Y'all need to have this conversation when you're not mad.
Dear Prudence,
My in-laws are chronically late. Not a single one seems to be able to set an alarm, read a clock, or get ready on time. It makes vacationing with them impossible, even when we rent a house. Even if I am the one planning ahead and making the reservations, it is a coin flip if we make it or not. Over Labor Day, we didn’t manage to make a single one—the girls were still doing their hair, my father in law thinks traffic will not be bad, and the rest of them can’t understand that restaurants will not hold tables for them. We ended up driving around and trying to find a place that wasn’t packed to the gills and could seat twelve people. I am completely fed up and told my wife I would never be going on another trip with them again.
My job doesn’t give me much vacation, and I am not wasting it on people who can’t even bother with the most minimal respect. My wife argues that is just how her family is and I retorted that they make it to school and work on time, but when I say it is time to leave, they argue and ignore me. We can visit them at their homes where we can at least make sandwiches in peace. My wife says this isn’t fair. I feel she is being unfair to me by not standing up to them.
—Not Even an Early Bird
Re: Y'all need to have this conversation when you're not mad.
I have heard over and over again "this is how they are" and yet I have the same feeling as the LW: If you can manage to get to your job/school on time then it's not a question of your ability to understand a clock: it's your inability to be courteous to those who have stated timing.
Is there a compromise? Could you agree to go to a destination separately and do your own things? Can you go to places that don't take reservations to help reduce the time that you aren't stuck running around?
But the ultimate answer is that you need to convey to your wife that you understand that people won't change but why does that mean that you owe them one of your few weeks of time off from work only to exchange it for more stress?
Then stick to those boundaries. Because I guarantee that the ILs aren't going to do anything differently until there are consequences and they are left in the empty driveway with their mouths hanging open.
But on the trips they do take, LW should agree to, like, one dinner and then tell their wife they want to make their own plans for any other outings, especially if there need to be reservations. I think it's a fair compromise.
I find big group vacations where everyone has to do the same thing all the time highly annoying. I'm definitely 'team LW', but there has to be compromise on both sides for the sake of harmony in their lives/home.
There was a point in our vacation last month that we took the ferry from our hotel to the theme parks. As we got to the ferry there were about a dozen people who were clearly related. It appeared to be two couples who were siblings, a few young children and two sets of grandparents. Based on their accents they were obviously from NYC and based on the T-shirts, Staten Island. They hit every check box of the stereotype down to the strong Republican tendencies (as one of the older men was loudly panning Biden's Inflation Reduction Act - that's what YOU talk about about on the way to a theme park right??). As we got on the boat, I saw one couple say they were going to walk instead of ride with the rest of the group. I assessed the following and said it to DH as we arrived:
1) "If I ever suggest to vacation in a large group with your family please do me a favor and shoot me."
2) I guarantee you that the people who opted to walk did it so they had 15 minutes without the large group in their ears.
There is no way I could ever travel in a large group and do the same things all the time and still like everyone when we were done.
There was an awesome deli open for breakfast and lunch near where I was living. Huge menu with so many goodies. It was a northern hive! 80% of the people with NYC accents every time I went, lol.
We only travel together every few years, but when we do we either get a place where we make our own meals or we go places that don't need reservations. When it's something H and I want to do, we do not wait. Say dinner reservation is at 6, if they aren't at the restaurant by 6:15, he'll tell the host that it will just be the 2 of us and we'll sit without them.
LW needs to have this conversation when they're calm, but they need to come up with a game plan for some compromises ahead of time.