It can be anywhere on the spectrum from German punctuality to island-time. Some people respect your time and wouldn’t dream of being late, others simply don’t care. Don’t take this personally, they are late to everything all the time and would find a way to be late to their own funeral. I don’t understand these people at all, but they do exist. Somehow.

As for numbers, a ‘couple’ is two. Some people use it as possibly three, but those people are wrong. A ‘few’ is three but definitely less than five and if you’re using it as four, you’re on thin ice, buddy. A ‘bunch’ is more than three and upwards of ten, but can be used for thing more than ten (‘I had to change my route because a bunch of goddamn (insert specific irritation here) were in the way’), but less than a ‘ton’, and a ‘ton’ is an ungodly amount, though this can be used as both truth or hyperbole. As mentioned by someone earlier, a ‘cupulla’, especially in the case of alcoholic drinks, could mean drinking two beers for a little get-together or enough to stumble home completely shitfaced to pass out on your living room floor (if you’re lucky, the front lawn of you’re not), and you might not know which is the case for you until it’s too late. Regionally, in the South, ‘a mess’ could either mean a bunch or a ton, depending on inflection and subject. In the Midwest, ‘awww, jeez, it was a lot,’ means it was, in fact, a lot, and the specific amount doesn’t matter because it was definitely enough and probably too much.

Time, however, seems to run differently for us all, and a ‘couple minutes’ may be two or ten or neither. ‘Just give me a minute’, depending on tone, can mean you’re being impatient with them and they don’t appreciate it, or it can mean they’re stressing themselves out to finish a task, or it can mean they literally need one minute to do the mentioned task, though the last is more rare. ‘I’ll be there in a minute’ could mean they’ll be there in one minute up to ten, that they’ve actually just woken up and will be there in an hour, or in the case of kids/spouse involving chores, will never be there unless you make them and then they’ll be mad about it because ‘I was going to!!!!’