Why It’s Such a Bad Idea to Keep Someone Waiting

Relationships run on the assumption that people will be where they’re supposed to be when they say they will. The social contract that you make with others takes this basic fact as a given. If you know a chronic procrastinator, such as a good friend or romantic partner, you’ve probably already accepted the fact that you’ll always have to kill some time while you wait for them to saunter in. What about if you’re meeting someone you don’t know that well, such as a healthcare provider, who expects you to be okay with cooling your heels for half an hour in the waiting room? How much will you trust them to treat your symptoms?

Impressions are formed on the basis of appearance, but behavior also factors into the equation. Maybe you’re about to shake hands with someone you’re introduced to and as they reach out to you, they trip? Unless you’re an unbelievably forgiving person, or at least someone with a good amount of empathy, their clumsiness could compromise what might have been a nice first conversation.

The Role of Waiting in Social Interactions

Using the framework of organizational recruitment and hiring, University of Tulsa’s Juseob Lee and University of Central Florida’s Steve Jex (2024) proposed that when a job applicant is kept waiting, they feel less likely to accept an offer, should it come. Signaling theory, the authors note, suggests that the lack of courtesy shown to the applicant becomes interpreted as a sign of “future organization mistreatments." After all, if they can’t be bothered to respect an applicant’s time during what should be a sort of courtship, what will it be like when the courtship period ends?

It may seem like a stretch to place so much emphasis on a slight hiccup in the hiring process, but Lee and Jex maintain that, based on previous research, the psychological contract that forms during recruitment can influence the well-being and career decisions of the applicant who’s kept waiting.

Going further, the “nonconspicuous attributes” of an organization that become apparent during recruitment take on significance because applicants don’t have much else to go on other than how considerate a potential employer seems to be. This includes not just face-to-face, but also email communication. Think about how you feel when you receive a sloppily-written email from someone you’re thinking of either hiring or being hired by. Probably not a good sign of what lies ahead.

Putting Signaling Theory to the Test

Before getting into the details of their research, it’s important to mention another factor that the authors believed might be relevant. Self-efficacy, or the belief that you can accomplish a task, could affect how much playing the waiting game affects the organization’s appeal to applicants. People with high self-efficacy regard stressors as challenges, not threats. They should, if this is the case, be less likely to find waiting for a late interview to start to be a problem.

The U. Tulsa and UCF research team recruited a sample of 206 undergraduates, almost all of whom had gone through a face-to-face or virtual interview, and nearly half of whom had experience with being made to wait.

The task of the participants was to read a scenario under one of 4 conditions, created by the combination of waiting vs. not waiting and face-to-face vs. phone. In the applicant waiting condition, the applicant was told that the company was 45 minutes late.

The organizational attraction measure included three items, such as, “For me, this company would be a good place to work.” To assess self-efficacy, the researchers used an established scale with items such as “I will be able to achieve most of the goals I set for myself.”

As the authors predicted, the waiting condition produced significantly lower organizational attractiveness scores than the no-waiting condition. People with high self-efficacy, in the no-waiting condition, came out further ahead than those low in self-efficacy, but the scores switched in the waiting condition: People high in self-efficacy reacted more negatively to imagining themselves as being forced to wait.

As the authors concluded, not only was signaling theory supported by these findings, but there also is the possibility that in real-world settings, there can be spillover effects: Just as people who dislike a product can share their low ratings through social media, applicants who have a bad experience during the hiring process can communicate information that negatively affects a company’s reputation.

One final proviso involves the situation of a stress interview. If you’ve ever been through one of these, you know how disheartening they can be. Making an applicant wait only heightens this effect. Unless the job is for a position in a job requiring the ability to handle extreme stress, the authors argue, it’s better for companies not to do this.

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What to Do When You’re Made to Wait

When the meeting involves a person you don’t know well, or at all (e.g. that healthcare provider), it’s now clear that the social faux pas they commit of making you wait will sour the way you feel about them.

However, if the relationship is important enough to you, then these findings suggest that you might want to give them a second chance. It is true that first impressions have a powerful effect, but you never know if there was a reason for their lateness.

Another angle to the findings is that when you’re the person who makes someone else wait, you’re damaging the way they feel about you. If this person is someone you know and care about, they may not change their impression of you, but they might feel a bit less enthusiastic toward your relationship than if you followed through on your time commitment. Try the “five minute rule,” for example, in which you give yourself an extra five minutes (or more?) to arrive on time if not early

To sum up, the social contract formed in relationships involves respecting agreements to be on time. Avoid being late, and the contract can become a lasting one.

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