How to have someone work on being on time and communicate it if they're late?

Question

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:

1. 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".
2. We meet in a public place that everyone must invest time in getting to.
3. Ideally I would fix their being late, if not then at least get some communication.

Answer 1

I'll put aside the cultural component here. Paying attention to culture is important, but that needs to happen from both sides.

First of all, it is nearly impossible to change someone else's behavior. They have to want to change it, and they have to make that change. What you can do, however, is change your response to someone else's behavior. In doing so, you can establish that the behaviors causing you stress won't be tolerated and can hopefully influence change.

I've got some friends and family members for whom clocks are... interesting and curious things. They know what clocks are, but just don't interact well with them. There are some folks who have legitimate issues (ADHD, etc.), but those are a small group.

What I've done is to establish my threshold for lateness. In my case, it's 15 min. I'll wait for you for 15 min and after then assume you're not coming. I don't beg people to be on time; I don't chase people. It took some family members being pretty frustrated and angry with me ("where were you?" "I hung around for 15 min and when you didn't show up, I figured you weren't going to.") Now people know that I'll wait that length of time and after that leave.

How has that helped? The folks that I give rides to and meet with know that I have a pretty low threshold. My family doesn't play that game with me. I get a LOT less stressed out - I hang around for a quarter hour, stare at my phone, do some people-watching, and then leave.

Answer 2

Just assume that he will be late.

This is probably not the answer you want to hear, but in this circumstance it seems that correcting his behavior is near impossible (as baldPrussian said). Considering that he already experienced consequences of lateness (you leaving the restaurant) and that this presumably has not led him to apologize or attempt to correct his behavior, it will probably just cause you more stress to try to correct his behavior with little effect.

If possible, you could tell him a slightly corrected time to account for his lateness. This is what doctor's offices are doing when they say to arrive 15 mins early for "paperwork". Just be prepared to have an explanation if he happens to arrive before you.

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Source: I am not very good at punctuality myself (usually 5-15 mins late), but I have also dealt with friends who are far worse than me (like an hour late to pick me up at the airport).

I know that often when I go to visit my friend I have every intention of leaving in 15 minutes, but since I don't want those 15 to be wasted I do something else in the meantime and inevitably leave 15 minutes later than I said I would.

I sometimes don't communicate this in a timely fashion because I don't want to get nagged at, but I will communicate it at some point. With my friends who can be very late, I just mentally prepare myself for it and also prepare something to do in the meantime (like a phone game or notebook to draw in).