What I remember most about a business meeting I recently attended, is that when I arrived a few minutes before the scheduled ten o’clock starting time, I wasn’t the first to show up. Already present and accounted for were a man and a woman, both roughly my age. And over the next twenty minutes or so, as additional people wandered in and took their seats (scheduled time 10:00 am, start time nearly 10:30), it seemed the younger they were, the later they arrived.

Is there a correlation, I wonder, between age and the sense of time responsibility? Those of us who knew we could be fired from a job for tardiness, or locked out and ultimately flunked, if we couldn’t show up at the start of high school or college classes, considered punctuality an important behavior. So we take seriously the responsibility to get our selves and any needed materials to a specified place at the appointed time.

Is that a good habit or an anachronism–a quaint and old fashioned practice–in the 21st Century? It does seem most everyone understands today that a stated time for something to start is more of a suggestion than a requirement.

Co-workers at my last job–the oldest of whom was in her early thirties–showed up for department meetings when they were expected to be there, which was a good ten minutes or so after the scheduled start time. And they didn’t immediately sit down and get to business. First there was a ritual involving coffee and pastries that could drag on another twenty minutes, especially if people needed to run down to the corner cafe to fetch the refreshments.

Is it impossible to hold a meeting without the simultaneous consumption of caffeine and usually something to go with it? Maybe. (It was cigarette smoking that had to be part of our professional get togethers back in the Seventies and early eighties).

There were no reprimands from the boss, the person who’d called for the session, because he was the last to arrive. Perhaps the rule is that more important you are, the less you’re bound by time responsibility.

In any event, showing up late for something carries no consequences. And in a social situation, arriving with a flourish after everyone else is there is considered rather chic. That’s why people expected at a party, even an event they look forward to attending, purposely arrive fashionably late. If there is any negative consequence at all to time “flexibility” in a business setting, it may be the cross look or a slight reprimand from the woman at the head of the table hoping to administer a little embarrassment for the individual who strolls through the door after the discussion is well underway.

But that’s a lame gesture. Particularly because the customary response from the guilty party is to manage a quick apology as a preamble to the explanation containing many details about the sick aunt or flat tire that caused unavoidable delay. The speaker can stop when the group leader begins rolling her eyes and shaking her head, obviously sorry for having said anything in the first place.

Rather than adding the ‘great decline in time responsibility’ to the list of complaints about modern living, perhaps we should recognize that the very sense of time–our relationship with it–has spun into an altered reality. One current law of time is that there never is enough of it to complete the projects planned. That didn’t seem to be a problem during the lazy days I remember when I had plenty of hours to do my chores, study for exams, then watch the latest Maverick episode or meet friends at the drive-in restaurant. If I ran out of time before I ran out of things to do, it’s because I didn’t use my time “wisely.” We don’t really understand time management anymore, even though we have plenty of expensive labor and time-saving devices.

Another reality, is that we seem not to respect time. I haven’t heard the expression “time is precious” in so many years, I wonder if it’s lost its value. Certainly the folks who set a time with me for a meeting, an appointment or social occasion, then show up when they damn well please, don’t respect my time. And even if people no longer consider wasted minutes and hours to represent a loss of time, I resent being kept waiting.

Maybe if we took our time as seriously as we do our money, we’d respect it, budget it and remain conscious of how it’s spent. Until then, my solution is to carry a book or magazine with me wherever I go. Colleagues, friends and acquaintances continue to keep me waiting, but at least I’m catching up on my reading.