Tradition-bound 😇
"A boss says 'Go!' A leader says 'Let's go!'"
—Author E.M. Kelly
> late to the resistance | slack
At a Tulsa coffee shop where I worked, our discourse over Slack on tardiness pushed ahead.
We were debating what to do with people like me who chronically showed up late.
- How about nothing?
The owner of the shop seemed to want more than nothing.
I had been arguing that there were no scientific correlations between laziness, productivity, and minor lateness, even though our minds might want to assume it.
Not everyone shared my views.
- No matter how logical my argument, it remains customary in the United States to treat minor lateness as a grave offense.
- Yet the Italians are late to everything. It doesn't bring the country to a grinding halt. Nor does it keep Italy from making great coffee.
Italy was the inspiration for our shop’s approach to coffee. 🇮🇹
I knew my argument was unfamiliar but rooted in reason.
Having traveled the world, however, the shop's owner fired back with just seven words that critically wounded my position:
- "It only works if everyone is late."
Ouch. His argument was rooted in reason, too.
While it could be argued that my position was scientifically defensible, it wasn’t necessarily practical.
Rather than gloat, however, the shop's owner began to attack his own position for amusement:
>> "On the other hand, our concept of time and punctuality is extremely recent. Clocks didn't even exist in the Americas until Europeans arrived. Time was measured more on the rotation of the earth, the movement of the moon, and sighting of stars. I've thought about how our measuring of time doesn't even make sense."
If our basis for measuring time was flawed, he added, "might it be possible that I was actually early and you only thought I was late?"
- next time "The Italians are late to everything."
- listening The Meters "Cissy Strut"
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