Whenever I have to go with my father for family meetings or any appointment, my father always gets furious and stressed when I’m not ready yet, even tho we still have plenty of time to do things or relax at home. My father always hated being late, I get that. But being there excessively early is useless and wastes my time. I get bored just waiting.
For example, the appointment is at 5 pm, and my father wants to be there at 3 pm. HUH? FOR WHAT? I always said that, but he always said "It’s better to wait there, so we don’t be late." Once I was angry and told my father to go there first, and I’ll catch up later, and I did, not late either. Then, when we get there, we just sit and wait, which is incredibly boring. I would rather do my work at home or at least relax.
NTA
Your father seems to have severe anxiety about being late to appointments. It’s best that you just show up on time for the appointment and not excessively early. Don’t let him make his anxiety your problem when possible.
This is what I thought aswell, I do think he has anxiety about being late. Cause this isn’t normal, honestly.
NAH.as long as he’s fine with letting you catch up so why do you care if he gets there 2 hours ahead of time. While I personally think 2 hours is excessive I routinely get to places at least 30 minutes early because you just never know what’s going to happen.
I care if someone is wasting my time, personally.
Dad is wasting OP’s time and being damned rude about it.
NTA, but I’m guessing he’s former military or an undiagnosed flavor of neurospicy.
Not both. I don’t know about neurospicy but I don’t see any other symptoms besides that.
There are other reasons for this type of behavior, but its guaranteed one of those “he won’t change unless he wants to” and “you can only control your own actions” situations.
Based on what you wrote, it sounds like you are a minor requiring parental presence for these appointments – so eventually you are going to be able to get your own appointments and not have to tell your dad when they are. Or lie to him about when they are.
Or you are an adult child of a senior parent that requires assistance – which gets more complicated and its probably worth a conversation with his health team.
Or your life is complicated outside my hopeful assumptions.
DO NOT TELL ME WHICH ONE.
That’s a wild over-correction to avoid being late.
95% of the time I aim for a 5-minute buffer window to account for traffic fluctuations, but I’ve already accounted for the door-to-door time including finding parking and walking to the place.
Sometimes it’s prudent to give a bigger buffer if timing is critical, but 15-min is like the max. 1-2 hours is insane.
Barely-related side note: “Appointment is at 10:00 but show up 15-min early.” Is mildly infuriating. What is with this, just say 9:45. OTOH, I guess if you show up 2 hours early you don’t have to deal with that.
this is pretty extreme.
are you old enough to drive? maybe take him there and drop him off, you go do some errands and come back at 4:45
Yeah, but I will waste my time driving back and forth then, but that gives me an idea, I’ll probably try to go to a cafe or restaurant near the location to do something at least, and come back later.
NTA
My clinic won’t even let you turn up that early. There are signs everywhere asking that we don’t turn up more than 10 minutes early.
I wonder if the father knows from previous experiences that he HAS to say they’re leaving an hour before they need to in order to have any chance of being on time? We do this with my brother: event at 5, everybody is told be here at 5, my brother is told the event is at 4 or 4:30. Everybody gets there at 5.