It's All About Timing

Today's entry comes from the summer of 2008, soon after I had started a new job. Since it was a new job I wanted to make sure that during the first few weeks I tried to maintain a presence of professionalism. Freshly ironed shirts, nice pants, even continuing to wear a nice wrist watch even though it had died a few weeks earlier. The whole nine yards. Everything was going well and this day seemed to be fairly typical as I was sitting in an afternoon meeting. The meeting was running long and was going well beyond the time it was scheduled for. Out of habit I checked my watch to see exactly what time it was. After a moment of confusion after seeing that it was 8:48 A.M. I realized that I was trying to read the time from a dead watch. After trying to indiscreetly hide my watch I returned to listening with no further sense of time. A few minutes passed by and my boss leaned over to me and asked what time it was. It was obvious that he had seen me check my watch in the middle of the meeting and he too was curious to know how long the meeting had been going on for. Out of habit I instinctively checked my wrist again and again I was denied the correct time. My only response I had for him was, "I don't know." That's it. Nothing more. No explanation. "I don't know." From his point of view it must have looked like they had just hired some guy who can't even tell time. My boss gave me this questioning look which seemed to wonder why I wouldn't tell him the time even though I had clearly just checked my watch. It wasn't until well after the meeting that I realized what had transpired and just how inept I must have looked. By the time I had realized it it didn't seem like it was worth explaining why I wanted to keep the current time a secret from all others. My advice, watch out for meeting watch watchers.