Clearance Ki Kahaani...Balls to 'Sayonara'

Characters:

GET : X (Graduate Engineering Trainee Resigning as Senior Project Executive)

Manager Y (Eating, Doing Nothing and managing GET X)

HR Z (Helpless Rascal @ the Human Resource)

Note: Trying to avoid being harsh

Warning: No resemblance with real world. If you find any, have beer and chill because none gets to bother.

16 Jan 2012

It was the 89^th day of the three month notice period at a company called Lallu & Tappu Ltd (La&Ta). My brain was bleeding as I was the only one around going home instead of going to some MNCs who pay like pigs. And adding pressure to the pumping blood was the Manager Y who was not clearing off my handover dues. Actually speaking, he didn’t know what I was handing over as he never worked till it came to brim.

The HR Z was any other person who was least bothered who was leaving; knowing the reasons might be his dream job that he used to actually do while snoring at 2 pm after the hefty lunch.

I was to leave at 17^th Jan and it was already 4:30 pm. It was getting tougher to nail Manager Y.

He only had to tick on a clearance form in his mail and like any day he wasn’t bothered when it came to work.

10 minutes of Creative Planning by GET X passed by.

To Retaliate Is Human Nature...

Manager Y: So why are you exactly leaving?

GET X: Does it make sense on the 89^th day of my 3 month notice period?

Manager Y (Stunned): What does it mean when you question a query?

GET X: It means I am not interested to entertain the query and the beholder.

Manager Y: Tell me which company are you joining?

GET X: I am getting out of this company business. It adds no value to my thoughts.

Manager Y: The world is small. We will be informed where you are heading.

GET X: Please clear off my dues, just by clicking a simple icon in your mail box.

Manager Y: No, I won’t till you let me know.

Nonsense heated argument follows.

GET X watches the clock. It was 4:50 pm. He knew Manager Y will run to the punching machine at 5:15 pm and drive home. At 5 pm all he wanted the subsidized tea offered at the labor canteen.

He wanted the tick as it was HR Z’s turn tomorrow.

Manager Y (provoking): He will be a Master (professor in derogatory sense) one day and then he thinks he can add value to his thoughts.

GET X (keeping his cool): Sir G, its 4:55 pm. (Actually the clock showed 5 pm). I am going for tea.

Manager Y: Oh! Where I have to tick for clearing your dues?

GET X (thinking prey had come to daddy): Here, over here sir…

Manager Y: Is there any provision for partial clearance?

Manager Y actually didn’t know what he was handling and still he wanted GET X to be trapped.

GET X: Sir G, its 5 pm (Clock actually showing 5:15 pm) we will miss the tea.

Manager Y: Here is the password of my mail box. Get it done.

GET X: (enters the password like a ninja): Click..! Bang you go…!!

Manager Y: Let’s go to tea.

GET X: Its 5:18pm.

Manager Y (Astonished): What?

GET X: So you finally come to know that is the way you get to work…! Good Bye.

Manager Y:  (Now knew the trick) If you wish you can share your personal contact details.

GET X: Good Bye.

17 Jan 2012.

HR Z: Have you ticked all departments in the form?

HR Z never knew what kind of intellectual capital the company had and the least he knew about the loss to company when most of them were leaving the company.

GET X: Yes

HR Z: Get your dues cleared by the Finance department know.

The official time to leave was 5 pm. But as I had received clearance from all departments I could have been relieved earlier. Every one applied Murphy’s Law.

I requested HR Z to relieve me by 3 pm. I asked him to at least hand over my documents against the I-card I had submitted. He said a cold NO.

He did every procedural works at 5 pm. I kicked the door.

17 Feb 2012

I am still waiting for my salary. Manager Y wants me back.

I got my clearance done over a Rs.3/- tea.

I left love and opened the doors of uncertainty in my life…!!!

 Amit Purohit The Lone Soldier

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Education: The Mess Continues

Education: The Mess Continues…


The mail said to update eight excel sheets from a single reference sheet. And I kept on doing the same almost the fourth time a day by now because the estimate was not under the belt of an apocryphal budget of the project what the ‘tummy’ thought. After meeting the apocryphal point I ran out of the junk; of which fabricators actually took pride of. My eyes weren’t paining out of the grilling computer screen because my mind never had the image of it. My fingers rolled over the mouse and rambled over the keyboard like a programmed zombie. With the flowing river by my side I was drowning into time…

2 years ago

I was tormenting numbers and an empirical formula. Control Systems was one of my favorites and Dr. Ogata was one of the fathers who brought Control Systems to life. I banged my desk as it was 2 in the morning and I was actually struggling to stabilize a control system. What more added to the situation was a snoring friend near me who actually brought it to me.

Today…

Why does education exist? Those dying Root loci, Bode Plots, Laplace Equations and one of my favorites the L’Hospital rule were just white ant food. All lost in some excel sheets and ERP systems. Education lets you excel in a field for which you find your nerves pump and not for the Excel ’07 version you operate and try making interesting by changing the colors of the tool bars. If this is the charred dead end for experts in the field then white ant food should be replaced with stuff that kicks some 30k into your account. It is eventually the dangerous thought of the recruiters thinking that these guys can tackle physics and programming on paper can actually tackle some projects on a spread sheet very well. Presentations; Excel Sheets and ERPs. If MBA is all about this then god bless the aspirants including me. I torture numbers and words till date. It is because I love the ways of approaching results of the brain boiling puzzles that actually refine your dendrites than a smoke with a Smirnoff. The mammoth packages offered to colleges belonging to the Ivy League for filling some rows and columns is actually the death of the idea of education.

Still more to go… Students experts in mechanics actually make Cold calls, convince people make them work by mailing sheer reminders is like crucifying Deans that promise to produce talents working for honing the technical intelligence of the country. Education and its dimensions viz, primary, secondary and college are like golden fishes of the sea which are actually caught and placed in a glass bowl to make people happy. It confines their mindsets, emotions and kills their skills with which they fought waves. It is actually killing them for the daily food they earn to endure by making a kid go smiling like a clown. Their culmination is a mere manifestation of frustration.

Dont keep thinking of the argument saying being junior in the hierarchy one has to face the music before becoming the audience.

Welcome to corporate slavery instead...!

Amit Purohit The Lone Soldier

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GET/PGET The Kaam Wali mode (Humour)

GET/PGET The KaamWali Mode…


(Pun Intended, To be read in a lighter mode, No personal experiences, Mere observations)

      In an organization with more than 40,000 employees and over scores of sub units you may find a diversified set of personalities and diversified ways of executing various jobs coming one’s way. The nature of jobs is so varied that the approach to it needs to be branched out so as to complete it in an engineered way. Diversification helps as well as hurts sometimes. This story is not about praising or condemning a diversified company neither it is to give ‘fundas’ over it. Diversification leads to involvement of people from various disciplines as well as various backgrounds. This leads to inter exchange of tips and tricks of making things move over the roll. Interesting psychologies build up, clash and sometimes converts into procedures (SOPs). In a cluster of some 300 odd people with a mammoth job at hand you can have more than psychologies than the head count. One such interesting psychology or one can say brain pattern we are going to discuss in a lighter vein is the GET/PGET psychology. GET/PGET is basically an abbreviation for the newly joined Graduate/Post Graduate Engineer Trainees.

    He is a new contestant to the cycle. He moves around following all the rules of the company and in the process comes to know how to evade the system and get things done forgetting the rules. He is the one who is authorized to do all the tasks over the phone but not on paper. Hence in the jugglery he never gets credit to the things he does and at the end he gets sarcasm from the top notches saying that the training he received since a year is futile. This in turn created a feeling of vengeance in many of the GETs/PGETs. Some of them run for MBA/M.tech, while others go for a job change. Rest clash day in and out with their respective bosses and keep forwarding mails, applying for online IPOs. The word training is basically an apocryphal for him as he never attains it. Even he does, he gets it on the subjects he had never listened to. Needless to say this lands in waiting for tea breaks, enjoying siesta and carry a face saying he was more interested than the facilitator. In PSUs the scene is more interesting. The fellow life in the classrooms for years never meets his seniors and sees his GM once in a blue moon. The world becomes a circle for him a complete circle where he thinks he is at the same level where he was. The only difference in now and then is the money and the follow ups. Follow ups more or less remain the same but the latter is now from strangers in a stringent way.

      The reader might be frustrated because he came here to read about the kaamwali mode which is still not discussed. A gold medalist from an esteemed university comes at the block. He copies and files everything that comes his way. More or less there are unrealistic miniscule projects in his hand which gets delayed due to reasons he can’t even deem of. Moreover, some of the people around add music to his party and he feels like listening Linkin Park/Metallica in the morning. People, more of situations around him make him enter the so called kaamwali mode. He is made to follow people more than to do his work. And the person he follows hates anyone following him. The more or less of the people he follows feels xenophobic when he is around. Days pass. These days makes him enter the kaamwali mode. And the brain pattern of taking decisions begins resembling to that of a kaamwali. We all are in the same mode but all of us are not at the same levels. Let me elaborate on this.

      The calendar just witnessed the dates of Holi. The holiday for Holi was on Monday. A GET/PGET takes holiday on Saturday packs his bag and drives to Daman to hang out. The gang of GETs promises their respective boses to come back on Tuesday and clear the pending work. They never return on Monday. The scene continues till Thursday. Kaamwali mode activated. This made me think and resemble them to my kaamwali who was fired when she did the same the third time. The levels to this mode increase as the GET/PGETs cruise their journey to their so called training to its zenith. Few days before the completion of training and prior to his stake being confirmed, he outbursts the tsunami of emotions in him. He catches his so called boss he never reports to and increases his adrenaline saying he will be leaving forever. My ailing grandma’s personal maid used to say this when she needed some of her old clothes or increment in her wages. The extreme mode of kaamwali activated…! Sometimes there are technical issues in the office and the boss never knows how to shoot such problems but he knows the one who can shoot it. He just offloads the contract and things get done. The mail around roves with he being in the BCC. This lets him down all the way. . . He goes back to the pathetic accommodation provided by the company and calls the one who he needs to talk daily and can’t help around. They too fight over the phone and worse are the mess when her mother’s call is in the waiting mode at the same nick. He takes the first piece of roti with his ailing mother discussing about the food there. His father inquires about his detoriating health.

      He disconnects the call, lights a cigarette sleeps under the towering sky with stars in his eyes and dreaming what he coveted to be and what he landed in…?! He powers the radio and the song it plays goes like this:

“Papa kehte hai bada naam karega, beta humara aisa kaam karega..!”

He covers his face with the blanket in a way that can stifle him, tries to forget the day and fine tunes his alarm clock.

A day comes in his life when he gets confirmed and a new GET/PGET enters the gang. The kaamwali mode never gets disengaged it gets shifted and the new kid on the block now faces the music. You are in the same mode reading this and trying to shift yourself from your regular monotonous Excel sheets…Isn’t it?!

(Pun Intended, To be read in a lighter mode, No personal experiences, Mere observations)

Amit Purohit The Lone Soldier