One Minute Late, Weekend Gone
Life Lessons from the Armed Forces – Punctuality
In the army, punctuality is not a suggestion.
It is a survival skill.
Be late by one minute and you don’t get a warning.
You get punished.
Your weekend disappears.
While your buddies are shopping, eating good food, or dating their girlfriends, you are doing security duties, kissing the fences, talking to the ghosts.
Turn up late to camp after2359 hours?
Congratulations. The gate is closed.
You are locked out.
Why is the military so obsessed with punctuality?
Because timing keeps people alive.
If one person is late, the whole operation is delayed.
If the whole operation is delayed, someone else pays the price.
In the army, being late is never just “your problem.”
That’s why there’s a saying drilled into us early on:
If you are early, you are on time.
If you are on time, you are late.
That mindset sticks.
Even now, I buffer an extra hour for appointments.
I factor in toilet breaks, wrong turns, bad traffic, and the possibility that I somehow forget how to read Google Maps.
In the army,
Being on time is free.
Being late is always expensive.
