Watchs wrong ?

There must be something wrong with my watch. How could I explain the fact that despite leaving for office at the same time every day, I find that my office floor is rather full when I arrive as compared to what it was a couple of months back? Even more surprisingly, these days there are more people in office when I pack up and leave at the end of yet another arduous day than what there used to be. Being a stickler for routines, I come and go at the same time every day and this change in office occupancy really did puzzle me.

Was my boss not happy with my work and hence giving me a lighter load? Did I accidentally delete an internal company email saying employees had to put in an additional hour of work? Was there a new policy of getting paid more for spending even more hours in office? Were people spending more time in office to avoid peak hour Bangalore traffic? Were they trying to ease me out by reducing their dependency (whatever little was there) on me?

I had a ton of similar questions that worried me no end. I was fretting, worrying, anxious and tense as I noticed that for the third week in a row I seemed to be the last to arrive and the first to leave. Is it any surprise that I couldnt get a proper night's sleep? As the days passed by, I grew more irritable and short tempered. Slowly people started avoiding me at work and took the longer route around the office floor just to avoid passing my desk. Those were gloomy days indeed.

And then one monday morning, all my fears were put to rest as I read the latest email from our H.R. team. People were giving me second and even third looks as they noticed that I had smiled for the first time in weeks. It even made a few stop in their tracks when they saw me. Suddenly it seemed to me that it wasn't just a monday morning. It was a nice bright sunny monday morning.I took a walk around the office floor exchanging pleasantries with people who hadn't made eye contact with me for days. More than a few of them were surprised to see my smiling face as they looked up from their laptop screens.

I eventually made my way back to my desk and read the subject line of the email again - Appraisal Season is here, time to fill in your goals and objectives. Obviously there was nothing wrong with my watch. Its just that time of the year ......