Your appointment was at 2:00. You arrived at 1:50, as instructed. It's now 2:35. You're still waiting. Someone who arrived after you just got called. The appointment time appears to have been a suggestion, not a commitment.

This happens everywhere: doctors' offices, service appointments, cable installations, DMV visits, any situation where you're scheduled to show up. You're expected to be on time, but the other party rarely is. The asymmetry is consistent and infuriating.

You're not uniquely unlucky. Schedules have become unreliable by design. The appointment time exists primarily as an organizational tool for the provider, not as a promise to you.

The Problem People Keep Running Into

Appointments don't account for reality. The scheduled time assumes everything goes perfectly, nothing runs long, and no complications arise. This never happens, so delays cascade through the day. One complicated case in the morning means everyone after waits longer.

The burden falls entirely on the customer. Your time is treated as free. The provider's time is protected. You wait because your waiting costs them nothing, while having you wait costs you everything: lost wages, wasted vacation days, childcare complications.

Overbooking is standard practice. Expecting some people to cancel, many systems schedule more appointments than can actually be served. When everyone shows up, wait times explode. The system is designed for an average day that never actually happens.

You're also penalized for lateness while they're not. Arrive ten minutes late and you might be told to reschedule. They can be an hour late and you're expected to accept it without complaint. The rules are one-directional.

How Modern Systems Created This

Chronically late appointments result from economic incentives that value provider efficiency over customer experience:

Provider time is expensive. A doctor, technician, or specialist sitting idle loses money. Overbooking prevents gaps. If someone cancels, the next person is ready. The downside of long waits falls on customers, who have no recourse.

Buffer time disappeared. Efficiency pressures compressed schedules. What once had fifteen-minute gaps between appointments now has none. Any delay compounds immediately. Lunch breaks shrink. Administrative time gets squeezed into appointment slots.

Variability was ignored. Scheduling treats every appointment as average length. But medical conditions vary, questions take different amounts of time, and some situations require more attention. The schedule can't handle this variation, so it pretends it doesn't exist.

Power asymmetry enables it. You can't easily walk out and go elsewhere. Once you're there, you're committed. The cost of leaving exceeds the cost of waiting, so you wait. Finding another provider might take months. Starting over feels worse than continuing to wait.

Volume metrics dominate. Organizations measure how many appointments happen, not how long people wait. What gets measured gets managed. What doesn't get measured gets ignored.

Why It Keeps Getting Worse

Shortages in certain services mean providers face no competition. When there aren't enough doctors or specialists, they don't need to compete on timeliness. You'll wait because you have no alternative. The waiting room is full of people who also have no alternative.

Documentation requirements have grown. Electronic health records, consent forms, and compliance requirements add administrative time that wasn't in original scheduling models. Providers spend more time on paperwork, leaving less for actual appointments.

Expectations have lowered. Because waits are universal, people accept them as normal. No one expects their 2:00 appointment to start at 2:00. This acceptance removes pressure to improve. Complaining feels pointless when everyone experiences the same thing.

And no-show rates remain high. Because schedules are unreliable, people feel less obligated to show up. This makes overbooking feel more necessary, creating a cycle of unreliability. Each participant's behavior reinforces the system's dysfunction.

Technology hasn't helped as promised. Online check-in and digital forms were supposed to speed things up. Often they just shifted the bottleneck elsewhere. You fill out forms online, then fill out the same forms again on paper when you arrive.

How People Cope Today

People plan for waits. They bring work, books, or phones, accepting that "appointment time" really means "start of an undefined waiting period." This adaptation enables the dysfunction to continue. The wait becomes productive time, making it feel less wasted.

Some request first-morning or first-afternoon slots, hoping to catch the system before it falls behind. This works sometimes but creates competition for those slots. Everyone wants 8 AM. By 8:30, the delays have already started.

Others learn which services are typically late and plan their days around expected delays. This personal knowledge substitutes for reliable scheduling. You learn that a 2:00 appointment really means 2:45, and you plan accordingly.

A few people push back, asking how late things are running before committing to wait. This occasionally prompts honesty, but more often prompts vague reassurances that mean nothing.

Appointment delays reflect a system optimized for provider utilization at the expense of customer time. Your waiting is invisible in their metrics. Until someone starts measuring and valuing the time customers spend waiting, schedules will remain suggestions rather than commitments. Your time will continue to be treated as less valuable than theirs.