why are the Portuguese always late?

[martin]

just wondered why they are always late, surely with driving like this they must be early

ps notice how others even overtake him!!!


see here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PjUKlswHPo

[sam]

I have often heard said that 'manana' is too fast for the Portuguese - until they get behind the wheel of a car.

[maccasa]

When we first came to portugal in late 90's, we were told "portuguese time is always 15-30 mins after the one stated" and I firmly believe its a built in clock that they have.

[Polli62]

Only 15-30 minutes, I dont believe it

[sunman]

last week our phone line/ internet router went on the blink a bit, we phoned Sapo who said somebody would be round 'in the morning'; the guy came at midday, pulled the socket out of the wall, disconnected the phone and announced that he was going to lunch, this was around 12.30; he reappeared at 3.15 to finish the job, which included spending about an hour on his mobile to friends, he left at 5 to go home; PT aren't getting much value out of him

[James Faro]

I wonder if those Portuguese motorbikers work for their national airline too!

[Polli62]

Sunman, we feel like headless chickens waiting the arrival of folks saying they will come, and after many years of learning never believe them. Even had phone calls after we have rung them asking "where are you", oh we are outside the little supermarket up the road, direct us please we are lost, and we have been stood outside our house and can see the supermarket. They are not there, and they couldn't care less.One wonders how they keep a business running when their customer service is sh*te.

[vilamiramar]

personnaly i dont think they are to late , try going to other countries , been a day late is normal, anyway i think people are late beacuase they know you are not going anywhere as most are retired or semi-retired so i guess they think you can wait while they attend other clients , although anither possibility is the fact that usually when you go to someones house to do a repair you encounter problems that werent expected so what you thought was a 30 min job turns into 2 hours and then there are cases that call as an emergency , and this is a true case , a expat called a pc handy man to come over and fix his pc cause he had 2 days without internet and he was upset of the job he had done, so the repair man goes over and when he gets there he sees in the screen in big letters vodafone internet CONNECT so he click on it and VOILA !! he was connected , so moral of the story , this person had to do 30 km to click on connected and wasted his time and somebody elses time cause someone didnt click on connect, and of course he wasnt expecting to get charged for such a silly thing right ?

[blue]

In an international survey the Portuguese said they considered themselves to be a punctual race .
I think they do, when the say a time they don't think that you might actually take that as the time they are going to turn up, it just means within a day or two of that time. We called out our electrician a week ago, still no sign of him. I think a sense of time just has a different meaning to the Portugese. It's drives me completely insane, still at least it's sunny & I suppose the trench in my garden will get sorted at some point - in time.

[sam]

Blue - have pm'd you the name and phone number of a reliable electrican.
To be honest, whilst we find it frustrating that the Portuguese have such a laid back attitude (except for driving) it is part of the charm of the place. Let's face it the UK pace of life can be frantic. I used to live and work in a city in the Midlands, then towns in Warwickshire, then Dorset, then holiday home in CVO. The pace of life has got progressively slower, and pleasanter. When I worked in the city I spent a lot of time responding to problems and other demands. In Warwickshire and Dorset the pace was slower, but we seemed to achieve more and usually tackled things before they got to a problem stage, hence the stress was less too.

[blue]

I used to get impatient when I visited my Mother & Grandmother in Lymington, queuing for ages while the old biddy behind the checkout in Waitrose had a natter with the old biddies buying there groceries, same in the post office, chemist, etc., what have they got all day?! Well yes actually they do. But there's moving slowly & then there's moving slowly, sometimes I think if the Portuguese went any slower they'd be going backwards.
I'm getting used to it but that's really not very helpful when you just need to get something done.