Monday, May 30, 2011

The HR intern

I LOVED MY JOB

I recently resigned my previous job at one of the leading vehicle manufacturers in India, to join my family business. While there is no scale of comparison between the two and both have their own advantages and headaches, there are somethings about my previous job that i would miss. A Lot. Some of them, i've tried to elaborate as a tribute to the great work experience they gave me.

The HR Intern:
What i'm talking about here is not a specific person but a phenomenon that occurs in most organizations and even colleges.

Being an engineering company, the female to male ratio was somewhere around 1 : 123456 and counting. With all the female population concentrated at the head quarters where i was stationed. Now that would sound so much like paradise, until you consider the age spectrum. If built a little differently, the office could be easily mistaken for an old age home.

Rarely could we spot good looking females who were not married. There was a good chance that they were in relationships, but hey, who cares?? Anyways, these occasional sightings would mostly be college students doing their internship in the HR department or the likes.
Advantage: you get to see different females every 2-3 months.
Disadvantage: There was no scope of an actual relationship. Not that it was achievable in a longer timespan, but it sounds like a really good excuse.

We didn't know her name, or her college, or any information. in short, we couldn't even find her on facebook. but we knew the one most important information. The time she has lunch. I think the only good thing about our canteen was that everybody was forced to eat there. Even if we had brought our own lunch, we had to sit in the canteen and eat.

Our whole group ensured that we were in the canteen at the exact same time that she had lunch. We would enter as a gang and crane our necks in all directions to locate her and sit at a table closest to where she was sitting or where she would probably sit, if we reached before her. If you are a lady reading this, let me tell you that we are not as cheap as you think. it would usually be one of us who would be interested in the female and not all. we are just there for moral support. its part of team work i guess.  But it is also true that it is usually that one shameless guy who is interested in all the interns. And i'm not that guy.

Well, moral of the story is that it was great fun, something that i will miss. And i'm sure it happens everywhere. Sometimes its the HR intern, sometimes that new recruit from a rival software company, sometimes the fresher in EEE.

P.S. if you are a lady reading this, please do leave your number.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

The Boss

I LOVED MY JOB

I recently resigned my previous job at one of the leading vehicle manufacturers in India, to join my family business. While there is no scale of comparison between the two and both have their own advantages and headaches, there are somethings about my previous job that i would miss. A Lot. Some of them, i've tried to elaborate as a tribute to the great work experience they gave me.

The boss:
           Yes, i will miss my boss, in fact all my colleague's bosses. The pleasure we get in abusing each other's bosses over tea would be greatly missed. Sometimes, the insults would be so bad that you would reject a promotion if it were handed to you at that moment.

I would like to think that we are different from our bosses. We wouldn't be so bad or that we wouldn't be abused so much. But the fact is that the abuses do not depend on your behavior but more on the number of subordinates you command and frequency of tea breaks at your office. If refreshments are free, God save you.

It is a very common misconception that only bosses take credit for all the achievements and blame the incapability of the subordinates for the shortfalls. The fact is that they do, but so do we. We do the same thing to our bosses. How many times have you praised your boss for his achievement? How many of you responded to the previous question with "let him achieve something first"? How many times have you complained to your colleagues about how your boss doesn't get his priorities right? Its all in the game, a part of the corporate life. The entertaining part if you look at it that way.

I will never forget an incident with one of my colleague's boss. I had forwarded him an automail with details he had requested for. He called on my desk phone and invited me to his cubicle, popularly known as "torture cell". He had my mail open in his laptop (a waste of company resource).
He asked me, "Where is the customer's name and number in the mail?"
"Its in the mail, let me check." i said, scrolling down the mail on his laptop, a really old one but still a waste of resource.
I showed him the detail in the mail for which he replied, "See, its somewhere down there. now i know that the detail is available in the mail, but my mental ability does not allow me to scroll down. instead i opt to call you on the phone and ask for the details."
I was shocked. I looked at his subordinate standing next to him. He was smiling at me. Here was a man telling me about his mental incapability in front of his subordinate and expecting me to be sorry for it. I have been a fan of my colleague ever since.

This is just one of the incidents with one of the bosses. My suggestion would be that the company should start a TV serial like "Friends" by compiling videos captured through the CCTV cameras. it would run for 20 seasons and we could sell the DVDs later. we could name it "Yes, we get paid for this."

P.S. This is my first blog. Hope to improve in due course of life.