By Chris Morvan,
A British aristocrat, Lord Bates, recently arrived very late for a sitting of the House of Lords and was so ashamed of himself, he offered to resign.
On the strength of this, the BBC (the one that’s short for British Broadcasting Corporation) asked its staff around the world for their country’s attitude towards timekeeping, and the results are very interesting. Take Nicaragua, for instance. Their correspondent said this:
“In Nicaragua, like the rest of Latin America, we have a flexible concept of time, to the extent that we call it ‘Nicaraguan time’. It is normal to arrive five minutes, ten minutes, 20 minutes, even an hour or two hours after the agreed time.”
Or Rwanda in central Africa: “We have a saying for people who respect time rigidly: ‘you’re like a European’. It is not unusual for someone to arrive at 11 o’clock for a meeting that started at nine.” What they didn’t report was how often they were immediately turned around and invited to hand in the keys to the company car on their way out.
Okay, I’m European and in this case I am happy to be classed as typical, but I can’t help thinking it is a sign of disrespect to ignore someone else’s schedule.
I’m sure we’re all familiar with the concept of Island Time. It’s a form of disrespect that has been practised in the Caribbean for many years. And what it means is “I will turn up when I feel like it, not at a time when I know you would like me to be there.”
This is a region where subtle disrespect is an art form. Don’t tell me it’s a sign of “cool”. It’s a sign of deliberate inefficiency just to p*** somebody off, and if failing to do things properly is cool, then we might as well all resign from the 21st century, build ourselves mud huts and live on fish and fruit.
In Suriname once I had an appointment with a government official at the offices of an advertising agency. Despite being reminded just before the allotted time, he didn’t turn up. I marched around to his office, five minutes away, and his secretary said he wasn’t there. I persisted and she went out the back, then returned and said yes, he was there, but he was busy. Again, I refused to give up and when I finally got to see him he said, “I hear you’re angry because I didn’t come to the meeting.”
Angry? Dead right I was angry. I pointed out that I had a job to do, just as he did.
“Island time” is all well and good when viewed from a distance, in retrospect. Even we stiff, uptight foreigners can laugh about it in the comfort of a situation where we have friends to talk to (because they had the courtesy to turn up on time).
But if a country expects to be taken seriously in the worlds of business and politics, surely it must be efficient, and efficiency means doing things properly and on schedule.
Most of the really successful industrial countries have this in their DNA.
In Japan people aim to be five minutes early, so if you’re supposed to meet at 9 and you arrive at 9, that’s late.
The Germans are famous for their organization and their BBC correspondent said if you invited someone to your house for dinner at eight, you could expect them to ring the doorbell at precisely eight o’clock. If they were going to be five minutes late they would probably send you a Whatsapp or a text to apologize, and if they were running early they would walk around the block, because being early is also considered bad, so they would just pass the time and then arrive on the dot.
I know from personal experience that in the Turks & Caicos Islands when you have a meeting, if it rains, most people will simply not turn up. Never mind the fact that everyone now has a car, an umbrella and waterproof shoes. It’s traditional, and they’re proud of their traditions. Maybe it’s not a fear of getting wet, but a sense that the gods are angry or crying or perhaps wetting themselves for some reason.
Me? I’m nauseatingly punctual. I try to stop myself but it’s no good. If I have an a appointment five minutes away in two hours, I’m ready and out the door before the alert I’ve set on my phone tells me there is plenty of time. But that’s not tradition. As a child I hated being late and it still makes me uncomfortable.
And now if you’ll excuse me I have to finish this piece and email it to the publisher, because I told him I would send them before close of play on Fridays and there are only nine hours to go. Phew, that was a close one.
