More than 10 mins early:
Congratulate yourself on this rare accomplishment. Play it cool and walk around the block again. You don’t want to look too eager.
On time:
Use this opportunity to point out to others that you aren’t always late. It’s important to earn as many brownie points as you can before your next inevitably late encounter. Resist any urges to brag or shame others. Saying “Who’s the late one now?” will only hurt you in the long run.
5 – 15 minutes late:
A quick apology for your tardiness is needed upon approaching the group. Unless you’re meeting with monsters they’ll be understanding. Shit happens. In fact, shit happens so often to you in particular that this is actually not even that late in your eyes.
15 – 30 minutes late:
In addition to an apology, you now owe the group a plausible excuse for your lateness. Keeping the excuse short and vague usually works best. For example, an often used classic is simply saying “Sorry guys, traffic.” Everyone will probably know that you’re lying since they took the exact same road and arrived on time, but it’s just plausible enough.
30 – 60 minutes late:
You now owe the group a detailed and entertaining excuse for your lateness. My personal favourite is admitting you lost track of time as you were having sex. It’s an excuse that’s embarrassing enough to avoid suspicion of it being fake while providing multiple opportunities for humorous and entertaining banter that will definitely distract everyone from your lateness.
60+ minutes late (if you’re a good person):
Reevaluate all of the circumstances that have brought you to this point in life. You need help and the first step in solving the problem is admitting you have a problem.
60+ minutes late (if you’ve given up on being a good person):
Stroll in confidently and insist that everyone else in the group got the time wrong. The meeting was scheduled for 11:07 not 10:00. If there’s anything that you’ve learned from movies, it’s that ideas that are “so crazy they just might work” always work. Also, this approach seems to be working really well for Donald Trump, so you might as well give it a shot.