Hell Frezes Over

This last week has been crazy at work, and by ‘crazy’, I don’t mean busy or hectic, I mean, ‘crazy’; literally!

So I have a new boss, who was visiting the India office and being the only pretty girl in the team, and no technical skills or expertise, I was the easy target for all the administrative duties: i.e. taking care of IT and access card issues, booking cabs, making restaurant reservations, dressing up and receiving him from the hotel. Sometimes you really wonder about the use of HR anyway. Now since I am perpetually in my ‘corporate world sucks’ mode, I do not invest in formal wear on principle and I also don’t have a car. So on such occasions, I find it rather embarrassing to dress up in my shabby clothes and enter a 5 star hotel in an auto (cabs don’t ply short distance in suburban Mumbai), sandwiched between luxury vehicles. The embarrassment reaches its peak when I am stopped at the main entrance by the security and a dog just walks inside the auto.

We also had long-winded meetings and they all lived up to the expectations of a successful meeting, i.e. wastage of man hours with no concrete results but a feeling of satisfaction. Now, one way to measure the success of a meeting is by counting the amount of meaningless jargon thrown at your face, while the other person is rambling on, operating under the illusion that he is making sense…

Jargon 1: This year we should sharpen our offerings to focus on more strategy/high-level projects.
What it means: This year, we don’t expect to have too many projects in the pipeline.

Jargon 2: We should evaluate our current subscriptions to the various databases and make the necessary adjustments.
What it means: We should start copying from new sources, as people have now figured out that our forecasts are really those of XYZ and ABC.

Jargon 3: We should avoid re-inventing the wheel and leverage the best practices already existing in the marketplace.
What it means: We don’t have budgets or expertise to introduce new innovations and therefore we should follow the herd.

Jargon 4: We should enhance our interactions with stakeholders and encourage them to take ownership of projects.
What it means: We can’t solve their problems; we can only PRETEND to care.

Jargon 5: India is a country rich in diversity and natural resources with an extremely young and dynamic workforce.
What it means: I don’t know the answer to your question, but please, please transfer me to the front end.

Hell has a new synonym; it’s called Knowledge Process Outsourcing…