This arrived in my inbox earlier today – ascribed to Asim Qureshi, CEO LaunchPad, 5 $1-10m startups (including Jibble.io)

You agree to meet someone at a certain time. Whether they make it on time or not depends on 4 things:
1. How much they value their commitments. People who are late are far less likely to deliver on other commitments such as giving back money, fulfilling promises. This is because they do not value their word.
2. How much they value your time. Being late means they have little respect for you.
3. How organised they are. If they can’t make a meeting on time, worry about their ability to execute anything well.
4. Factors outside their control. Traffic, emergencies, etc… but given one should aim to be early to ensure punctuality, this should be rare.
Thus, I avoid working, or even developing friendships, with people that are regularly late.
And being late for a first meeting is very bad sign.
When we agree 3pm, it needs to be 3pm…

It’s often interesting to observe the clash of cultures when IST (Indian Stretchable Time) meets the West.