This morning me and my coworkers were right on schedule to reach office on time and we were actually pretty happy about it, when suddenly just 10 minutes away from office we found ourselves in the middle of a traffic congestion. It was on 6-lane wide newly upgraded Emirates Road just before the Dubailand intersection. The reason for the clog was a traffic accident, and we ended up reaching office half an hour late.
I know there is nothing unusual about the above incident as it is a everyday story of people getting late in Dubai traffic and missing flights, deadlines, meetings, and what not.
What’s ironic is that you cannot plan for it. There is only so much margin you can leave when scheduling.
Here is the catch. It takes 45 minutes in normal traffic load for me to reach work from home. If I leave 15 minutes margin for overloaded traffic I can manage to reach office at 9 if I leave at 8. In this case I will be late if the highway is blocked due to an accident for extended duration (as happened this morning). But if I leave 30 minutes margin and leave at 745, I am more likely to reach office by 830, which is too early. I don’t love my job that much to come to work 30 minutes before official time. And waking up 30 minutes earlier than usual is not something that excites me a lot.
So I guess the only option is to make the assumption that traffic will be normal and leave 45 minutes before. If got late just tell the boss it was traffic.
lol