Punctuality

This post might sound elitist, but so be it.

I recently hired a contractor to do some minor work at my place. The guy was very polite and I was satisfied with the work. But he was tardy.

And not even in a dramatic way! He simply arrived late every day: anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour and a half. Half the time he was upfront about it, messaging me to say he's running late (though occasionally after he was already late).

This prompted me to reflect on something I've long wondered: why are contractors so often the type of people who are never on time? Is there another profession where people are so consistently bad at time management? I doubt it's just exceptionally bad luck on my end — comparing notes with friends reveals that the issue seems widespread.

Tardiness, at least here in Finland, is considered very rude and disrespectful. In most jobs, you're expected to get to work on time without excuses. Why is it so hard for this group to adhere to that convention?

I'd be more understanding if there were variables in play that caused uncertainty: e.g., multiple sites to visit on the same day with unpredictable traffic in between (I presume this is why services like FedEx are so unpredictable). But that excuse didn't apply here, as I was his first site every morning. Maybe the mindset is that the workday starts when they leave home, not when they arrive on-site.

At least my contractor was a proactive communicator, which, in my experience, is definitely not common in the trade. The bar is set so low that I'm more than happy to recommend him to others — slight tardiness is nothing when they actually communicate. And, to be fair, the most important part, i.e., the finished outcome, was good, even though the deadline stretched by a few days — I'm much more forgiving on that front since there were unknown unknowns.

I get that many in the renovation trades tend to be "doers" rather than "administrators" — that's likely why they entered the industry in the first place (especially in the Finnish welfare society with practically free education)¹. Perhaps that explains why they aren't always the greatest at communicating. But being on time is a super simple concept most people master by the time they start school.

I'm envious of a friend in Japan who described how the local contractors he hired for a kitchen renovation did everything exactly as agreed. They even rearranged the decor to match a photo taken beforehand — right down to placing a stray coin back on the counter exactly where it had been.

Maybe the contractor business here is so "rotten" that novices simply learn bad habits from older professionals? I might never know, but if you have a theory as to why this happens, shoot me a message.