Brianna Parkins: Anyone can be early. Always being late takes skill

Being chronically late or just-in-time for things requires skill. Anyone can be early. It takes no special talent leaving an hour earlier than the time specified by Google Maps. You get ready and go, and play with your phone when you get there waiting for everyone else to show up.

It’s a crude habit that has somehow been elevated to an accomplishment, this rocking up early nonsense. These are people who will tell you “I don’t like to rush”. There’s a reason why. It’s because rushing takes expert ability, adroit mental reflexes, problem solving and logistic expertise.

It takes a lot of planning to be late actually. Leave-it-to-the-last-minuters know which roads to take at what hour, the numbers of the most agile taxi drivers in every city of the country and which coffee shop can crank out a flat white under the four-minute mark. They know which car park will have spots, which barmen at the airport can serve a pint in time to still make the gate when it’s 10 minutes to boarding, which dry cleaner can do a same-day rush job and which ticket machine at the station works 1.5 seconds faster.

Rushers are the ones walking quickly and thoughtfully down footpaths, sticking to one side of the pavement. Getting in their way, dawdling along without any thought to anyone else behind them, are the “left with plenty of time to spare” community. They’re stopping in the middle of the path to look at their phones, they’re gaping at shop windows or walking on the wrong side of the path, with no thoughts or cares about the Rushers who have to be somewhere. They understand, unlike the Early Bird Worm Eaters, that paths are a highway. There is a slow lane and fast lane. Always allow room for people travelling faster than you to get around. Don’t walk two or more abreast on busy paths unless you’ve all won at least a bronze medal in an Olympic speed walking event.

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Early people don’t often get that, because they tend to be insensitive to the needs of others. They can’t help it. They couldn’t possibly conceive that not everyone wastes valuable hours they’ll never get back by arriving before they have to. It’s too much for their brains. It was thought that Rushers were actually the selfish ones, but this is outdated propaganda. Rushers just need to get to where they are going in the most efficient manner possible, which benefits everyone. They are more sensitive to moving through life in a way that doesn’t obstruct others, because they understand that an elevator door unheld might cost that stranger in the lobby a new job if they are late for an interview. They know what it is to live on the edge.

Airports give us a great microcosm of how these groups act. It starts at check-in. The Rushers have their passports and boarding passes out. They have already checked in on their phone and bought an express security lane pass on the way there in the back of the taxi, risking travel sickness. They are the ones with serious faces. They have no belts. No shoes that need removing. They are the definition of “not f**king around”.

Their liquids are separated because they know if their bag is flagged and shunted down the little slide of death to the recheck area, it could be the kiss of death to their non-refundable Ryanair flight. The one boarding in 30 minutes.

Rushers are not going to waste their €8 pass by not having their laptops already out, their jackets off and coins out of their pocket. They’re here to save time and, by extension, everyone else’s by getting through security as quickly as possible. These people are doing the rest of us a national service, stacking trays on the conveyor belt so the bags can come through faster instead of being jammed at the top.

Their nemesis are the early folk. They are chatting away at check-in to the staff, chancing their arm with redundant upgrade requests like they have all the time in the world. They probably do, arriving four hours before their flight. But not everyone else behind in the line does, which is something they either don’t understand or care about. Studies have yet to determine which.

These are people who don’t have their boarding passes out, who have to dig through tote bags, chuckling to themselves in a careless “what am I like?” fashion while the people behind them are wishing for their immediate spontaneous combustion. They are bringing one litre shampoo bottles in their carry-on, and €100 worth of coins in their pockets. They stand, oblivious to everyone else’s need, to collect their bag off the X-ray and repack their luggage according to colour, size and season.

They are paying for food at busy restaurants, counting out that €100 worth of coins one by one. They are moving through walkways at the pace and thoughtfulness of a slow oozing slime, ignorant of the fact that airports are places where people might need to get where they are going in a timely manner.

Ultimately, it is selfish to get to airports four hours before they need to, clogging it up for the Rushers. But Early Worms are emotionally delicate. They get anxious if they aren’t sitting at a destination aimlessly premature. They need the little self-supplied bualadh bos they think comes with earlierness. We have to give them that. It’s the least we can do, it’s not their fault they have no skills.