I have a group of friends and one person is often late and gives misleading communication. Twice he made it sound likes he's close and "just parking his car" but takes another 20-30 minutes to arrive. He also tends not to reply to messages and phone calls when running late. Once I was at a restaurant waiting for him. He wasn't answering his phone so after 30 minutes I left. He then asked where I went and I told him I left, he said it was like I lied to him by saying I would wait for him. He told me he had turned off his phone to charge it in his portable battery.
He is Filipino and I once heard it's sort of a cultural thing to be late. I feel a little bit bad about addressing this with him since I'm not great at being on time myself. I'm normally 5 minutes late, but try to communicate this. Him being 30+ minutes late I think is a bit different.
How can I get him to realize his lateness is getting excessive? How can I get him to start communicating clearly how much longer until he arrives?
I have a tendency to either not say anything, or get abrasive when trying to fix something that someone is doing that bothers me.
I know it may seem similar to this one so I will highlight some differences:
- I'm looking for actions I can take, not theory analyzing the situation. So I'm not looking for answers like "some people [with ADHD] just are bad at being on time".
- We meet in a public place that everyone must invest time in getting to.
- Ideally I would fix their being late, if not then at least get some communication.