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Comment by michaelt | Hacker News Reader

> If your adult partner works late a lot, then you should not worry when your adult partner is coming late.

Not worrying is all very well, but imagine the family dinner starts cooking at 6pm, is ready to eat at 6:30pm, and has gone cold by 6:45pm. And imagine this timing works fine 9 days out of 10.

It's reasonable for whoever is doing the cooking to want to know - ideally at 6pm and certainly at 6:30pm - whether their partner is on time, running 5 minutes late, or running an hour late.

> Healthy relationships do not require "ceding authority over own schedule"

People do that all the time - A person who has promised their partner they'll get home by 6:30pm every evening for dinner has ceded control over their schedule. Nothing unusual about that.

> I would seen that as a red flag and sign of controlling personality.

A partner who will have dinner ready when you get home from work doesn't seem like a red flag to me.

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In your situation, I would simply start to eat along with children, because they are hungry and have bed time. Even if you called, you cant reasonably expect everyone to wait for you with dinner for an hour. I would also expect the partner to let me know in advance, but if he is forgetful we would either eat or call.

> People do that all the time - A person who has promised their partner they'll get home by 6:30pm every evening for dinner has ceded control over their schedule. Nothing unusual about that.

I was literally reacting to parent who said this: "you could accomplish the same thing by reliably leaving work at the same time every day - but some would say ceding authority over your own schedule is a greater indignity than ceding privacy over your current location."

In any case, promising something is not ceding authority by any reasonable definition. Parent claimed that having partners location all the time is necessary to avoid "ceding authority over schedule". Theory was his, not mind

> A partner who will have dinner ready when you get home from work doesn't seem like a red flag to me.

When that requires constant location tracking, then it is red flag. If your schedule have you coming in within an hour long span, I find it odd to organize the dinner so that it is done exactly wherever you come it. I would expect the dinner be more regular, at the time when you are usually already at home.

You guys are kind of getting beat up with the votes, but if it makes you feel better, I too find OP’s use cases pretty unusual and over the top. I always thought the FindMy and location sharing features were meant to be for emergencies. This regularly occurring, casual tracking of an adult partner’s precise GPS location seems pretty creepy to me, too.

Like I've said previously, my wife is a pet sitter and has been bitten. It's good to know where she is so if the situation ever happens again, I can find her.

The geolocation thing for me was purely so I could get dinner ready for the both of us in time since we like to eat together.

Have you never got so engrossed in a conversation or activity with a colleague or friend that you lose track of time and forget to tell your SO you're going to be late?

If it takes me 45 minutes to get home is it really that crazy that I might want my SO to be able to have dinner rather than awkwardly (and hungrily!) wait for me?

The approach I went down was something with home automation and geo-fencing to trigger a notification if I was still at work like an hour after I was supposed to leave, but it's the same use cases.

No, because I have to take kids out of preschool/school and if I an not in time, they call social services.

Before kids, I was coming home randomly and it was not big deal. I did not expected husband to have dinner exactly when I come or wait for me if I am late for random reasons. If I found I was about to be late when he might wait, I would call or he would call.

Frankly, you all have either super tolerant spouses willing to time dinner too you exact moments, or controlling spouses using dinner to keep check on you. But the relationships that come up in this discussion do not strike me as usual at all.

The difference between you setting up notifications based on your location and geofencing your partner is vast.

I don't have kids and like to eat at the same time as my wife as I'm sure many other couples do, this is why we like to have it ready for when they arrive.

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