WARNING : Extreme blasphemy ahead. Not for children and for people planning to join an organization and who are happy about it. Alcohol and Drugs might be needed to tolerate some words.
Read at your own risk.
And don’t bloody blame me…..
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Sometimes when you are in corporate, you know the big multi-national companies which think that they pay you a lot which they do not really, and expect you to perform miracles for them in work, and that too following concepts like “First-time-right” and “Sense of urgency” and “Continuous Improvement”, you get a lot of shit thrown at you. You know, the big words which all those leaders at the top pass on you, I never quite understood that. I mean those things are definitely important and all, but then i am freaking tired of hearing that stuff over and over again, and that too when I am listening to all that in a 3-hour long “ALL-HANDS” (fancy name for just-another-crappy-meeting) and I have a deadline to meet in the next one hour. I mean, I just don’t tolerate all that.
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Now, my Organization (i hate to use this word because nothing really is organized, but then its better than saying company), is having this “Power-of-One” initiative over the span of one or more month . It’s just one of those stupid initiatives that the HR and the Communications Team launch in the organization(again that damn word), to ignite those feelings of unity and spirit and such things among the different cross-functional teams (more crossed than functional) on premises. Of course, its much easy to launch an event than to actually execute it. And that is where we come in. We morons, who are expected to work together(with other morons) to make this event a success for our own team, at the same time meeting all deadlines and continuing to perform miracles at work. The funny thing is, not all morons are engaged. Only those whose names, our bosses remember less for our work done and more for our engagement in any activity that is non-engineering, are chosen. And that is where, I come in.
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Over the last couple of months( more like a year or so), i have been involved more with the communication manager than my own team manager. I mean, we sit, have some chat, crib a lot over useless stuff, have some coffee and sometimes bitch a bit too. You know, productive stuff. We generate ideas and then implement them. Not the sort of ideas my boss would want though. He would ideally want me to design and assemble a full Gas Turbine Panel, all by myself in our lab here in office. I cannot really comment if that’s easy or tough, for I know as much about a gas turbine as a class 2nd student knows about integration and differentiation.
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So when it came to Power-of-one (it’s really weird that a team-event has a name power of one), i was chosen over other morons. I let out a few curses under my breath, as of all the people in the organization, i am the most lethargic and least bothered about all these things. It’s just that people believe that I am the best at it. Which is really strange again. Anywz, so we all meet together to decide what needs to be done. It’s really pathetic how we have meetings for every god-damn thing. And then follow-up emails and follow-up meetings. It really irritates me to the core. I attend the first meeting nevertheless, with the most disinterested of faces though.
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So we had to come up with a series of god-damn events which we can conduct or something, on a given day. The COE Boss (COE is short for Centre of Excellence and it really took me a year to gulp down this fact, am still unable to digest it though), decided to have the event, you know the Power-of-one one, on a friday evening, as he thought people would be free to attend then. The up-side I realized was, for the employees obviously, that they could just leave for the weekend without having to go through the painful rituals of another corporate event. Of course, the homeless could stay behind, and the starved ones could stay back for a free dinner, but that’s more like it. They didn’t realize that, you know. I did, but i was not a smart guy to say it loud. Sometimes, I am a moron. I love being so. Especially at company expense.
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Anywz, So the boss decides that we should all wear the same dress or something on the given day. We said, we all don’t have a common dress. Also in any case 150 people in the same bloody dress, is more like a circus parade or something rather than a team. But the boss thinks that’s unity and all that, you know. I personally wanted it to be a theme party and we could have chosen a beach theme for the summers. But then, corporates cut me out. They never approve of my ideas. Not that i say them out loud. A beach part would have been unity , or whatever the boss wanted. I may be wrong. Who cares.
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Anywz, so the boss decides we should be given shirts to wear on the day. Bloody homeless losers, they jump like jokers at that and then throw the burden of arranging for the shirts on me. I didn’t mind much though, as it was still better than to be actually involved in the god-damn event. But it was still a pain, more when i saw those crazy people in the meeting so excited about the whole god-damn affair. Some of them even have crazy weird voices and all, like rats squealing or something. It just pains my heart when i see these mendicants in such offices.
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Anywz, so i had to arrange for some 150 shirts, 20 odd bags for the girls(who don’t wanna wear shirts. Good decision. I would have taken that too had I been given a choice. But no, men had to look like jokers that day) and some 25 gifts for the losers who would win something that day. Losers so like to win. Give them something and say that they won, and they would be on cloud 9 or something. I frankly don’t care much. I might be a loser too. But I don’t wanna win lame gifts. I think that just makes me a bigger loser. Still, i don’t care. I am not a loser. I might be but i am definitely not.
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So, over the next few days, i contact a vendor for all the above stuff. This vendor is supposed to be an official one, but he gave me such a pain in the ass. Deciding on type of shirt, colour of shirt, logo to be printed, sizes of people who didn’t knew it themselves, type of bags and cheap gifts, getting all these, bargaining, getting quotes, satisfying the bosses and the employees with everything, raising requests from finance, getting approvals, all of this i tell you, it killed me. I enjoyed it thoroughly though. It’s good to do something for the losers sometimes. They get happy and all, you know. Fancy stuff dude, fancy stuff. It still killed me. The vendor was a total ass, and he gave me some real pain in my own ass. And on top of it, I didn’t even care. I think that made things worse. But i thought, even the vendor didn’t care much about us. So, it was just a reciprocated feeling, I guess.
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Anywz, the stuff is all done now. I mean ordering and all that. Hopefully, we will not get the shirts on time, and save ourselves from looking a like total asses for one full day. Its funny though, in a weird way. The event itself is this friday. And am totally not looking toward it. Maybe, I’ll take a half day leave or something. Bloody hypocritice losers. Anywz, i was playing with a few circles on ms paint, and suddenly i came up with this. Thought I would share it with you.
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NOTE: This post is meant as a satire to the above-mentioned event and other such corporate events. Please don’t take it personally and take offence. It might not be an actual indication of things as they are.
THE MIRROR 99 