Clockwatching

Lately I’ve been leaving work early on Fridays because the contract I am assigned to requires me to both track my hours in the office rigorously, down to the tenth of an hour, and to work exactly 40 hours and not a tenth more each week. I usually get in early and work eight hours and change (straight through lunch most days) which means by Friday I’m a couple of hours ahead and thus spring myself from the cube that much sooner. It’s nice, at the very least, to have one day a week to look forward to on which I won’t be battling 5 pm rush hour traffic on I66 to get home.

Today I’m planning on leaving early but there’s slightly more to it than knocking off at mid-afternoon on a Friday. I made an appointment to have some blood drawn for medical tests (purely routine, I assure everyone that nothing is amiss) and in order to make that appointment I need to leave at a specific time. Whereas generally on Fridays I do my thing and when I happen to glance at the clock and realize, “Oh hey, I’ve been here six-point-four hours and I only needed another six-point-three, I should go” and then I’m pretty much out the door. (Also worth noting, in my minutiae-observant definition of the word, is that I’m supposed to have my electronic timesheet filled out by 9 am on Friday, which in theory means I predict how many hours I’m going to be in the office, but in reality means I just enter the digits that will make the weekly total add up to 40.0, and then if there is a discrepancy between how long I sit in my cube and what the time sheet says where I work “too long” I really don’t sweat it.) Because I don’t want to miss my leave-by deadline, I keep checking the clock every minute or so. Which means I’m getting even less done than usual.


It’s been an exhausting month, though, so maybe that’s acceptable. I have a few large, sprawling thoughts I want to get into hereabouts, but they will have to wait until May.

P.S. 200th post! Woohoo!