How irritating is it when the phone rings while you are in the middle of an important meeting?

I had just landed in London after a near sleepless night and was in the middle of some serious discussions with the Board when the table vibrated slightly. Everybody glanced at their phones or fished them out of their pockets. I noticed that it was my phone and it said “No Caller Id”. Well, one more of those scam calls, I concluded. Pressed the power button to cancel the call, looked at the beautiful River Thames in front and proceeded with my spiel.

Within 5 seconds, the phone rang again. With “No Caller Id”. Fairly persistent fraudster. Canceled it yet again.

And sure enough, they called up yet again. For a moment, I had a doubt that Sharmila or the daughters might be trying to get hold of me. Excused myself and picked up the phone.

“This is Alpharetta Police Department. Am I talking to Rajib Roy?”

This was TROUBLE.

“Let me take this. It is urgent”, I told the Board members as I ran out of the room, fearing some real bad news. Visions of one of the three in an accident is what kept flashing in my mind.

“This is Rajib Roy speaking. What is going on?”

“Your car is parked in an illegal spot. You need to move it now or we will have it towed.”

That was confusing. My car is at the airport. It is in a reserved parking spot. There is no way my car is anywhere near Alpharetta.

“Where is the car?”

“On Highway 9. In front of Smokejack. We have signs all over not to park anywhere on the road due to downtown events”.

“Officer, I am in London right now. I suspect that is my wife’s doing. Let me call her”

So, I called Sharmila and sure enough she and Nikita were out and about and had the car parked where it should not have been.

I went back to the room and within a minute there was a message from Nikita that they had moved the car to a proper place.

Late in the evening after all meetings, I called up Sharmila to find out what had happened.

She explained that there indeed was a sign not to park. They saw it. It said Oct 15.

“Well, why were they disallowing cars to be parked there today? It is Oct 13th today.”

She explained herself.

Unfortunately, my phone had said “No Caller Id”. If I knew the number, I was so going to call back Alpharetta Police Department and let them know that somebody thinks it is all their fault. The “From” date should not have been written in smaller font than the “To” date!