The person I'd like to talk about is my best friend Ana, who I met in my first week at university in São Paulo. We studied psychology together and now share a flat. She's wonderful in almost every way, but she's never on time for anything.
Her lateness is legendary among our friends. If we arrange to meet at seven, she'll text at seven saying she's leaving the house, which means she'll arrive at about eight. She's been late for exams, job interviews, and once for her own birthday dinner, which we had organised as a surprise. We were all hiding in the restaurant for forty minutes.
When she's late, a few things usually happen. First, there's a stream of messages with excuses, some of which are true and some of which are definitely not, like the traffic being bad on a public holiday. Then she arrives full of apologies and so cheerful that it's hard to stay angry. The funniest time was when we were going to the coast for a weekend and missed the bus. We had to take a much slower one, and she spent the whole trip buying everyone snacks to make up for it.
How do I feel? It depends. With friends, I've learned to live with it. We now tell her events start thirty minutes earlier than they really do, and that works surprisingly well. But when it affects other people, it does annoy me. She nearly lost a job offer because she arrived late to the interview. I think her problem is that she's an optimist; she always believes she can do one more thing before leaving. I've tried to explain that being on time is a form of respect.