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| Innocuous household item or ultimate source of terror? |
For this reason, I am very scared of clocking in and out at work. Yes, I am afraid of the clock. Dun dun DUNNNN!
Getting to and leaving work can be a stress fest. I always want to make sure that I get there at least a couple minutes before I'm scheduled to begin and leave at or after my scheduled time.
Yesterday night I was released early, so I left work at ~7:27 pm instead of 8:00 pm. I know because I texted my sister and have a time stamp (and I did this specifically because I knew I would worry about marking my time sheet wrong because of this deviation from the normal schedule).
So when I got home, I naturally marked my time sheet for 7:15 pm. Totally logical!
Why did I cut out those 12 minutes? Maybe because 7:27 is a weird in-between number. For sure because if I texted my sister to say I was done, I wasn't working anymore at that moment. I was texting. So when did the work really stop?
See, I can feel absolutely sure I was still at work at 7:15. And there's nothing better to assuage anxiety than absolutely sure.
What exactly am I worried is going to happen if I get paid for a few extra minutes? I can tell you what I'm not worried about: getting fired, going to jail, going to hell. This isn't a fear of punishment at all: the anxiety just surrounds the idea of being a dishonest person.
Cheating myself to assure that I didn't cheat someone else is something I really need to stop.
But probably not today. Thinking about changing my time card to say 7:27 pm or even 7:20 pm makes my insides cringe.
Today is the tragedy of 12 minutes.
