Since retiring to Florida, we have noticed a phenomenon where people who have been disciplined and on time to most everything suddenly find they have to arrive up to 30 minutes before the event. Even being “on time” to an event might guarantee you that everyone else has left for the planned destination. It can be frustrating.
This is why I am on-time. First, it is polite and courteous to be someplace at the time you are expected. Second, I have been in a disciplined time mode virtually all of my life. Third, in some places I have been, it can save your life.
I come from a Germanic-Welsh genealogy. These are people who are fairly strict about being on time. My parent were both “on timers” and raised their children that way. All through secondary, high school, college, and beyond, you lived by the schedule. You were to be in your class at a set time, no exceptions. Late meant seeing the Principal or worse detention. Late in my College meant the possibility of losing a letter grade for X number of times late or with an unexcused absence aka “cutting class”. In many classes, exam questions were often in material covered in the first few minutes of class.. In my era, not getting your date back to the dorm on time meant real problems for both of you. You weren’t late in getting your papers or projects to the Professor as the penalty could be as much as a letter grade.
From College, I entered the US Marine Corps. You were NEVER late under any circumstances .The penalties could be severe and often included loss of rank, humiliation, or financial penalties. Missing a troop movement could land you in jail. The strict discipline was all geared to one thing and that was survival in the battlefield. Remember the earlier comment about saving your life? In Vietnam, if you arrived, say at an assault point too early, you could die in preparatory fires. If you were patrolling and arrived at a checkpoint too early, you could die in friendly H&I fire that was designed to protect you. The Marine Corps is strict and we were always on time, period, no excuses, and, end of subject!
When I joined IBM, in the first moments of the orientation, being on time to work was covered as a condition of employment. IBM started every shift at 8:18 AM. You had better have hit the clock before 8:18 or spend some ugly face time with your manager. When hitting the time clock was stopped for professionals, you still needed to be in your office at or before your scheduled start time . Your arrivals were tracked by the time you logged onto your office computer in many places. Being on-time was a point in your annual performance plan. I personally fired four people in iBM for their failure to get to work on time.
In IBM, arriving at meetings on-time was strictly enforced at all levels of the business. I worked for Managers and Executives who closed the door on time. If you weren’t in the room, you did not attend the meeting. I closed my doors for meetings that I called 5 minutes after the meeting was scheduled to start. Hardly anyone was ever late.
In IBM, I was a frequent global traveler. You needed to be on-time to catch your flights especially if you had a complicated itinerary as I often did. With one exception, I always made my flights on time. I had some early training for this because our family owned a small cottage on Martha’s Vineyard. You arrived at and left the Island on the Steamship Authority Ferries which is a tough ticket in the high season. When I was working on the Vineyard during College, I caught the ferry every morning with a truck, drove to a warehouse, loaded it with milk, and caught the noon ferry back to the Vineyard.
Being on time has been ingrained into the fiber of my being. This discipline remains with me today. and take some pride in time management. I don’t plan to change because I am retired.
jtdraig 
We must be twins……you and I entered college at the same time, I started at New Paltz State just northwest of your Poughkeepsie and transferred to Brockport State just west of Rochester, NY to play football. Likewise, I too knew Jesus but didn’t attend church that much but had a GREAT time in college. I was commissioned a 2nd Lt. in the Marine Corps upon graduation, was an infantry platoon leader in Viet Nam and was always “on time” and hoped my platoon didn’t stray from the assigned patrol route and get clobbered by our own H&I fires. I lost too many young Marines in Nam (1967-68) and think about them every day. Also the POW/MIA’s that our government abandoned. I still listen to “The Eve of Destruction” and the music of the 50’s & 60’s…..best music ever made. I married my Brockport State sweetheart (9) days after arriving home from Viet Nam and we still have the BEST marriage after 46 years……and two sons.
I have a very personal interest in your writing of The Battle of Thon Tham Khe……I should have been killed there. Allow me to explain. I had the 3rd Platoon of Lima 3/1 up until November 1967. Our Battalion, 3rd Bn 1st Marines was selected to “go afloat” at the BLT with the Valley Forge. The Battalion was going to go the Philippines for the month of November into December and then become the BLT and sit off shore until needed. I was told that I was too “short” to go with the Battalion and that I was also “needed” at a court martial in DaNang. Saying good-bye to my platoon and especially to my best friend in Viet Nam, my radioman, Cpl. Dave Kamp, who I eat and slept with in different foxholes for better part of 13 months…..I was trucked up to 1st Marine HQ and assigned as a “watch officer” in the G-3 command bunker up on “the hill”. I never expected what was to follow…………
“Watch Officer” huh?…..what kind of a “girly” job is that?…..DESK job! I was one of about (6) officers who sat around this giant table listening to what was taking place in the entire I-Corps…..the TAOR for the 1st Marine Division plus the Marine Air Wing. Except for two different occasions, it was pretty boring and way too much “brass” running around. The first incident put a bayonet through my heart…..it started out slow on 26 Dec ’67.
It was called “Operation Badger Tooth”. My radioman, Cpl. Dave Kamp had been “promoted” to company radio operator with Capt. Thomas Hubbell. I served with Lima Company under Capt. Joe Gibbs and then under Hubbell for only a couple of weeks just before the Battalion went afloat. I will only say that Hubbell didn’t impress me.
OK……so I’m sitting in this nice secure underground bunker carved into the side of a hill over looking the ships in the harbor of DaNang, listening to all the action in I-Corps as if I was God……or at least one of his angles because being a only 1st Lieutenant, I could have never been given the part of God. That part would have been played by that fat-ass major who was trying to “break me in” as a glorious “watch officer”. Anyway…..I’m listening to Lima Company come ashore with the rest of the Battalion to sweep (2) vills suspected of harboring a battalion of NVA. No sweat the first day…..very light action…..the word was that the intel wasn’t up to date or the 116th NVA battalion cleared out on the 25th.
My (12) hour shift started at 0600 each morning and I was looking forward to following Badger Tooth on this bright morning of 27 December 1967. I never expect what was to follow……
You know the story better than I do but even as I tell my story, I feel that I should have been there with Kamp. I think he would have remained my radioman and I say now……never really knowing what I would have done at the time…..but I hope that I would have had the guts and nerve to DISOBEY Capt. Hubbell’s order to assault that village without having it thoroughly “prepped” with arty and/or fixed wing. I’ve been told that every officer including 2nd LT. Kenneth Smith who took over my platoon was KIA………and I sat in a sand-bagged cave all nice and safe back in DaNang, listened to my Lima Company getting shredded. The death of Capt. Hubbell was reported and Cpl Kamp was listed as WIA but I didn’t know that he had been paralyzed from the neck down until I flew up to see him in the Great Lakes Naval Hospital (3) days after I got home…..shot through the neck and laid on the battle field for over (13) hours before being choppered out to the USS Repose.
The other incident before I got out of Nam was seeing full-bird colonels and generals running around in flack jackets carrying M-16’s and wearing helmets when Tet started in January. I had turned in my weapon,
12 ga. shotgun, helmet and flack jacket because I had my orders to take the big bird back to the States. But that didn’t happen as scheduled because of…..well, I not sure if it was the Tet Offensive or they just didn’t want me to go home. All DaNang air traffic was halted and I wasn’t sure if I was going to make my wedding that Lee and I were planning since I flew her out to Hawaii for my (5) days of R& R.
I better end this with a happier ending…….yes, they opened the air field for (1) hour and I hopped on a cargo plane that got me to Guam and then on to Hawaii and to the States. I got into the POW/MIA issue pretty heavy…..meeting at the Laos Embassy in D.C. and talking with the North Vietnamese at the UN building in NYC. Other than that……we may have a few more things in common.
Semper Fi………Dick Anderson
Dubois, PA 15801