Italian view of time, appointments and what is "late"

Americans and time
Americans might be one of these most time conscious cultures in the world. We value every minute of every day and we tend to budget our time everyday to put the most use of our time toward things we want to accomplish. We are very goal oriented people, whether that is getting the car washed and waxed today, or completing a degree program. Obviously not every individual in America has the same degree of time-consciousness, but I am speaking in general terms here.

Think of how many of our daily expressions and proverbs have to do with time...

"wasting time" - what exactly does that mean? think about it. I used to say that to my children "you are wasting time dawdling around". Now, older and wiser that I am, maybe they had it right and I was wrong; living in the moment and savoring the small things in life is not a waste!
"saving time" - can someone tell me how we save time? put it in the bank? we can't draw it out later -- we get one pass and that is it.

Usually what ends up with all the "time-saving" devices in our lives, is that we get so many of them, it allows us to cram more stuff and activities in our lives which really tends to bog us down, rather than "free" us. Hm.

How about...
"make good time"
"free time"
"spare time"
"it's about time"
"take your time"
"no time to lose"
"a race against time"
"deadline" - wonder where that came from?
"lose track of time" 

You get my point. It is no wonder other people trying to learn English as a second language struggle with all our expressions about time; the equivalents don't exist in many other languages. Try an experiment with me just for fun. Take one day and make a tally mark every time during the day that you use an expression about time, you think about time or you check to see what time it is. I think we'll all be surprised about that.

Italians and time
In some of my previous blogs I have commented about the differences in how our two cultures value time and how it affects daily life. At times (actually most of the time) I continue to be frustrated by Italians that are late for meetings, late for appointments, late submitting promised documents at work, late opening stores, early closing stores (not abiding by the posted hours), not showing up for appointments at all, or showing up an hour or two late without calling and just expecting everyone to be waiting around for them. Now that is hair-pulling!

I have learned, when dealing with repair people and installers, to be sure and let them know that I expect them to be on time, and if they are more than 10 minutes late, to call and let me know. I tell them that I will not wait for them, so if they fail to call me, don't be surprised if I am not there. I hear my DSP speaking to them and telling them "She is American and she means it". For the most part, that has helped assure that service people are on time. I will say though, if they arrived and I wasn't there, they would not be nearly as upset as I would be. It just isn't that critical of a thing to most Italians, and only considered mildly inconvenient. When you speak later, you make some lame excuse about why you weren't there (it can be anything really) and no one remembers that anymore.

In most other situations, I have learned to not count on promises of "tomorrow" (domani) or  "next week". Generally in my head, I do the math and add on at least one or two weeks to any of those conversations, and that way I don't get as frustrated. Occasionally, Italians surprise me and are very prompt, but that is only when they want money from me, and then, because they expect this, I put them off for as long as possible. It is part of the Italian culture to do this and I am being culturally adaptive!

So I am starting to try and understand the Italian thinking about time, some of the expressions and proverbs in Italian that are a clue to the thinking behind them. This was part of our cross-cultural training but it is different to be told about something versus living it.

An article from the UK Telegraph says:
Concept of time: Punctuality in Milan means they are up to 20 minutes late, in Rome half an hour and in the south 45 minutes. You will not be able to change this, except in a fixed-hours factory or office environment. You must therefore adapt. Be prepared to wait 15-45 minutes before your Italian counterpart arrives to let you into their office.

Another interesting read is this blog from a woman of Italian descent.
Italian words about time