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I guess it varies by culture. What would be considered late enough to be rude in Spain?
by kohanz 11y ago
I guess it varies by culture. What would be considered late enough to be rude in Spain?
- tluyben2 11y agoMore than a week late. That's a bit rude. So when I'm meeting a plumber at 15:00 on wednesday, he often comes a week later. You just drink your coffee, wait till 16:00 and go away and turn up a week later.
- aaronem 11y agoSure hope it's not an emergency!
- tluyben2 11y agoHahah, often it is. That's why you often see houses with crap in the badroom for weeks. People are not all that bothered.
- ctdonath 11y agoQuite the opposite here (USA): infuriates us to no end when trying to make an appointment for home service (plumber, wiring, whatever) and are told "will arrive sometime between [insert 2-5 hour range here]". Only reason we tolerate it is, for some industries, there is no alternative - it's a systemic problem which customers hate hate HATE. When you have to take a half (or full) day of vacation just to get your home internet connection fixed (or new sink installed, or air conditioner fixed, etc), and you only have 2-4 weeks of vacation per year, "just drink your coffee, wait 'til 16:00 and go away and turn up a week later" feels like theft, stealing your $X/hr time.
- tluyben2 11y agoYes, but that is related to the total concept of being obsessed with the wrong things (money/time). And yes, that's easy for me to say and I appreciate that. But I think that's easy to say for many people here. For others; I used to make a crapload of money in the Netherlands but I hated the life and the stress. I moved to Spain where I can live of a literally less 1/10th of what I made in NL, and live like a king (big house, car, pool, dinners out). The obsession with money and time are in your head ; you can live like a king in a lot of countries in this world for the rest of your life. That you 'need' a villa in the most expensive city in the world is your mental issue, it's not a 'real' thing. That's what I realised about myself anyway. And luckily I realised that before I was 30 and not when 60 like many... Even with flying in for meetings all over the world, it's tons cheaper than living in the north...
- JohnTHaller 11y agoIf you only have a single extra vacation day you can take off and the plumber doesn't bother to show up, do you get your toilet fixed or lose your job? That's a societal level construct that you can't fix by deciding not to worry about it at a personal level.
- mapt 11y agoWhile I'm totally sympathetic to the viewpoint that punctuality is efficient? Europe gets almost an order of magnitude more vacation days, sick days, and holidays than the US does, and Mediterranean Europe gets a midday break on top of that.
- jamie_ca 11y ago"almost an order of magnitude" is exaggerating a little. http://www.vpcalendar.net/average-vacation-days-by-country.html http://www.vpcalendar.net/average-vacation-days-by-country.h... pegs it at just over 3x at the extreme. (That said, I'm Canadian - never knew the gulf in "average" vacation time was so stark.)
- cafard 11y agoI don't care for it. But sometimes I'm the guy whose plumbing problem pushes everybody else's appointment back an hour. I wish that the service people didn't have to provide windows; I wouldn't care to see the windows narrowed by the plumber walking off with a sink unusable because he has to be on time to the next appointment.
- pvaldes 11y agoIt depends on the context, zone, and cause of your delay, but its mostly a cliché. Is acceptable in some situations but not in other cases.