Business Communication Persuasive Essay

So there I sit, staring at the clock, watching as the seconds turn into minutes. The feeling of my blood pressure rising every time the hands on the clock tick. I hate being late.

We’ve all been there, you’re told you have an appointment and so, like a considerate human, you arrive 10 minutes early so that no one is waiting on you. Everything goes according to plan. It never seems to fail, the day you have everything going right, someone else’s work-a-day attitude about punctuality throws the wrench into your finely tuned system.

When I was growing up, I learned very early the importance of being “on-time”. I knew that when those street lights came on, I had to high-tail it home if I wanted to avoid the dreaded grounding. That set the framework for a lot of us, our parent were prompt for appointments and meetings, so we learned to do the same. Personally, I was taught and still follow the “if you’re not fifteen minutes early, you’re late” philosophy. Somewhere along the line though, it seems that there has been a break in the chain. I am going to generalize, and I mean no ill-will towards those it does not apply to, but it seems more and more that the younger generation places almost no value on their, or perhaps more importantly, other people’s time. This is sparking a trend to be more self-centered and ignore the concept of OTHER people’s time.

Back when I was managing a doctor’s clinic I got to witness the ripple effects of this trend on a daily basis. Our check-in windows opened at 7:00 on the dot every morning to a line of patients waiting on us. By lunch enough people had shown up late that we were typically at least 30 minutes behind. Taking a lunch break SHOULD have given the universe a chance to right itself, have our afternoon patients show up on time, and not run us late. Never actually happened though, never seemed to finish a day on time.

From my vantage point behind the desk I have heard every excuse under the sun, but the one that...