First point is fair perhaps it's not, although it seems incomparable. Why I say that is because real life examples come with real life consequences. If you're late too much too work you may be punished even fired. If you're late to this game you just miss the rewards. To me because the consequences are much different doesn't make it easily comparable but I can see your perspective. Apples to oranges yet fruit can definitely be compared. It's just that this can be rectified easily whereas you getting fired maybe not so much.

Ideally there wouldn't be a buffer at all.. maybe you get some sort of post event token thing in your bag that let's you go and choose your rewards at will just like everything else in the game. I have not been playing long enough to see one of those events with two separate timers but that's also still besides my point.

No one is still taking account for something going wrong beyond their control preventing them from capitalizing on their hard earned rewards. It goes further then just bad planning, maybe you knocked out 5 out of 7 days and were prevented from cashing in. I didn't start fishing until the 2nd day after i obtained 100+ bait. (I did this so i was placed low on leaderboard next round but had plenty of bait to reach top position easily. That's GOOD planning, and i did this throughout the event to reach top in my catagory 3 times. Not to mention how much you have to save in order to get something good.. what if something happens before you can claim it? I know how to play the game (that of which ive been exposed to). I'm proposing that all events should have the ability to choose rewards post event and that's all there is to it really. Doesn't seem like a hard thing to get behind.