Last week I was struck by one of those unearned privileges of wealth and power: the right to be running late.
While visiting a nonprofit in downtown Chicago, I saw one of their donor relations folks in the hallway. In asking about her morning plans, she said she was rescheduling with a donor who ran into traffic and couldn’t make the meeting. We commiserated about the difficulties of navigating Chicago traffic for a bit and neither of us thought too much about it.
Later that same day, I was scheduled to give feedback to a job seeker about her interview skills and she was running late. By the time she walked into the room, I realized I already had a negative impression. “If she really wanted to make her life better,” I was thinking, “she would have found a way to get here on time.”
“Don’t be late” is one of the mantras of the interview process, especially at the lower end of the economic spectrum. Work out your child care issues, your transportation issues, whatever. Just don’t be late because it makes you seem unreliable, not serious, not a good team member. No excuses.
The double standard in our flexibility and mindset about overcoming everyday obstacles was glaring and uncomfortable. People in power are given leeway, presumably because whatever makes them late for the meeting, the lunch date, the deadline, is so important that we must understand the situation (especially if we need something from them). But the job seekers, the powerless folks who are hoping for that job, that chance at a better life, if they run into traffic or the bus is late, it just shows how irresponsible they are. Clearly, they should have planned to take an earlier bus but it’s okay if the wealthy donor didn’t expect to run into heavy traffic.
In my own journey to live an integrated life, I am confronting these uncharitable attitudes–my greatest obstacles– and trying to recognize them and name them out loud. It’s not that I want you to start being late for our lunch date, or that I won’t try so hard to be on time. But I am hoping to slow my rush to judgment.
