You're only late if you're not on time

I have a punctuality problem. Not anything in a real sense, it's just that in this business, if you're five minutes early, you're still ten minutes late.

The head of this site, a tall and gruff and very freaking intimidating man, tends to arrive for work around 4:30 a.m. Come in after that, and you've essentially shamed God.

The work day for most personnel begins at six in the morning. I, however, don't come in until eight because I supervise a crew that starts work then. I catch flak from everyone when I stroll in then because I wasn't there early. I don't try bother arguing that I work later then everyone else because construction workers don't understand the concept of same.

No matter what my start time is though, I can't ever seem to make it there on time.

Now I don't see anything wrong with behind 15 minutes late when you're working an 11 hour day, but apparently that's not the case. Luckily for me, there's a back door to the site that leads straight to an elevator, so I can usually get in without anyone seeing and thus knowing that heaven forbid, the site was unsupervised today for the first 13 minutes. Unsupervised save for the 20 other guys our company has out here.

My system usually works pretty well, except for well you know, when it doesn't. Running 20 minutes behind today, I made it through the doors and to the elevator unseen. But of course, who do you think was standing in the elevator lobby when the doors opened on the sixth floor. No one but the head of the project himself, fours hours deep into his workday.

And unfortunately, it's pretty hard to convince him you've been here for the past 20 minutes when you're still in your jacket, have a cup of coffee in your hand and your laptop bag still slung over your shoulder.

It might be a long week.