Academia Problematic Punctuality Psychodrama

Yet Prompt Payment Is Expected

July 17, 2023 by David 54 Comments

In case you missed it in the comments, I bring news of a dream employee. You see, she’s not at all entitled. It’s just that the world must revolve around her:

I think we can assume that madam’s professed “time blindness” – which apparently precludes the use of the reminder function on her phone – doesn’t result in her turning up for work early, or accidentally working extra hours. Or being in any way more useful or helpful, or less self-involved.

I think we can assume that with some confidence.

If the elevation of chronic lateness to some kind of progressive credential or state of pious victimhood sounds familiar, we have encountered several variations on this theme.

Unreliability is, for instance, championed by the Oregon Health Authority, on grounds that “urgency is a white supremacist value,” and therefore expectations of punctuality and preparedness are terribly problematic and something to disdain. Whereas, in matters of health, tardiness and lack of forethought are presumably aspirational, a woke ideal.

And then there was the time we were told, by Marcus Moore, an “equity transformation specialist,” that the cultivation of self-absorption and lack of focus, along with a disregard for deadlines, standards and obligations – and by implication, a disregard for reciprocity – will somehow catapult minority students into gainful employment and a world of many, many friends.

Because expecting minority students to turn up on time is merely “bending to whiteness” and therefore a cause of “tremendous harm.” Unlike the “equity” poison being tipped into their ears. Examples of which abound, some positively surreal.

As noted at the time:

One might argue that this supposedly “white” “obsession” with “mechanical time” – which is to say, basic foresight and punctuality – or just adulthood – has very little to do with oppressing the negro, as Mr Moore claims, and rather more to do with courtesy and treating other people as if they were real, just as real as you, and no more deserving of delays, frustration, or gratuitous disrespect. 

And,

Punctuality is, among other things, a gesture of recognition, of empathy. You’re acknowledging the other person as mattering, as someone whose time is as finite as your own and no less valuable. And if someone exempts themselves from such reciprocal expectations – having been encouraged to do so by supposedly grown-up educators – then it seems likely they will do less well in life, whether socially or materially.

To pick a humdrum example – if a schoolfriend’s mom invites you to join them for tea, and you turn up an hour late, unapologetic, and still expecting to be fed, this is not an obvious basis for congratulation. Or a second invitation.

From this childhood example, you can, I think, extrapolate.

Readers will likely have registered that the convolutions of “equity transformation specialists” are not entirely dissimilar to the insufferable narcissism of the young lady in the video above, our “chaotic philosopher.” It is, I think, worth noting that, when used by Clown Quarter academics and their fellow pinhead agitators, the term “equity” translates as something like “equality of outcome regardless of inputs.”

And so, we have people who disdain the habits of bourgeois life as something to be “dismantled” and done away with, at least for themselves or certain favoured groups, while still expecting the rewards of those same bourgeois habits.

Perhaps there’s a word for that.




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