Old for Gold

A lot of times we talk about face value and how everything gets judged around it. And, here I’m literally talking about “face” value, and how much it is looked upon to gauge your talent in professional world.

Most of us know about professions where looks play paramount role, in some profession its looks + smartness and for rest looks are supposed to play no role. But, Are there any such profession? I think it rarely does exist. Rarely not because people exploit their looks for success but actually how critically a profession judges a professional’s talent by his/her looks.

It was just a few months after my post graduation, my friend had mustache grown on his face. His answer to my enquiry of change in fashion was simple, he was handling his business and he didn’t wanted to look newbie and novice in business, who lacked sense of business; and off course he had to give slightly mean look. A few months later it my turn, a client looked at my colleague & me and got worried with our silly young excited face. He wanted to know how qualified we were to handle his research project.

Young is not the look that most of the young professionals want and truth is that young look in most of profession is not looked upon. How many of us can ever believe most of the senior level person look at young professional and say “yeah, I think s/he handle it”. If you want to move slightly upward then young is out and mature is in. How many people ever trust young doctors irrespective of their talent? I have seen people making themselves look older than they actually are to gain trust of their patients/clients.

It’s so ironic that anyone and everyone who wants to look younger in their personal lives and does whatever possible to look young actually wants to look aged in their professional lives. Sometimes there is pressure to differentiate. I have seen young people with managerial roles trying hard to create differentiation between themselves and their team members and that begins with facial hair.

French bread is most popular it seems people take French beard route to look more matured compared to rest of team members. I don’t know how much of this effort is directed towards their bosses that help in identifying a young manager from his team or making boss believe that they have really become matured in life with straw of facial hair. I’m not sure if this one is global phenomena because if French people would come to know this then would have heart attack that people use French beard to fake their maturity and the killing part would be you look notches up older with it.

The Blackberry Punishment

I finally got nailed by my company; it firmed up with the final brick in the wall by handing over me the final tool in corporate slavery- the blackberry. It’s an amazing instrument that shrinks world further and personal life even shorter. It makes you so smart that you end up reading mails twice on lot of occasions.

I tried to get feel of it, keeping in hand itself was quite a task in the beginning. After trying to hold it in hand for several times I tried putting it in the traditional blackberry way- on the waist. It was like a policeman putting his gun in his holster, I tried on right side then left side, but it looked funny on me, I looked like over-promoted pandu (constable).

I tried to sooth myself trying to create a style of picking blackberry out of its cover, james bond came to my mind and for a moment I felt great. The “007” background score rang in my ears, then I took it out in slow-mo in the same way as double 0seven does, I did it a few times in the office lift (which I avoid to take), I was in haven but then I realised that it required too much of leg-space and I possibly wouldn’t be able to do it everywhere. Then, I tried ‘good bad and the ugly’ style in true cowboy fashion. I think it is preferred style in the corporate world as it gets things done. But, its rash, jerky and fast way to pickout you phone and it might even injure a bystander in most cases. So, I decided to drop this style and made mind to pick-out my cell like a common man does in his boring life.

Even as I had ended my flirtation with new blackberry had ended in dismay, I realised for most it had just began. Blackberry creates it own set of onlookers. Suddenly guards at my office realised that I had one and they assumed that my position in the company had climbed a few notches up, though in reality it wasn’t the case, but it still had impact on them, they became more formal in the mannerism. Then, there were “the others”, who were amused with blackberry on my hand, I looked too young to have it and definitely didn’t fit into the image of mid-level-mid-age-grouchy person.

People still can’t help talking about it when they see me with blackberry for the first time, their love for this instrument really surprises me. For me, it similar to the school days punishment when teachers used to put a not behind your back and you used to pretend that it was really cool and used to show-off.

When Pajamachaaps Reunite with Queens

During my school days my classmates were greatly inspired by a hindi movie ‘jo jeeta wahi sikandar’, especially for classification of lousy guys with low sense of dressing guys as ‘pajamachaaps’ and then there were well dressed babes called ‘queens’ after their school, no names for well dressed dudes. My friends preferred themselves being ‘pajamachaaps’ chasing queens, which I despised. I thought those days were long gone until pajamachaaps made comeback. I’m not talking about myself, neither my friends nor colleagues, it’s about my organisation.

Sometimes back my organisation merged with a company that is better know in the public eye as a ‘media’ outfit. On the D-day, when all employees came together to celebrate the formation of new company, my colleague gasped while looking at the employees of other company. They were starkly different from our fellas, who are simply dressed but largely with no sense of attire to be worn in corporate environment. I guessed the other guys needed to project image for being a media outfit; I could see my colleague almost felt like pajamachaaps not because of one or two persons but because it was the crowd. I know how dangerous crowds can be, if you ask a Mumbai teenager which college he wants to go, it wouldn’t be collage’s acclaim or toppers’ list but ‘the crowd’!! Man, crowd really psyches you up. I knew that this newly acquired ‘crowd’ had over-glossed us, it was creating clash of class in the newly merged environment, “we are better than those types”, which people do to get upper hand.

Anyways, employees started getting swapped in new setup. But, despite intermingling you could still identify ‘the crowd’. One of my colleagues hated it, while my other colleague started to enjoy the change, suddenly grass was greener on the other side, and remarkably he identified ‘the crowd’. As it happens in the movie, ‘queens’ really didn’t look up to the ‘pajamachaaps’. In all this I realised that there was uncanny similarity in their attire, it was their style. The style made all the difference between the old fellas and newly acquired fellas. It was as if they had special induction lecture on corporate fashion, what they can wear and what they can’t; which shades of eyeliners would do and what was strict no..no. Nothing like it ever existed in the subconscious of employees of my pre-merged company.

I didn’t feel bad until after a month, when I realised that spiky hairdo of a guy survived for more than a month. This never happened in my five year career that a hairdo survived the corporate dictate. Maybe it was too much of shock values for old fellas of my organisation, may be no one gave damn to the five year old hair style, heheeehe!!!

Unfortunately, our old junta is still pajamachaap but some are happy with ‘queens’ around them. ‘The crowd’ still thinks (I believe that) they are ‘In-thing’ in the new company. Superiority and inferiority of egos gets settled in same old way, one-upmanship of work. The company still remains worried about the bottomline as it was before this brief period of honeymoon. As it happens in corporate marriages some people shine while others whine and a minuscule of us are just there to enjoy it!!

Saving Private Batakh !!!

The naming biz or say re-christening thing really excites me, off course its non-profitable biz. In last four years (of my professional life) I have seen happiness, despair, hatred, anger and affection all boiling down to one thing- naming the culprit. It’s the naming part that we all love and being named is the most dreadful thing to happen, though sometimes it doesn’t. Mostly, it irritates the person who is called upon with such name.

I know most of you would be thinking…what the heck so much for a name, who cares about it. But, I must tell you, it isn’t as simple as it sounds. We are very careful and meticulous about naming a person. We like to see how it resembles on our friends, colleagues, bosses, nemesis and the ‘character’ in the office (who is nature’s invention but our discovery).

Also, this damn naming thing goes through evolution, on quite similar lines of your professional life. I didn’t realize that how much of it I had already seen until sometime back. Personally, I don’t like naming people after animals; kutte suar and sandh all sound like Chinese new years and their main course dish; and anyways it’s pretty tough to match animals. But last year was kind of exception, I would say.

On usual day, just another brickbat between my colleagues turned into mother of all naming convention/invention (only, according to me) and then came the word “Batakh”. Suddenly they were hurling it on each other; I didn’t know the reason and I also failed to see why!!! Its pretty tough imagining person as batakh, though we have English alter ego of batakh –duck, but I’m not sure if it has the same characteristics as I can fit lameduck on face of our PM but same doesn’t go with “bakakh”. May be because “batakh” is desi and it doesn’t have those English traits. Also, I found it hard to fit batakh on lotsa people (probably my sample size was wrong) and probably I needed to do more clinical testing to find its active ingredient. But, before I could possibly do that one of my colleague left us (I mean organisation!!) and then I was left desolated.

For past three months “batakh” has almost ceased to exist. I didn’t hear anybody hurling it upon other and no character was added to its much needed persona. “Batakh” has become endangered specie and I don’t want it to die due to lack of people’s participation. So you…guys go out and find who can be worthy of being “batakh” in and around you, add character to it and also to the people…make it memorable…. make ‘batakh’ of your day!!(I don’t know what it really means).

So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you……………Batakh!!!

My Corporate Pickup Line

“I am available.”

How this will sound to you if someone says it to you?
What exactly would you infer from it? Will you slap the person or laugh at it?

Well, this statement is actually our corporate jargon that means availability of resource for assignment. This is the first thing that most of the people in my division say in the Monday morning meeting, yeah it doesn’t get them really HOT date of choice but may add to your Monday morning trauma.

Though I have never dared to say it in outside world, but if you are a guy and you happened to make this statement unfortunately, this would perhaps be considered as one of the worst PICKUP lines ever used!!

It may never become a hit pickup line to get girls but in our division it is more used as seduction tool to get the exciting piece of work. Everyone makes a point to stand out when they say “I’m available”, so, the manager can see the passion (which may be very dim on Monday morning) in your eyes and may assign it to you (though it doesn’t happen).

Just imagine different people in your division saying it and that too in different styles. Try out people and see what it does to you? Post Austinpowers movie on Sunday, every time I hear people saying “I’m Available”,
Yeah babeeh!! I see Austin whispering into my ears – “Corporate Slut Babeeh”

SMART Work and FART Work

Though its just two years into professional life but I have heard this noise SMART work at almost all levels of organization. Some one from top level management giving ‘BHAASAN’ on it to your team lead, there is just no end to this funda, you see.

You will realise that smart work is actually not ‘TOP NOTCH’ work or the best quality of work ever done!!! (Yeah man, this will happen when you self actualize.) Smart work is just managing the outcome which will satisfy the client most. It is shallow and doesn’t have much depth, of good work, but can hold and superficially looks better than most of the outcome in same line of work. It is delivering just what is required without actually fulfilling most of requirements. Smart work something that successfully deviates client/user from the original concern but make him feel that it concerns have been met. Since everyone gotta save his ass but that doesn’t happen all the time, so smart work comes in. what people don’t realise when they ask for smart work. What people don’t realise is the kind of work person has to do to smart work.

I think there are just two types; I call it Good work or Fart work.

You see, good work, when people get the kind of work they desired in the life or the kind of work that really use the potentials of a worker and helps in his/her development. Now, this kind of work is actually hard to get. In fact, I believe that most of the people actually don’t get it and they just dream for that day when they will have what they wanted. So, I won’t waste much time on it.

Then

There is FART work. Yeah.

You know when you eat something and your stomach doesn’t take it well then you fart. This happens with the work also. You don’t get the good work but you are asked to make it good. The work that disserved to be dumped sees the daylight of your desktop. There is nothing that can come out good from that work but since someone in the system has to do it, so it is thrown at you. You don’t like that kind of work and it upsets you sometimes. You don’t feel good about the work and then it start creating trouble in your professional life, makes it stinky. You take some help (kind of medication) manage the work and come out with smart work. But in long run every thing stops working for you and fart works sucks everthing "Fresh" out of your life and the stink of your life becomes visible in your language especially how you describe your work. The more you are force to do fart work, more helpless the situation becomes.

You just end up hating your work.