Corporate Lessons - Chapter 3: "Your input is very important to us! Koi shak?" "Oh fuck!"

Disclaimer: The title is rather obviously inspired from His Holiness Himesh Reshammiya's chartbusting titty-shakin-ass-kickin track "I love you O Sayonee". Please don't sue me O Lord!

Somebody is spreading rumours about me in the office and I've gotta find out who it is before the company closes down! If your pea-sized excuse for a brain finds it hard to make the connection, let me make it easier for you by explaining the kind of rumours doing the rounds. Apparently I'm being projected as a hard and efficient worker who should be staffed on all important projects! At least this is what a very senior employee said in our first meeting for a very important project.

"I have been told that you guys are the best resources available for this project"

And almost instantaneously, I lost all respect for the project.

As if this wasn't enough, I was staffed along with another new joinee to compile one of the most important reports regarding the project. At least that is what they told us! But I kept noticing signs to the contrary. Most of the reports were to be sent to the country head for QC (That's Quality Check, you uninitiated assholes!)
Ours wasn't one of them.
Heck, nobody even bothered to ask us about the progress till the very last minute!

But of course, every other day we were routinely warned that the work is very important and we simply can't afford to screw it up! Then help us not to, for fuck's sake!

Then, after about a week of scrambling our apparently-very-capable-brains, we were informed in a group meeting that a lot of research has already been performed in the particular sector and all we have to really do is sift through the previous reports and look for the relevant material!

So much for 'best resources available'!

I believe the conversation went something like this during the staffing exercise:

"This is a very important project"

"You couldn't be more right, our asses are in danger!"

"I wouldn't want to put your sweet ass in danger!"

"Aww,come 'ere you..."

(half an hour later)

"Phew, nice fucking eh?"

"I'll say"

"Hey, what about the staffing?"

"Oh we've already done that, I just called this meeting to... y'know"

"Aww, come 'ere you...."

(another half hour later)

"Bascially there's just this one sector where we already have all the material but we just have to repackage it to fool our hapless client into giving us more money."

"Hmm...looks like the kind of work that some new joinees may find interesting."

"Hey that's a great idea! Ooh I love your ideas, come 'ere you..."

"Easy babe, it may be a while before I can get it up again!"

"Oh sorry dahling!"

"Anyway, have you noticed any particularly clueless ones in the recent lot?"

"Yea I think there are many of that kind. Anyone who joins this company is clueless anyway"

"Ok put them on this and don't forget to put undue pressure on their sorry asses by overemphasizing the importance of the project"

"Oh you're so naughty! Come 'ere you...."

"Gawd did you descend from rabbits? Bloody nymph!"

What was I talking about?

Corporate Lessons - Chapter 2: "English, Mothafucka! Do you speak it?"

Act 1

I got the spookiest phone call last night.

*Tring, tring* (actually, it was my cell phone and the ringtone was 'Money' by Pink Floyd, but *tring,tring* is so much more dramatic)

"Yeah?"

"Hi Avichal"

"Laloo?"

"Yea Hi this is Abhishek"

"Kya?? Laloo?"
(Translation: "What?? Laloo?")

"Yea did you talk to Anosh about the mail regarding change in shift timing?"

"Nahi be main 5 minute mein baat karke tujhe batata hun, waise tu bhi mail kar hi dena"
(Translation: "No man I'll talk to him and let you know in 5 minutes, but you send the mail anyway")

"Yea ok let me know"

If you're wondering what is so spooky about the call, I don't blame you. But consider this: I have never, NEVER once in the 4 years that I have known Abhishek aka Laloo, conversed with him in the Queen's language! Do you blame me for being scared out of my wits when Laloo suddenly calls up and unleashes howhaw Oxbridge on me??

Of course, being fellow corporate bitches, both he and I are expected to, and do speak English within our workspace. But still, I never thought he'd do this to me!

So I call back after 5 minutes and decide to lay it on him.

*Tring,tring* (This time it's the actual sound, since I'm making the call)

"Haan Laloo"
(Translation: "Yeah Laloo")

"Yeah Avichal" (He's still doing it!)

"Haan be mail kar dena pakke se, Anosh shayad ghar chala gaya hai"
(Translation: "Yeah dude send the mail for sure, Anosh seems to have left for home")

"Ok"

"Aur saale angrezi mein baat karne se pehle warning de diya karo"
(Translation:"And do warn me before you start talking to me in English asshole")

And I put the phone down immediately, thus conveying my reaction appropriately.

Act 2

Laloo returns from office, and I don't even wait to give him a breather.

"Behen ke laude angrezi mein kahe batiya rahe the phone par?"
(Translation: "Why the fuck were you talking in English over the phone you sister's dick?")

"Abe mera Boss paas mein hi tha, aur usne humko thodi hi der pehle lecture sunaya tha ki office mein Hindi nahi bolni hai kyunki foreign employees ko bura lagta hai"
(Translation: "Dude my Boss was nearby, and he had recently instructed us about not speaking in Hindi as it makes the foreign employees uncomfortable")

"Maa ki chut uski"
(Translation: "Fuck him!")

"Haan saala"
(Translation: "Sure!")

Yea yea I know I'm being unreasonably whiny and hypocritical about the whole thing, considering I'm actually writing this post in English and providing translations for all Hindi sentences. But it's still bewildering when your closest friends - with the possible exception of Mandu who was born out of America's pussy and plans to return there asap, and Dube who is just an incorrigible Delhi dood - talk to you in English. What's next? Mudit? Nishant? Barsaiyan? Dassa?? Tau??????

I'm too scared to write anything else!

Corporate Lessons - Chapter 1: People are sensitive

First things first: People - sexual harassment is NOT a joke!
If you think the above statement is also a joke, I actually love you, but I'm bound by professional ethics to remind you that it is not!
If you're still not serious enough, let Mr. Scott Adams(PBUH) explain it to you himself:
As expected, the start to my professional life has been shaky, to say the least! Every day I learn something about life,the universe and everything that I had unlearned with great effort during the last 4 years of my stay at the greatest place in the whole wide world - IIT Kanpur!

Yup that's right; whoever said that IIT's are institutions of learning was probably a wannabe IITian stuck in some crappy NIT.

Oops! I seem to have already forgotten my first lesson in professional life:People are sensitive!

Of course,this is a horizontal division that runs across the vertical one defined by Scott Adams (PBUH): People are idiots!

Anyway, the bunch of assholes from our dear alma mater learnt this lesson the hard way during one of our orientation sessions in the company. It was the Anti-sexual harassment session(as has been established earlier, sexual harassment is not a joke. Does that make anti-sexual harassment a joke?) and a smart female, who later turned out to be our group manager (God is a funny guy!), was instructing us about what constitutes sexual harassment in a corporate environment. Tariq(whom we had nicknamed tharki owing to his controversial activities over the last couple of days) wanted to clarify if guys could be sexually harassed by other guys. Why he didn't already know this despite being an IITK alumnus is beyond me, but that's beside the point for now.

Now as is our wont, we find anything and everything extremely funny, at times even stuff that may qualify as extremely tragic for sensitive people! We laughed like second-grade students who had just gained carnal knowledge and the female decided to let us know that college is over for good and our kind of behaviour is not acceptable outside the safe haven that our campus is.

Oh well, as they say, all good things are murdered in cold blood by sensitive people!

P.S. For the record, my heartfelt apologies to NITians. You rock dudes!

P.P.S. Off the record, NITians are so lame man!

P.P.P.S. Quite obviously, the record is just another joke to us.