said the friend arrived about an hour late to a birthday dinner, causing the group to lose their reservation, and missed a significant portion of another friend's going-away party. There was another instance when she was meant to collect the poster for a medical appointment but arrived 50 minutes late, so the poster had to take an Uber and thus miss the appointment.
The poster said the group had previously tried giving the friend earlier arrival times, but she eventually realized the strategy and began treating those times as the actual meeting times. The situation came to a head when the group arranged a dinner with a 6:30 reservation and asked everyone to arrive by 6:15.
The friend said she would leave her house at 6.
The friend sent a text at 6:20 saying she was "leaving now." But by then the poster was too frustrated and told her that the reservation had been pushed back to 7 p.m. The rest of the group, however, were aware of the real plan and arrived at 6:15.
The friend did not arrive until 7:35 and found the group had already finished their meal. She then went to the poster and accused her of having deliberately put her off by making her late and of having trusted her to give the right time. The poster admitted that lying was "not exactly mature" but insisted that she wanted her friend to understand what it was like for other people's time to be repeatedly ignored.
Most Reddit users agreed with the poster. A comment claimed that the group should just go ahead and make their plans without the friend instead of always having to change their schedules to accommodate her. Another argued that a friend who is regularly late should be allowed to face the consequences of missing an event.
Yet, one Reddit user explained that they had previously had difficulties with estimating time and organizing before being diagnosed with ADHD. They added that they used to set repeated alarms and plan thoroughly so they could get to events on time.
A study from 2016, which appeared in Research in Developmental Disabilities, looked at timing abilities and executive functions and discovered relationships between the ability to estimate time, executive control, and the capacity to organize activities around time. The research has also connected time perception with executive processes such as working memory and cognitive control.
In this instance, the poster was 'Not the A-hole' according to Reddit. Her friend said she did not want to make plans with her anymore. The poster wasn't too worried because, after months of frustration, she felt that the friendship had gone as far as it could.
