The saga of reaching office late

I am absolutely sick and tired of being late to work and even though I am late only by 5 to 10 minutes, it sucks as much when you have to report your in time daily. Or rather it sucks even more if you are late only by 5-10 minutes because while in your own head that hardly constitutes as being late, for your senior all that matters is whether you are in time or not and not by what time are you not in time.

First Saturdays are working for me and today is that Saturday of the month. The entire week has been immensely hectic work wise but I am happy that I have been able to cope up with the stress (caused by unreasonable deadlines) successfully. In fact I managed to wrap up some stuff before the timeline, of course by burning the midnight oil. I don't know why though! It's a disorder that I have no control over. I had the urge to knock it off last night in the hope of a peaceful weekend and so I did. And I am happy I did that. What I am not happy about is that I reached office at 9:38 am. Exactly 8 minutes late and as soon as I called the Delhi office to report my log in time (yes I have to do it every single day. Feel free to feel lucky if you don't have to.), I hear the voice that I detest the most from the other end- you are late today? Well, someone please PLEASE for crying out loud tell me, how do you respond to that! I mean isn't it obvious I am late when I have already given him my in time as 9:38 but no apparently some people hate numbers so much that they don't understand numbers verbally either! That apart, I cleared my throat to say "yes I am slightly late" and just when I thought the worst was over, I hear "how come" from the other end. This is when the person talking to you is not even your partner, it is his irritating EA for the record. If only I knew how come, I wouldn't be coming in late by 5 minutes so often I thought to myself. I wanted to scream out loud that it's most certainly not to hear him for longer on phone first thing in the morning! I was obviously caught off guard by that question and so my instant response was "it's raining outside and I couldn't find my umbrella". As ridiculous as it may sound I have to admit that I said that.

I am told that he sends out an email listing everyone's in time to the Partners daily with reasons for being late. Believe it or not, my concern is this- will he be writing this against my name today- "log in time - 9:38 am; she was late to office because she couldn't find her umbrella."

No seriously, now that would be hilarious!