Just ask for leave

There are days when all of us feel like bunking office. As Delhi slowly simmers, it requires a steely resolve even for the most motivated among us to haul ourselves out of air-conditioned comfort and get to work. If you happen to be working with a young team, you8217;ll find a mind-bogglingly hilarious range of excuses that twentysomethings can come up with to avoid work. I suppose they could be true but I have a hard time keeping a straight face and expressing sympathy.

Like recently, a 21-year-old on my team told me her sister8217;s husband got hit by a golf ball in the eye and has gone partially blind. So, of course, she couldn8217;t make it to work. One reporter weirdly enough had a nerve problem only in her right hand, so she couldn8217;t type for weeks on end. Another had some mysterious illness stalking her family. In my opinion, the simplest excuses work the best. Like when a reporter told me she didn8217;t have electricity all night and was too spaced out to put in a hard day8217;s work. That, I definitely believe.

However, most of us have had incorrigible bosses at some stage and we8217;ve been forced to lie to get leave. At my previous job when I was desperate for some time off and my leave wasn8217;t getting sanctioned, I succumbed to killing off a grandparent as well. I might have felt the tiniest pang of guilt, but logic prevailed: he was dead anyway. My husband, a lot more God-fearing and superstitious than I am, was appalled. My other set of grandparents, very much alive even now, had a hearty chuckle. But the last laugh was eventually on me. After a sunny week by the beach in Goa, I came back to Delhi and had a nasty bout of malaria. Then I totalled my car and narrowly escaped with my life. A week later, I broke my ankle. All the while I had to put up with my husband8217;s infuriating smirk and murmurs about poetic justice.

Logic and common sense, indeed! I8217;m convinced somebody up there was trying to teach me a lesson. Now, if I want leave, I offer no excuses. I simply ask for it.