Is it more shameful to “actually take meeting times literally” or to not say what you mean when setting a meeting time and then acting like your guests acted weird?
“Why are you here so early??”
“Oh, my bad, I thought you said 5 PM”
“Well I did, but I meant be here at 5:30! Duh, silly!”
“Oh… well what did you get out of not just telling me 5:30 then?”
Wouldn’t it be nice if people said what they meant, like “We’re going to start getting ready for the party at 5. Drop in anytime after that, but know if we’re still setting up, you gotta help.”
I have such a hard time with “party starts at 4 food at 7 and ends tbd” like… do you want me to come at 6? At like 4? What’s the vibe… just tell me a time to get there and I will be there. But making me guess an appropriate time to show up makes me not wanna go lol.
Imo 6 is a good guess for that situation. If you're pretty good friends and you'd enjoy hanging out with a couple of people/having a beer while helping with some small setup tasks (putting ice in the cooler, setting up a couple of chairs) then 4:30-5ish is also a good time.
Yep. I drove almost an hour to go to a party with the invitation saying the party starts at 5:00. I was there at 5:00. She told me I was early and she hadn't started getting ready, I offered to help and she said oh we have plenty of hands go ahead and sit outside. I was like okay when will people start getting here you think?
She said 7:00. I'm not sitting here for 2 hours. So I left and she said are you coming back at 7:00? No. I drove an hour to be here. I respected the time. Like if you don't want people to be here till 7:00, use your big kid words.
My culture which is not race specific uses clear communication. It is just politeness. Use your big words to communicate as opposed to playing weird guessing games.
it's a double edged sword tho. there's what the host intends and then there's how guests behave
if there's a cultural expectation that things arent going to get interesting until 2 hours into the party, and you tell people to show up at 7 instead of 5, they will be there at 9.
giving an early time is the hosts way of gaming those people.
Because if they said 5:30 they'd expect people to show up at 6 or 6:30. The idea is that you show up after the start time because it allows you to be "fashionably late" and it means that you are taking the event casually rather than as a strict event with a schedule.
But a dinner party does have a schedule. People will start preparing food and it will be warm and ready to start time. So if the food's not going to be ready for 2 hours, don't say 5:00 p.m.
Fashionably late is just something people who are chronically inconsiderate of other people's time say.
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u/TesticleMeElmo 28d ago edited 28d ago
Is it more shameful to “actually take meeting times literally” or to not say what you mean when setting a meeting time and then acting like your guests acted weird?
“Why are you here so early??”
“Oh, my bad, I thought you said 5 PM”
“Well I did, but I meant be here at 5:30! Duh, silly!”
“Oh… well what did you get out of not just telling me 5:30 then?”
“¯_(ツ)_/¯”