3 Billion Hours Late

In other exciting Peruvian news, Peruvian president Alan Garcia has declared March the month when punctuality will sweep the nation:

"(We must) stop this horrible, pitiful, disastrous custom of failing to be punctual," he intoned in a speech, inveighing against the $5 billion in annual economic damage caused, he said, by being late. Tallying tardiness, he said Peruvians as a whole were annually late by 3 billion hours. That works out to over 107 hours of tardiness for every man, woman and child.

"If you are literally always 10 minutes late, it's psychological," Morgenstern says. "You're arriving exactly when you want. The question is 'why?'" Sapadin says the answer depends on your personality type. "For some people, it's a resistance thing," she tells WebMD. "It's a carryover of rebelliousness from childhood. They don't want to do what other people expect them to." Another category is the "crisis-maker," someone who thrives on the minicrisis of running late. "These are people who cannot get themselves together until they get an adrenaline rush," Sapadin explains. "They need to be under the gun to get themselves moving."

And if you're feeling bold, here are some confidential "lateness citations."