While I agree with this article to some extent, I have also had my eyes opened up to a very plausible alternative. Etiquette surrounding meeting start and end t

While I agree with this article to some extent, I have also had my eyes opened up to a very plausible alternative. Etiquette surrounding meeting start and end times turns out to be are very culturally subjective. Being "somewhat" German, I have always held that being late to a meeting was as rude as suggested in this article. However, I also felt that a meeting that extended beyond the allotted time was even more disrespectful and it potentially meant everyone would be late for their next appointment. I held no qualms about up and leaving (current context be damned) in order to make my next appointment on-time. A few years back though, a colleague from South America told me that in their culture the exact opposite is true. If you were to leave an ongoing meeting that was being productive just because time was up then you were being very rude to the others whose productivity would would disrupt. Everyone understood that it was more important to continue a productive meeting than to be on-time for a meeting that had not even started. Even those in the next meeting would understand and take no slight. I still feel that one should be on-time (5 minutes before in fact) but I have also come to expect that there are other perspectives. At a 10km level, it actually seems clear to me that a productive meeting should have priority and continue at the expense of one that had not started.