people who are chronically late
I'd go with that being something much bigger than a peeve. It's a serious character flaw, that speaks to both total disrespect for others as well as speaking volumes about how little awareness the person actually has. And it's the easiest reason in the world to fire someone - who would undoubtedly loudly protest how they 'had it out for them' when the reality is that they could not have served up a better reason on a platter.
I had a boss once explain it in a near perfect manner. When the person showed up 10 minutes late the boss starts yelling at him for being an hour late. Dude protests, point to the clock and saying he's only 10 minutes late. Boss tells him to count the people there. Dude does, comes up with 6. Boss - still yelling - shouts: "In my book 6 x 10 = 60, and that's an hour." See, we're all waiting for you, you're late for everyone, not just yourself.
I freely admit - and I warn people upfront, BigTime, so there is total disclosure - that I have like less than zero tolerance for late, and that's due to lengthy training by a Jedi master at being on time, my dad the airline pilot. He did it through many means, but my favorite (one I would repeat on my kids, successfully making them just as anal about it as me) is that if I asked him to drive me and my friends to the mall at 10:30, and we showed up at 10:35, well that train had left the station and we better start walking if we wanted to go to the mall. If we wanted to go at 10:35 we should have said so, and for damn sure he had better things to do than wait around for us. You only made that mistake a couple of times. We learned that if we wanted to go at 10:30 we best be telling our idiot friends to be there at 10, if not 9:30, so poorly were they trained.
One of my best friends, Miss Margaret, who couldn't be on time to save her life (but I loved so dearly that I wanted her with me that she got special treatment). I'd just flat-out lie to her about when we wanted/had to leave. If I wanted to go at 10 I'd tell her 9 every time. It worked out. But she was exceptional, so I found a way to deal with it. And if you're not Miss Margaret, you're out of luck.
And I'm not the only one, being late is one of the few real sins in theater (theater - in the largest sense of the word, including movies, concerts, et.all.). This is due to that entire how many people are waiting for you deal. It's also because - as it was once explained to me - that in theater the only two real things we work with are time and money, and you better not mess with either. I put up with a lot, cut a lot of slack and tolerate things that almost no boss anywhere would tolerate. (Like employees showing up tripping balls, like allowing the workplace to be a place where happily "harass" is still two words - think about it- and not being able to find people who were on the clock because they were having sex somewhere.) But I don't do late. (Or stealing/theft/borrowing - if you want it, ask - or lying.)
And that's the same basic deal for students when I teach too.
