\”How long did you wait?\” the question that has stumped me this year. What is the appropriate response when the one who asks the question has obliviously arrived late?

Punctuality varies from culture to culture. From the West to the East. From company to company. From school to school.

But when we say \”I waited here for 30 minutes\”, we are almost begging for an apology. Are we upset when we wait? Are we supposed to give others the benefit of the doubt? And in the end, I say that I was waiting for only a few minutes.

With the proliferation of cell phones, no such urgency is demanded anymore. But. I remember waiting in Berkeley for a friend. I said 7 pm and called him. He said he was just leaving and estimated an hour. So I found something to occupy myself. I called him again at 8 pm and it turned out he hadn\’t left yet. When he finally arrived at 10 pm, there was no regret but he implied that I should understand his culture–be flexible and work with his style of arrival. Right.

At one of my jobs, I stood outside in the cold Pittsburgh winter. I arrived exactly at 9 am, but hadn\’t received my keys yet. So I waited, rubbing my hands together, my nose turned bright red. They finally arrived about 15 minutes later and asked me how long I had waited. Despite my frozen deposition, I said, \”Oh, only a few minutes.\”

Nonetheless, I learned from my experience to arrive at a party 90 minutes late. That took 3 years to learn.