Some people prioritize their time over other people's

The argument

Countless theories attempt to explain why some people are always late, but many of these hypotheses are far too forgiving. They treat chronic lateness as a misfortune that happens to a person — a miscalculation, a busy diary, an optimistic sense of how long a journey takes. When it becomes a regular occurrence, however, tardiness is not just a result of poor time management or overcrowded schedules. Rather, it is a poignant show of an individual's priorities, because a pattern that repeats across years and situations is not an accident; it is a choice being made the same way each time. If a person is always late, they evidently care little about other people's time, or about other people's opinion of them. On the contrary, they place more importance on their own schedules than anyone else's. Because of this, they feel no need to manage their time properly — or, heaven forbid, to rush — in order to make it to places on time. Punctuality is rarely difficult in any absolute sense; it requires leaving earlier and accepting the mild cost of waiting. Someone who never pays that cost has decided that their own convenience outweighs the waiting they impose on others, and the arithmetic is not even close, since one person's saved minutes come at the expense of everyone else's. Naturally, everyone is late once in a while, and no one is describing a missed train or a genuine emergency. It is only when tardiness becomes a habit that it indicates an underlying character flaw. By being late, you show others a lack of respect for their time and a willingness to disrupt their plans to prioritize your own schedule. On the other hand, by being punctual, you show respect for other people's commitments as well as your own — which is why chronic lateness is best understood as selfishness rather than misfortune.

Context

In cultures across the world, it is considered rude to arrive late to an event you have previously committed to, whether it be a date, a meeting, or just an ordinary day at work. Sometimes, people show up late because of outside occurrences they have no control over, like car troubles or traffic. Other times, lateness indicates a lack of preparation or even disrespect for the other people involved in your plans.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that chronic lateness is usually explained by something other than disregard for others. Well-documented cognitive patterns — time-blindness in ADHD, the planning fallacy, anxiety, or simply differing cultural norms of punctuality — produce habitual lateness in people who feel genuine distress and guilt about it, which is inconsistent with simply valuing their own time more. Reading a stable 'selfish character' off a behavioural pattern is the fundamental attribution error: it recasts a cognitive or situational tendency as a deliberate moral ranking of oneself above others.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Habitual lateness is frequently driven by documented cognitive patterns — time-blindness, the planning fallacy, anxiety — rather than by a considered ordering of one's priorities. [Rejecting P2] Many chronically late people report real distress and guilt at being late, which contradicts the claim that they simply value their own time above others'. [Rejecting P3] Inferring a fixed selfish character from a behavioural tendency is the fundamental attribution error, treating a disposition or situation as a moral choice.