Who killed 9 AM?

People who are unfortunate enough to visit by this blog would know about the punctuality of gilsbert and how comfortable and dependable he is in keeping up on time, which has been explained in no less than several thousand words across so many posts. It so happened one day that, despite all his reluctance, he had to set up a call early in the day, to catch up on the tasks to be done, before the clients came barging in the evening.

After much deliberation, it was decided to be scheduled at 9 AM. Much to his surprise, there were hardly any takers for the call. The responses for rejection were more on the lines of  "i would be on commute and hence tentative" or more simply since they left late yesterday, joining a call at 9 was simply out of question for those invited. Not one of them mentioned that they had a conflict with another call at that time, which usually would be the standard response for rejection. And when he checked their calendars before setting the call, the 9 to 10 window was the only available free slot across all of them.

There are quite a lot of people, be onsite or offshore, who doesn't bat an eyelid when it comes to taking calls at odd hours in the morning. Probably the only reason being they can take it from home. But 9 AM is cursed in that aspect that if you take the call from home, you would be much delayed for work and if you've to take it from office, you've to be in really early!!  The risk of taking such calls on commute varies from external disturbances to signal loss.

Coming back to the topic, is the concept of 9 AM really practical in current day scenario? Did any one question how long did they play the previous evening or how late into the night they stayed awake studying (!!??) and hence couldn't be on time for school? Does anyone pray excuse and ask any train or flight to wait since they were held up on traffic or request for a rerun of those scenes missed while going for movies? Then why the same sense of importance is not assigned to in-time for offices? Coming from some one who is titled "late" even when alive, these questions are not mere rhetorical but rather practical. And these would be very questions posted by any corporate management to insist on the perfect in-time.

They are not much wrong in their genuine query, except that the answer for it lies on the other side of the day. How concerned those very people, who raise these questions, are on the out time for the employees? What effort do they take to ensure people leave on time? how many managers can cross their heart and say they don't set up meetings after 6? In this cut throat competitive world, where you blink and miss business and with the pay lords sitting on other side of the planet, is it logical to shut shop at 6?

Nayagan dialog thaan nyabagam varuthu - "mudhalla avangala nirutha sollu..aprum naan nirutharen" !!!