Bus journeys are very tedious you know, especially when it is to the office on a Monday morning as early as 7:45. I am an unfortunate part of the very few people in my office who have to depend on the transportation provided by my office to reach workplace – please take special note (with sympathy, of course!!) that I reach there way ahead of my office hours that start at 8:30, just to find no one there except for another 2 poor souls, who, in the name of a morning production support On-call, run here and there to fix the abended jobs.
My morning bus journey, it’s a 25-minute, 15 km long travel from home on the NH (we term that ‘long’ as long as we are in trivandrum; the same was a short one when in Chennai where I was traveling 22 kms.. :-D ), where you find not much of activities at this time of the day; so the entire road is all deserted and bears a gloomy look adding more to the agony of getting to office so early, while most of my colleagues would still be sleeping. Most of them reach there only by 10:30, and get the benefit of the so called “flexi-timing work culture”. Hey, one moment plsss…, hmm.. what’s that?? Did I hear something interesting??? It’s nothing but aping some so-called-technical terms from the western culture, and uttering it every now and then you reach office late, mostly because you slept off a little too much after boozing all night – weekdays too are no exception to this, leave alone the Mondays after the weekend bash!! Haha.. just see how we take things to our advantage.. we are a real bundle of brains always @ work man!!
I would rather term this as unpunctuality, irresponsibilty, arrogance and shear negligence of work, unethical, valueless and cultureless, if I were to put myself in the shoes of my manager, but “No, Thanks”, I don’t want to do that, atleast on Monday mornings, plssssss…
Monday mornings – after having enjoyed the weekends, it does take some time to console myself and get started off. Uffff… client mails, onsite hues and cries, project lead already ready with my work for the day.. how do I get this all delayed.. reach there late.. gud idea… This is one day I don’t mind missing my morning bus, and going to office on my pulsar (it’s actually a 60 cc green Scotty, ‘99 model, that still struggles, but yet gives me company ;-P ). Well it’s simply so that I get in there when the work has already started in full swing, so that there is hardly anyone to notice my grand (late) arrival… later I can always say “I was there long back, it’s just that you were a little too involved in your work that you didn’t notice me!!” (sweet grin follows as usual – either of us know what has really happened, and after all this is what he is going to tell me the next Monday)
You know one thing, by getting there late, any urgent work is always passed on to an already existing workaholic (we call him our scapegoat), who slogs all thru the day and into the night to get it all done.. and I guide him with all my expert advice (as long as I am there)
Settle down, check the mails, time for morning tea… get back to discuss the Anil Kumble form at Oval, Sanjay Dutt’s bail grant plea, salary hikes in other companies, and the rest of the newspaper.. time for lunch…. Forward all mails that has come in for the day.. oh, did I miss the evening tea…. Sipping through the free tea we get, still blaming its poor quality… And slowly strolling back to our workplaces…. Finally it’s 4:30 and time for some serious project discussions, after all that’s what I went for in the morning you see.. (grin), else none would know how much I’ve been working all day!!!
The outlook sends me the reminder I set… Oops, it 5:55 PM now, and the bus is at 6:00... “Bye Renjith, bye Anu, bye-bye… see you tomorrow...” . I take my pulsar, and off i leave, after a hectic day's work...
Statutory Warning: Strictly following this might be harmful. This trick won’t work everywhere and every time. Be ready for an answer if it backfires.
