As promised, I begin my short but totally weird stories of my life at work in Delhi. I work for my client, an American Telecommunications company. We are setting up a Cellular network for our customer, the Government Telecom Operator in Delhi (don't want the name to pop up in searches so let me give it a fictitious name, Doorsanchar).
A couple of months back, I was asked to get some work done in one of Doorsanchar's sites and complete it as soon as possible. Being from an environment where work starts at 8:30am and goes on till late evening, I had planned on getting to work a notch early. Since Doorsanchar's working hours (as stated in their employement policies) is from 9:30am to 6pm, I decided on getting there at around 9:15am and working on my task till a little after 6:30pm.
I managed to get to the Metro station on time and after a 35 min ride on the Blue Line of DMRC, I was finally at the site. After a quick breakfast at a local store I was at the gate of the site. The security was standing up in front of me and stopped me there.
Guard: Who are you and why are you here?
Me: Sir, I'm here for the new project on the 4th floor. Here's my gate pass for today.
After a long glance at the paper stuffed with 7 signatures and some horrible writing by some Doorsanchar Officer, he stared back at me......his pan clad teeth almost got me nauseous but I managed to keep a straight face.
Guard: Oh but you are early. The office opens only at 9:30, come back later.
With a confused face, I looked at my watch...the whole discussion had apparently taken over ten minutes and it was now 9:27am.
Me: Sir, it is 9:30 already. Take a look at my watch.
Guard: No it is 9:27, come back after 3 minutes!
..........a silence followed and I found my way out and sat down on the pavement, waiting for another 180 seconds to get done with......so much for punctuality!
