This is an awesome article. But I’ve always been bothered by people’s expectations when it comes to arriving on time for things. In my experience, people are less annoyed at the person who leaves early than the person who arrives late, even if they miss the same amount of the meeting. The usual reasons people give for avoiding being late (missing content, disrupting the meeting) apply just as much to leaving early. Why the double standard? Also, people are generally more understanding if you have to miss something than if you are an hour late, for some reason.
If a meeting starts with most important things, and progresses to least important ones, missing the beginning is more serious. Also a person leaving early is just missing the latest part, but a person coming late may be missing an important context for things discussed later—repeating this context for them is a waste of time for others, but not repeating may cause them to ask or suggest irrelevant things.
people are less annoyed at the person who leaves early than the person who leaves late,
Do you mean comes late?
Aside from that, Viliam Bur has a point, and also people who leave early generally have unavoidable conflicts and are seen as busy instead of lazy/irresponsible. Also, people who come late keep the others waiting, wondering if they should start without them or give them another minute.
Arriving late is usually accompanied with others waiting for me and not being sure when I manage to arrive, which is very annoying. With early leaving this effect is absent. If I let the others know in advance that I will arrive late, the effect would disappear as well, i.e. they will be no more angry at me than they would if I left too early.
People arriving late can be plausibly put down to something that was outside the control of the individual arriving late. Leaving early from a meeting or other activity implies some form of intent on their part.
This is an awesome article. But I’ve always been bothered by people’s expectations when it comes to arriving on time for things. In my experience, people are less annoyed at the person who leaves early than the person who arrives late, even if they miss the same amount of the meeting. The usual reasons people give for avoiding being late (missing content, disrupting the meeting) apply just as much to leaving early. Why the double standard? Also, people are generally more understanding if you have to miss something than if you are an hour late, for some reason.
This is all completely anecdotal, obviously.
If a meeting starts with most important things, and progresses to least important ones, missing the beginning is more serious. Also a person leaving early is just missing the latest part, but a person coming late may be missing an important context for things discussed later—repeating this context for them is a waste of time for others, but not repeating may cause them to ask or suggest irrelevant things.
Nitpick:
Do you mean comes late?
Aside from that, Viliam Bur has a point, and also people who leave early generally have unavoidable conflicts and are seen as busy instead of lazy/irresponsible. Also, people who come late keep the others waiting, wondering if they should start without them or give them another minute.
Arriving late is usually accompanied with others waiting for me and not being sure when I manage to arrive, which is very annoying. With early leaving this effect is absent. If I let the others know in advance that I will arrive late, the effect would disappear as well, i.e. they will be no more angry at me than they would if I left too early.
People arriving late can be plausibly put down to something that was outside the control of the individual arriving late. Leaving early from a meeting or other activity implies some form of intent on their part.