THE CRAPBOOK

I have been in this industry for 4 years now. I would be just another guy working in the Technolgy Services (out of  1 MM). But recently I realized I have the swipe Flu. Now what is Swipe flu?

To get more understanding of it, let’s look into a day of my life at work.

 I enter the building with the identity card worn around my neck, which dances around with each step I take. I swipe the card at the reader to open the door. I swipe the card at my department door. I swipe the card when I go out to the break out area(coffee machine area). I swipe the card at the door when I walk out of the building. I swipe the card when I go out to cafeteria.I realized that my hand automatically picks up the card and swipe it at the reader every time I see a door. I am doing this subconsciously. I do it when I am walking out of the door talking to my colleague, or when I am on the phone. I don’t even realize that I am doing it every time I open a door.

 Well I realized there is something wrong when I tried opening the lift door with my card. And when I tried opening the apartment door with my card.

 I almost lost it when I tired to open my car door with my i-card.

 I talked to a colleague of mine and he said these are symptoms of something called the swipe flu.

I wish if we would have just used a register at the reception. 

Do you have these symptoms?

“You have to protect the egg from breaking” explained our trainer.

“You will have to throw it on our target kept at approximately 6 feet away” She continued “and it should not break”

 

“WHAT THE?? “ I thought. Even before my thought process could finish the world favorite line, she continued “You will be given 4 sheets of paper, one thread, cello tape, and three balloons. Protect the eggs!!” She declared.

 

I was lost, I felt like our team was lost in wilderness. I could hear the wolves. I need to protect the team…. ‘ACT FAST’ my mind rolled.

 

“Okay let’s use the balloons to protect the egg from the impact” I said.

There was counter opinions, changes in plan and even a 5 minute discussion on how to inflate the balloon. Finally we managed to inflate the balloons in no particular plan or shape. But fate had other plans.

 

The oversized elderly gentleman in our team accidentally sat on one of the balloons.

“One down” I declared. “Let’s not lose hope here” I assured the team.

 

The other balloon was declared lost when our extremely lovely lady in our team poked it with her extra long pointed-polished NAILS.

Her continuous sorry(s) was not helping our team. We had to go on.

 

The third balloon was down in action; at least we have a martyr who died for a cause.

 

Before anyone starts complaining on what the hell is happening, let me explain. I am in training “Managing people” and this activity was part of it. We had to protect an egg with the help of few items that the trainer has provided. We had to throw the egg, hitting the target kept 6 feet away. The winner would be the team whose egg did not break.

 

My last encounter with an egg was two days back when an egg slipped off my hand while I was taking it out from the refrigerator. It fell on the tiled floor and broke.

The worst part of it was cleaning. I realized that the contents of the egg cannot be absorbed by cloth nor can it be swept away using a broom. Its sticky and slimy and its worse when it’s on the floor.

Getting it out of the floor was indeed a task; I tried the above two and miserably failed. So I decided to dilute it. Dilution will help soften hard solutions, I have learnt and tried applying it. I was left with a messy floor.

 

I had to cover the entire thing up before my wife find out. The last resort was to use a spoon to recover the contents on to a vessel and hide the rest under the refrigerator.

I did just that.

 

Now back to the story, we were left with nothing but 4 sheets of paper, one thread and a cello tape.

“Hooooray” that was from our rival team. They completed the task of wrapping the egg in a protective cover. Now they can continue with the ‘throwing’ part.

We had 5 minutes left. We quickly made soft paper balls out of the sheets provided, kept these at strategic locations around the egg and used the thread to bind them. Finally we wrapped the tape around the egg-paper combination to strengthen the protected area.

 

“We are done!” I declared.

Now for some action, I thought. The trainer, sensing danger, quickly requested a person to lay paper all around the target (a white board). She did not want the fresh carpet to be stained with fresh egg contents.

 

I aimed at the target carefully calculating the trajectory and the angle at which I should be throwing the egg.

I used as little force I could to project the egg to the target.

It was a direct hit.

The trainer gasped.

The rest of the crowd gasped.

 

I closed my eyes.

 

“Hoorrrraaaay”

Was it the other team celebrating our misery? Or worse should I clean the floor myself?

I thought.

 

“It did not break!!!.. Clean shot !.” Said an overly excited trainer. She continued.

 

“Now my friends, that’s a practical explanation for team management. The egg was your team and you put in all your efforts to protect it from everything. That’s what we learn from this activity.”

 

EGG? Team??? Will I be a bad manager? Chucking the team under the refrigerator? Or making bulls eyes of it? Only time will tell!  

 

 

PS : The trainer took the egg back. I had plans to replace it with the one I broke two days back.

 

 

 Happy Friendship day to all !.

 

 

 

Conversation b.w two IT ‘Professionals’ (Overheard) 

Professional 1 : ‘Hey heard that you got an offer from a new firm?’

Professional 2 : ‘Yeah I did, I joined the company too’

Professional 1 : ‘How’s the package?’

Professional 2 : ‘ Well its not just the package. There is growth, new challenges and new technologies’ 

Professional 1 : ‘Oh okay. How’s the package?’

Professional 2 : ‘There is onsite too’ 

Professional 1 : ‘Wow. How’s the package?’

Professional 2 : ‘Its not bad. There is bonus too’ 

Professional 1 : ‘You can ask more, with the experience you have’

Professional 2 : ‘Yeah but they have Coke, snacks and chocolate drink in the pantry’ 

Professional 1 : ‘That’s so cool, we just have a stupid coffee’

Professional 2 : ‘Yeah? That’s so dull buddy’

 Professional 1 : ‘But we can smoke in the pantry”

Professional 2 : ‘Oh, that’s something I wanted’ 

Professional 1 : ‘How’s the package like?????’ 

 Click to enlarge !!!

Colleague 1 “Hey let’s go down for a pizza”

Colleague 2 “Nah I don’t like it anyways”

Colleague 1 “It’s free yaar. The company is paying for it”

Colleague 2 “WHAT? Heyyy wait for me….”

And here we are crowded at the pantry waiting for the pizzas. The admin assistant who is coordinating ‘the event’ said

“I am gonna take 10 minutes of your time. We have to wait 10 mins before we start”  

Amid the ‘Ooo’s , ‘oh’ and ‘noooo’s I tried my luck to get near the pizza’s.

Colleague 1 “I guess we are waiting for our VP and manager”

Colleague 2 “What???? I thought we were waiting for ketchup” and rushed to slice out a piece!

 There was nothing unusual about my cab driver for today ( he was driving the car with one hand on the steering wheel and one on his cell phone, after quickly overtaking the car in the front, he switched gears while handing me the route sheet.. In the mean time he managed to shows signs (in an obscene manner) to a motor cyclist who cut in front of us. All while trying to open a packet of PAN.) 

Whew.

 But there was something unusual about him, that why I am writing this blog after all. In spite of doing all this in one rapid action he managed to go under the dash board to turn some squeaking knob. And each time he did that, the meter turned 2KM.

“Are bhaiyya, what are you doing” I asked.

 “Nothing” he replied startled.  

When he did that for the third time I asked him “Is there any thing wrong with the meter?” 

 He said “Yes” and said that, that’s the reason why he has to run it manually!!!!! 

Most of the companies have outsourced their transport division. Mostly some third party vendor arranges the cab for the companies, the third party keeps a route sheet with these cab drivers who have to log in the meter reading when they move out of the company facility and when they come back after the pick up. 

My cabbie was just trying to make some quick money; he would just turn the meter to some extra 10 KMs for each trip because this will go unnoticed. Well not now!