I may have already mentioned this, but half of my team is in
Noida (India). This means that,
depending upon whether or not we are currently observing Daylight Savings Time
in the U.S., we are either 13 ½ or 12 ½ hours behind them. This has caused some issues as far as our
team meetings and work/life balance are concerned. I had a co-worker in India who didn’t see his
son for four days because of odd meeting hours.
This is not acceptable to me. In
order to solve this problem, I drove a decision that we would alter our meeting
times per quarter. One quarter they
would be evening time US/morning time Noida.
Then vice versa the next quarter, rinse, repeat. This was to ensure that A: All meetings were
happening during one inconvenient time slot rather than alternating from early morning
to late evening in one week B: Everyone
had to feel the pain of having meetings at sucky hours rather than focusing
this on one Geography and C: Reiterating the fact that meetings are not free
and we should try extra hard to respect each other’s time and make sure they
are necessary before scheduling.
This seemed like a really good idea at the time.*
It is our quarter to have evening time meetings. Currently, my evening meeting schedule is as
follows:
- Mondays: 7:00 – 9:00 PM
- Tuesdays: 7:30 – 9:00 PM
- Wednesdays: 7:30 – 8:30 PM
- Thursdays: Nothing standing, but I have had meetings from 7-9 PM pop up the past three weeks in a row.
This means that, during my quarters on, I am lucky if I get
to have dinner with my McMen much less anyone else that I happen to love. I have grown accustomed to some serious
snuggle time with Mr. Joel and it was pretty obvious a couple of weeks into
this new schedule that I wasn’t going to get that. Joel decided to be proactive and help solve
this problem for us, so he introduced Monday Night Date Night about four weeks
ago.
On Monday nights at 9:00 PM sharp, we stop whatever we are
doing and go into our bedroom for date night.
Stay with me, I promise that this isn’t going to get weird. We pick out a movie before hand, we snuggle
on our oversized bed with our overly stinky dog and we watch a movie
together. Sometimes we talk through it,
sometimes we heckle it, sometimes we just watch in silence. The important part is the cuddling. It sounds simple, but it is really one of the
best things ever.
Last evening I had this conversation with Riley…
Me: *gives big sloppy
kiss to the head* Goodnight sweetie, I love you. See you in the morning.
Ri: I love you too. Why are you going
to bed? It’s only 9:00 PM.
Me: Because it is
Monday Night Date Night and I am going to bed with your father.
Ri: When did this
tradition start?
Me: Three weeks ago.
Ri: Why am I not
invited?
Me: Because it is
weird for teenage boys to cuddle in bed with their parents.
Ri: Is the dog
invited?
Me: She is a dog and not a teenage boy.
Ri: Is the dog
invited?
We have fun.
Anyway,
when I got up this morning I was still all happy and sufficiently snuggled from
watching Men in Black with the hubby.
*I still think it was the right thing to do, I’m just
whining because reality is reality and sometimes it sucks even with the best of
intentions.
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