On Time Archives - understand-culture

No Penalty for Late Work

Some American schools no longer take points off for late work. In 2022 the Associated Press reported on a teacher at Wilcox High School in Santa Clara, California, who “stopped giving zeros and deducting points for late work.” Schools from California to Virginia were trying such changes, often called equitable grading.

Some teachers pushed back and said the changes lowered expectations. In San Diego the teachers union filed a grievance. Julia Knoff, a government and economics teacher there, said: “I have a job and I have a boss and requirements.”

In a fall 2024 survey of 967 teachers for the Fordham Institute, about half said their school or district had adopted at least one of five such policies. No penalty for late work was one of them.

The Joke of the Summer

In May 1997 the release of James Cameron’s Titanic was moved from July 2 to December 19. A Fox executive said “there’s not enough time for him to finish the movie the way he wants to see the movie on the screen.”

When the film opened, Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote: “Delayed release and outrageous costs made ‘Titanic’ the joke of the summer. Now it’s the movie of the year.”

Five Days Behind After Six Days

United Artists gave the director Michael Cimino $12.5 million to have his western Heaven’s Gate ready for release by Christmas 1979. According to Steven Bach, the studio executive who oversaw the film, Cimino was five days behind schedule after six days of shooting. After two weeks he was ten days behind, with three minutes of usable film.

The film came out in 1980, nearly a year behind schedule. It cost United Artists $44 million. After its wide release it earned $3.5 million. The studio was then sold to MGM. Bach told the story in his book Final Cut.

Dewey Defeats Truman

On election night in 1948, the first edition of the Chicago Tribune went to press with the headline “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.” Harry Truman won. On November 4 he held up a copy at St. Louis Union Station. The photograph became famous.

The printers who ran the Tribune’s typesetting machines had been on strike. The paper’s substitute method forced it “to go to press several hours earlier than had been usual,” before most states had reported results. About 150,000 copies were printed before the headline was corrected.

Because It’s 11:30

In her 2011 book Bossypants, Tina Fey lists the things she learned from Lorne Michaels, the creator of Saturday Night Live. One is that the show does not go on because it is ready. It goes on because it is 11:30.

In 2026, discussing a documentary about Michaels, the NPR host A Martínez repeated the rule: “He says the show doesn’t go on because it’s ready. It goes on because it’s 11:30.”

What I Need Is a Deadline

“I don’t need time,” Duke Ellington liked to say. “What I need is a deadline!” His biographer Terry Teachout gives the line in Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington.

Teachout calls Ellington “the most chronic of procrastinators.” In Teachout’s book, the only thing harder than getting him out of bed in the afternoon “was getting him to finish writing a new piece of music in time for the premiere.”

Longer Than We Thought

In June 2024 Apple showed a more personal version of Siri at its developer event. Ads for the iPhone 16, launched that September, promoted the new features. In March 2025 Apple said: “It’s going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features.” It pulled an ad starring the actor Bella Ramsey.

Buyers sued for false advertising. One suit said the phones offered “a significantly limited or entirely absent version of Apple Intelligence.” Apple agreed to pay $250 million to settle a class action over the delayed features, pending court approval. Apple maintains that it did nothing wrong.

One Day at a Time

“How does a project get to be a year late?. . . . One day at a time.” This question and answer begin the text of a chapter in Fred Brooks’s book The Mythical Man-Month. Usually, he writes, “the disaster is due to termites, not tornadoes.”

Brooks based the book on his experience managing the development of OS/360, an operating system at IBM. It was first published in 1975. Its best-known rule is also about lateness: “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.”

143 Days

In 1943 the War Department gave Lockheed 150 days to design and build a jet fighter. Chief engineer Kelly Johnson’s team delivered the XP-80 prototype in 143 days. Lockheed Martin still tells the story as “seven days ahead of schedule.” The XP-80 first flew on January 8, 1944.

Johnson’s team became known as the Skunk Works. Later, Johnson won the contract for the U-2 spy plane “by promising to deliver the aircraft in just eight months.”

Eighty Percent On Time

In November 2020 the Federal Railroad Administration set a minimum standard for Amtrak trains. The standard is 80 percent on time “for any two consecutive calendar quarters.”

When a train gets fewer than 80 percent of its passengers there on time for two quarters in a row, a complaint can go to the Surface Transportation Board. In July 2023, after a complaint from Amtrak, the Board opened an investigation into the Sunset Limited. This is Amtrak’s train between New Orleans and Los Angeles.

The Board first decides whether the delays came from a railroad that failed to give Amtrak priority over freight, as the law requires. A second phase can then look at possible damages.