"Everyone's late these days"

Another defence is that the world has moved on. With phones, being late is nothing. You send a text, the other person has a coffee, no harm done. Only the old and the rigid still care about five minutes.

There's something in this. A text does reduce the damage. A friend who knows you're ten minutes away can order a drink and relax. And some social settings really have loosened. A party that says eight means any time after half past, and everyone knows it.

But the phone has also done something less helpful. It's made lateness cheap at the moment of leaving, and so it's made leaving late easier. "I'll text if I'm running behind" has become part of the plan, which means that running behind has become part of the plan. I'd suggest that the text is a good way to limit the damage of a late day and a poor reason to have one.

The phone also lets everyone see what's happening in a group, and this produces a spiral that I'm sure you've been part of. Six people are meeting at seven. One texts at ten to say they're running late. The others, reading that, ease off. Why hurry if it's not starting at seven anyway? By quarter past, four of the six are late, and each is late partly because the others were. The first text lowered the start time for everyone, and nobody chose the new time. An arrangement made for seven now begins at twenty-five past, and a group that could have been reliable to each other has instead become one where nobody quite believes the stated time. Whoever arrived at seven is the one who feels foolish.

It's true that some settings don't mind. That's fine, and this book isn't about them. It's about the settings that do. Work, appointments, anything involving food that goes in an oven, anything involving a child waiting to be collected, anything where one person is waiting for you alone. In those, the other person's tolerance is real, but it isn't free. They tolerate it because they like you, and because saying something would seem petty. They're spending goodwill on you every week. It's a good deal of goodwill to spend on something that costs you ten minutes to fix.

So I'd separate the two questions. Does everyone tolerate it? Mostly, yes. Does that mean it costs nothing? No. It means the cost is being paid quietly by other people, which is a thing you'd probably rather not be responsible for.