Because I was in a hurry and late on Saturday I did not have time to finish the thoughts I started here about being late and being made late.

In an honest and amusing piece, Burt Prelutsky explained why he is irate when people are late:

As a rule, I'm an easy-going guy. Hardly anything gets my goat, ruffles my feathers or raises even a single hackle. I always try to put myself in the other fellow's shoes, and am always prepared to give people the benefit of the doubt. There is only one area in which I give no quarter. If it were up to me, lack of punctuality would be a felony. And while I might not make it a capital crime, I wouldn't think twice about tossing the terminally late in the cooler for 10 or 20 years; preferably in solitary confinement, so that they wouldn't be distracted while mulling over their anti-social behavior.

Where punctuality is concerned, my motto is: Better half an hour early than 10 minutes late. They're words I live by, and so should the rest of you.

I have a dirty little secret which probably shouldn't be disclosed on this blog, but which I'll disclose anyway because it's a rainy Monday morning (and I'm being told my blog is being read by people who do not like it but who for whatever reason will never let me know about it). I really don't mind it when people are late, as unless they are totally insensitive assholes who offer no apology (itself very revealing), it takes the "edge" off things. Probably involves my low self esteem and adolescent passive aggressive rebellion, but that's just the way it is. If the person is a relative stranger, it's a way to break the ice and evaluate him, and if it's an old friend, they usually have good excuses if they're late (in which case it's no big deal) or else they call into the "chronically late" variety, in which case it's something to plan for (and if you really don't like it, well, you can always discontinue the friendship). I tend to be amused by chronic lateness types, but then, I've spent enough time in cultures where everyone arrives late that I don't get as bothered as some do. My biggest problem in dealing with late strangers is that it makes me wonder whether there was confusion over where to meet -- which means that if I'm wrong, they have more of a right to be indignant over my lateness than I do about theirs!

Because there are no rules other than "NEVER BE LATE!" a contradictory, seemingly hypocritical attitude towards lateness prevails. If being late and being made to wait is rudeness, then we are all (at least, most modern people are) subjected to a relentless, systematized campaign of chronic rudeness over which we have no control. This, I believe, triggers conscious resentment which is quickly stuffed away as unconscious resentment, because we see ourselves as "not allowed" to feel it.

Who must wait for others -- and who gets to make others wait with impunity -- involves a classic struggle over personal power dynamics. This touches on respect, disrespect, who has authority, and who should have authority.

We are all made to wait, put on hold, rescheduled, and literally abused -- all without any input from ourselves -- by total strangers to whom we give near total power over our valuable time. I believe this takes its toll, and because the resentment has nowhere to go, we take it out on those who are "smaller" in much the same way the victim of a bully will often turn around and bully an even smaller victim.

Abusive airline personnel are a perfect example, which is why I wrote about them, but nearly any petty tyrant will serve as an example. Like it or not, there are people who like to boss people around and use their arbitrary authority, and they are everywhere -- from the most mundane all the way to those who have real power over our lives.

"Good Morning XYZ Associates would you hold please?"

Nothing like a command posed as a question, for it is nearly always followed by being on hold. It's rude, but it's so routine that only a crank blogger would even take notice of it. But how many people would answer their home phone that way -- even if they were extremely busy?

As part of their jobs, airline employees must become accustomed to ruining people's schedules, days, and even entire purposes of trips that if they didn't grow calluses, they'd probably not last long in the job.

"I'm sorry that you missed your mother's funeral, but we can get you on the same flight tomorrow."

Only they're not sorry at all. No one is. Never mind that the customer paid three times the usual rate for a last minute emergency flight. If you didn't get what you bought, tough luck!

The problem is compounded by a lack of clarity over who holds the power in these interactions between "customers" and "providers" of "services." Where is the authority? If you go into a store or a restaurant, the employees are expected to serve you, because you are the customer, and that is the nature of service. You take a cab, and you can usually expect that the driver will take you where you want to go with as little delay as possible, and that he'll be forthcoming and generally polite in explaining delays encountered along the way. But with airlines (and increasingly, on trains and even buses), the idea of "service" or "politeness" is such a joke that complaining to anyone in charge seems so beside the point as to be almost ridiculous. I complained once to New Jersey Transit over the failure of the company to indicate from which track a train was leaving, and how it didn't make the company (a state run monopoly of some sort) look good. From her incredulous expression, it was probably the only complaint like that she'd heard in a long time, if ever, and that I was the one who must be crazy, not New Jersey Transit (which was, after all, only behaving in a completely natural manner).

Yet just because it is natural does not mean it is natural. That's the contradiction. Customers are increasingly not customers, and service is increasingly not service.

What are government employees who work in the innumerable bureaucracies? Is the anachronistic expression "public servant" really helpful in describing them? The term would imply that because we the taxpayers pay their salaries, they are working for us. But isn't that a bit silly? A guy comes to inspect your business, with the power to shut you down if he thinks you've got a bad attitude, and he's working for you? Come on. Might as well lecture an officer who's giving you a ticket on why he should be more polite to the guy who's his "boss."

Anyway, these people -- an endless variety of petty tyrants -- routinely make us wait and mess with our lives, while conducting themselves in a manner more associated with rude bosses than people we are paying for a "service." Attitudes we would find appalling in a bartender or a waiter are simply accepted as a given.

But the waiter or bartender analogy fails, for the simple reason that there's no competition. You don't like the service of Joe's Bar and Grill, you can refuse to leave a tip, and you can go elsewhere. But if you don't like USAir, it's not so easy, as there may be only one or two other choices, as it's a government-sponsored oligopoly, and if you're not pleased with the quality of your electrical service, or the quality of the passport or drivers license services, forget it. To illustrate further, imagine if these various petty tyrants had their salaries reduced and were made to work for tips. In a government monopoly setting, a massive bribery system would result.

And of course some hard core socialists advocate pooling of waiters tips in order to eliminate incentives and competition. (They probably imagine that socializing health care would make it better. If you like New Jersey Transit, get ready for their health care system.)

This is only an attempt to explain unconscious forces that may be at work, and I am in no way trying to say that rudeness justifies rudeness or lateness justifies lateness. It wouldn't be an excuse anyway, and in a case like this, even offering an honest excuse like this --

"Sorry I'm late, but because I am tired of being put on hold, tired of long delays at the airport, and abused by authority figures masquerading as servants, I'm afraid my unconscious mind may have made you my punching bag!

Hey, I don't like being late or making excuses for it, so the above is not my excuse. But we're living in a world in which brutal honesty, rudeness, and insanity, are not always options. Sometimes I get a kick out of the idea of a covertly polite world where bloggers can say what they really think, and run around pretending they didn't say what they thought in front of people who pretend not to have read it.

Where else can you go to complain and explain at the same time?