Originally Posted by
CCayley
I'm not sure other people's attitudes or experiences are much use here - in my experience some people (e.g. me!) get very nervous if they think they may miss a flight and probably over-do turning up early, whereas others are much more relaxed and would fret if they found themselves wasting an hour waiting in a lounge. I used to work extensively with a particular colleague whose attitude to this was the opposite of mine and although we flew all over the world together we just couldn't travel together to the airport: he entirely trusted that the tube would run fine and would go to Paddington to catch the last possible HEX before conformance, and I would meet him in the lounge, having got there an hour and a half before! In the end neither of us could persuade the other to accept our preferred timings owing to our differing feelings of anxiety/confidence.
Colleagues are the worst for this. At least with friends and family I can express my need to be on time!
I have one like yours - very last-minute. Last time we travelled together I had guested him into the T5 lounge and he would not leave to go to the gate - one more drink, oh actually I will go to the loo, sure we can't have another drink?, haven't packed up my stuff, maybe get a paper... I was concerned it might be perceived by my boss (who was meeting us at the destination) to be "my fault" for having taken him in there if we missed the flight so was very stressed and didn't want to leave him there but could not make him get a shift on. In the end it was exactly T-20 when we left the lounge; we ended up running through the terminal and thankfully were not turned away at T-18 at the gate. On the way back a couple of days later I got him to agree on the way to the lounge in CDG that we would leave at a specific time, though when it got to five minutes before that time and I suggested we should start packing up he denied all knowledge of this and admitted he'd agreed but "wasn't actually listening to what you were saying". Then,
as we were boarding, he decided he fancied the look of one of those 15 minute in-chair massages next to the gate so took himself off to have one. By that point I did not care at all if he got left behind. In fact I was really peeved that he made it onto the plane (last person on, having cut the massage short on being paged) as he was very smug on sitting down that I'd been worried over nothing. I am not travelling with him again if I can help it as our attitudes are incompatible.