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Nobody really cares if a train is on-time. They care about the consequences of being late wherever it is they have to go. If transportation is generally unrelia

Nobody really cares if a train is on-time. They care about the consequences of being late wherever it is they have to go. If transportation is generally unreliable across an entire country, then appointment times will be lax, nobody will be fired for being a few minutes late, your date won't decide they don't like you, etc. It's all about the surrounding expectations and how other people will treat you because of them. If Western European countries also had a culture of no hard timelines and schedules only being suggestions, then people who lived there wouldn't get stressed over a late train.

RapperWhoMadeIt 5y ago
You are entirely missing the point. Yes, sure, there are examples in which there might be consequences if the train is not on-time. But a lot of the time I see people literally stressing out about a train being late for no reason whatsoever, because they don't have any stakes on that train arriving on-time. Lots of my colleagues don't really have to be at work at a particular time, our working ours are completely flexible every day. But they will always complain extensively if their trains get minimally delayed. So what are they getting so mad about? Because they are "losing" 5 minutes of their precious time being idle in a train station? I guess those 5 minutes would have been quite remarkable if they could have been replying to emails at their desk. As I said, there were no negative consequences whatsoever for those guys if the train arrives late. They have just lost all sense of rationality and want to be mad for the sake of being mad about something "not working as expected or intended".