December Detour

At SheaHedges Group, a public relations firm near Tysons Galleria, many employees leave at 4 p.m. to get a jump-start on their drive home.

"The office basically shuts down," said Lisa Throckmorton, senior vice president. "It's the difference between a normal commute and sitting in your car for over an hour." This is the first year the firm has allowed the flexible hours for the entire month of December. "Beyond Thanksgiving, Tysons is insane."

Some people opt to alter their hours regardless of a workplace policy. At ImmixGroup, a Tysons-based firm that helps companies expand their government business, employees frequently slip out earlier than usual, "before the traffic gets incredibly bad," said Tony Franzonello, business development manager.

"If I see someone gone, I just figure they left early for that reason -- I don't ask questions," he said. "I used to live right across the street from the office and it would still take 25 minutes to get here."

Many office workers have devised their own tricks. Melissa Fernandez goes to the gym after work to kill time before tackling the traffic. Employees at Appian Corp., a software company steps away from the mall entrance, have mastered the parking garage exits and back roads of Tysons Corner to scoot around traffic. Holiday shoppers are often easy to spot on the roads.

"Shoppers are confused by the bridges, poorly marked intersections and one-way streets that we commuters learned to navigate through years of experience," said Michael Beckley, a vice president at the company.

Elil Shunmugavel, 28, a lawyer with Wealth and Tax Advisory Services, joins the crowds of office workers who migrate to the area's restaurants for happy hour and dinner to wait out the traffic. She meets fellow sufferers at the Daily Grill, Legal Sea Foods or the Cheesecake Factory across the street from her office.

"Every restaurant is really crowded, and it's all people in work clothes with their ties loosened up," she said. "I go out to dinner a lot more in December than I do any other time of year."

Gordon Biersch in Tysons Corner Center has benefited from the increased traffic. Between 4:30 and 7 p.m., the beer garden fills up with people waiting it out.

"It certainly drives a lot of people in here from the offices," said general manager Joe Cominsky. "People come in, shop, grab a beer and shop some more. It's very predictable this time of year."

Even in their frustration, office workers held captive near the malls are good for business, said Kathy Hannon, property manager at Tysons Corner Center. Nearly half of the weekday traffic comes in the middle of the day -- a large portion of which is made up of lunch-breaking professionals.

Philip Larson, who also works at Appian, has turned lunch-hour shopping into an art. Last week, he got his girlfriend's birthday flowers from Art with Flowers at Tysons Galleria, picked up a card from Hallmark, checked out the new DVD releases at the electronics store and grabbed a medium-seared tuna sandwich from Cafe Deluxe, all during his lunch break.

Sara Schuman keeps a pair of sneakers under her desk. At 5 p.m., as the roads circling the malls begin to clog with hordes of commuters and shoppers, she sprints across six lanes of standstill traffic on Leesburg Pike to Tysons Corner Center, the larger of the two malls, where she strolls through the stores. She often circles the mall three times before traffic has cleared enough to tackle her homebound commute.

"I've pretty much gotten all of my shopping done already," said Schuman, a 23-year-old receptionist from Rockville who repeats the drill twice a week. She admits that she's memorized the inventory of just about every store, "but it beats moving at a glacial pace for two hours out there -- and I get some exercise."

Beckley of Appian found his own silver lining in the seasonal cloud.

"Tysons is becoming the Times Square of Northern Virginia," he said. "It's crowded, it's lively and everyone is here. Sitting in a line of BMWs and Mercedes and Volvos full of holiday gifts is a great time to reflect on how absurdly opulent and cushy our lives have become."