Flakes and Flakiness
The only good flake is a corn flake.
It’s safe to say that everyone in college has had experience with a flaky person. Chances are, if you’re a college student, you’ve probably flaked on someone yourself (I hope not, though).
So what is “flaking,” exactly? According to urban dictionary, flaking is “bailing out of something at the last minute.” In other words, a person flakes when he/she has made an agreement to do something with another person on a specific time and day but either: i) gives short notice on a schedule change or ii) just forgets about the event and doesn’t show up.
The latter case is rarer and isn’t important because it’s just stupid. If a person can’t remember events he (or she) plans, there is no foundation to schedule things with him (or her). Forget it. The first case is more interesting. First, what is “short notice”? Everyone has a different definition, but I will pose that “short notice” is less than 1 day of notice.
Yes, people will make plans and then change them with less than a day’s notice (for various reasons). If you are one of these short-notice flakes, STOP.
Of course there are some justifiable reasons to change plans on short notice. If an emergency, illness, or some amazing opportunity (like being invited to a Barack Obama’s house to watch the World Cup, followed by mini-golf with Steve Jobs) comes up, fine. But for normal everyday occurrences, there are few reasons to switch one plan for another at the last minute.
What if Event B (just came up) is relatively more important or more fun than Event A (originally planned a week ago)? Well, the course of action depends on your values. If you don’t mind the fact that rescheduling Event A will (probably) negatively affect others’ schedules, then go for it! If you evaluate B and realize that sticking to your plans with Event A is better than switching to B, then stick with A. Your friends will probably appreciate the latter course of action.
Whenever you schedule something, you block out a chunk of time. By scheduling things with other people, they block out the same chunk of time on their schedules. In the meantime they are likely to stumble upon many events, gatherings, movies, etc. that could have occupied that chunk of time. Sticking to the schedule, however, your friends will keep that chunk of time scheduled for you. “Ah sorry that movie sounds great, but I already have plans to get dinner with such-and-such so I can’t make it,” your friends will say to their peers.
If you flake on a person, you can deal a lot of “time damage” if the event was dependent on you (i.e. a get-together at your house, a dinner date, etc.). First, that chunk of time has now been freed up in others’ schedules now that you flaked. Depending on how short notice the schedule change is, it may be difficult to reallocate that newly available time in a useful way.
I once got a phone call a half hour before a scheduled meet up saying that we had to raincheck (the reason for the raincheck wasn’t even that good). Suddenly, I found myself with three hours opened up on a Sunday afternoon. I’ve always got a zillion books to read, so finding a use for three hours is not too hard for me. Reading books on a Sunday afternoon isn’t my favorite use of Sunday, though. I could have scheduled a movie with friends, planned a trip to San Francisco, etc. for that time chunk. With less than a half hour of time to react, planning something like this is out of the question.
There are many things you can do to combat time damage from flakes. The first thing to do is to make sure you schedule things with people who are actually excited about the event. For example if you’re a guy (switch the genders if you’re a girl) and you want to schedule a coffee date with a girl, make sure she really (and I mean really) wants to meet up for coffee with you. This is a complicated task and isn’t easy to explain in a short post, but basically you need to trust your gut.
If you ask, “Hey let’s get coffee on Friday. Are you free at 7 pm?” and she checks her schedule and says, “Sure coffee at 7 sounds good, but I might be busy then so I’ll give you a call that afternoon to let you know if I can make it” then my friend, you have a high chance of getting flaked on. I would not even call this an instance of flaking because the event hasn’t been completely scheduled yet. A “Yes I can do A on the condition that B doesn’t happen” is NOT an agreement to schedule something. If you get this response from someone, ask for a better time when she will not be busy and get it “hard scheduled.”
Soft scheduling: Sure, let’s meet up for lunch next week.
Hard scheduling: Let’s meet up for lunch next Tuesday at 1 PM, at X restaurant.
Time is valuable. This is why people flake in the first place –they find other more valuable uses of the time. If we all appreciate that other people value their time, however, I think flaking will become rarer and rarer (this assumes that people care about how they directly affect other people). After all, flaking sends the message: “I’m going to go do something more valuable with my time. Your time isn’t that important to me, sorry.” Do we really want to send that message to people?
Also if you flake on people today, you make it more likely for others to flake on you tomorrow. Respect others’ time, and others will respect your time.
If someone flakes on you or does an unreasonably short notice schedule change, voice yourself. Let ‘em know you don’t appreciate it –or do like they do in business: don’t plan future business with that person. Find other friends!
Tags: college, flakes, flakiness
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.
