The Floor
Is it worse to be late or to cancel?
A question about manners that turns out to be a question about whose time counts.
Concluded from · Assessed from the stance that the cost falls on whoever is left waiting.
Closes at 1,500 answers
1,342 people have taken a position.
Take a position and it opens — to you now, and to everybody when this closes.
The split is covered until you have taken a position, because on a question like this the room is not evidence about the world — it is what is being measured, and a number shown first would only tell you what the normal answer is. It opens to everybody when this closes, answered or not.
What people are weighing
Take a position to mark what weighed with you
- Cancelling returns the evening; lateness spends itLate is worse
- Notice given early costs the other person nothingLate is worse
- A cancellation is a decision; lateness is usually an accidentCancelling is worse
What settles this, and when it closes
This one has no answer. It has a room. Nothing in the world settles it — so when it closes, the floor says what it concludes, from a stated stance.
Counting closes as soon as 1,500 people have answered.
What people said · 3
Every bubble carries the side its writer took.
Take a position above to add your view. You can read everyone else’s now.
Bea S.@bea_s· 8 Sept
Cancelling costs me an evening. Being late costs me the evening and twenty minutes of standing outside in it.
Miguel A.@miguel_a· 9 Sept
Late is an accident. Cancelling is a decision, and it is a decision about you.
Bea S.@bea_s· 10 Sept· reply
A decision about me that I hear in time is a courtesy. Twenty minutes on a pavement is a decision about me too, and I hear it last.
