driving time
March 25th, 2002Yesterday afternoon, I sent my boss this email:
I moved out of my apartment and into another about 15 minutes away this weekend. I'm not quite sure how long it will take me to get to work during traffic this way, so I am going to estimate. If I estimate wrong, I may be a little late. I will call you tomorrow morning if I am going to be, I just wanted to warn you ahead of time.
When I got into work this morning, I had this reply from him:
Wouldn't it be better to leave 30 minutes early and run the risk of being early than to estimate wrong and be late?
I responded with this:
That's exactly what I did. Only, I still wasn't sure. I have only heard horror stories about driving on 635 during morning rush hour, and couldn't be certain that I would make it here on time. So, based on how far away it is from work (17.6 miles) I left assuming I would average about 30mph (standard rush hour traffic speeds) and doubled the amount of time it would take me, just to be safe. That worked out to just over an hour… so I left an hour before I had to be here. It ended up taking me 31 minutes to get here and I averaged about 35mph, so I got here 27 minutes early.
I'm not sure if traffic was light this morning due to whatever reason, or if this is the way it will be every morning. I guess we'll find out tomorrow. One thing is for certain… it doesn't take nearly as long to get here from this place, as it did from my old place, even though my old place was closer, distance-wise. I was leaving at about 7:45am every morning and not getting here until just before 8:30am, provided there were no accidents.
After he read this, being only two cubicles away from me, he stood up and said, "Dan, all I wanted was a 'probably'" laughing in between each word. "I was looking for the liberal arts answer and you gave me the programmers answer. I'm putting this in my favorites."
I guess this is just further proof that, even after managing me for over three years now, he still doesn't understand me at all.
