A few days ago, I lost my patience towards some people because of time. The people who were supposed to replace my night duty came in half an hour late. I was frustrated. I was exhausted and had a whole list of things waiting to be done yet, I had to delay my plans because they were late. To add salt to the wound, they were my friends, so I lost my temper and I did not react positively when they walked into the room. I was upset and I wanted to send the message across and I burst. Obviously, my friends were shocked. I guess they did not expect that to come from me.
Although I knew they were wrong to be late, I was disturbed by the way I had reacted. I somehow had a sense of guilt. I felt guilty of showing my frustration. Till now, I still feel guilty for bursting. I have not met those friends yet and I don't know if they are upset with me or not but I feel uncomfortable that I let it happen.
It is a culture at my workplace for people at my work place to walk into the office late. The culture started because people were assigned to duties that were out of their shift hours. Hence, the department heads allowed the flexibility to happen. However, some people have taken this flexibility for granted, they come in late because they had personal matters to settle. As the number of staffs in our office is big, their lateness do not affect their fellow colleagues during the normal shifts, sadly, some of them carry this lateness with them when they are on night and morning shifts whereby there is only 1 person on duty and the person needs to wait for them to come before they leave the office so that the office is not left unattended. I was told this morning by a fellow colleague that there are some people who came in 2 hours late for their duty and caused other people to wait for them without having any sense of guilt. How could people do such things? I just cannot understand. Even if our colleagues are not punctual, does it mean we have to be like them?