I never really liked going to school. I hated waking up in the mornings. The thought of sitting through those long hours of “Fundamental rights and duties” & “Tropical Grasslands” were enough to send me into a coma. I dreaded being pulled up for not answering a question in class. I was a pretty timid kid.
I am still a pretty timid Team lead. I hate Monday mornings. I start moping Sunday evenings and slowly brace myself for the week ahead. The single crucial decision that I make every morning – Work from home or Work? It’s a complex multi-variate analysis that my mind does everyday, my brain grapples with numerous conflicting factors and tries to churn out the most optimum decision – Is my manager coming in today? How many days have I already worked from home this week? Are my teammates going to office today? Do I have presentations/calls today? What do I fancy having for lunch today? In school it was a lot simpler – either fever or stomach ache.
There’s my outlook calendar, my very own little school bell. It warns me of the impending “Process improvement session” and “Budget reconciliation call” (today’s Tropical Grasslands) 15
minutes in advance. I grit my teeth, pop in a mild sedative and bravely forge ahead for the session. Each meeting, each session is a wonderfully meditative experience. Its amazing that we can say something like “It’s important to standardize and benchmark the process in order to effectively leverage information and build synergies” in almost any meeting and get away with it. My geography teacher wasn’t so liberal. She once whacked me with a foot-ruler for making a wild guess about where Digboi was. I still don’t know for sure where it is.
For all the freedom I miss the easy, friendly ways of olden days. Last month I suddenly lost access to the server and somehow logged myself out & I couldn’t log back into the server. I needed help and fast. I called the IVR and punched the Fibonacci series of numbers all through the morning before I reached a human being. I gratefully blurted out my problem only to be told to raise a ticket. Catch-22! I need my system to be set right for me to raise a ticket that my system is not working. Finally it took 4 whole days before I could grab somebody’s attention and then a couple of hours for them to set it right. There are times when I wish I could just run over to the corner store and get an excel upgrade or borrow a mouse from my cube-mate. But you can’t have everything, can you?
At least my appraisal is a lot less discriminatory than my progress report and a lot less embarrassing; I don’t have to show it to my dad – can’t imagine that one!
I am still a pretty timid Team lead. I hate Monday mornings. I start moping Sunday evenings and slowly brace myself for the week ahead. The single crucial decision that I make every morning – Work from home or Work? It’s a complex multi-variate analysis that my mind does everyday, my brain grapples with numerous conflicting factors and tries to churn out the most optimum decision – Is my manager coming in today? How many days have I already worked from home this week? Are my teammates going to office today? Do I have presentations/calls today? What do I fancy having for lunch today? In school it was a lot simpler – either fever or stomach ache.
There’s my outlook calendar, my very own little school bell. It warns me of the impending “Process improvement session” and “Budget reconciliation call” (today’s Tropical Grasslands) 15
minutes in advance. I grit my teeth, pop in a mild sedative and bravely forge ahead for the session. Each meeting, each session is a wonderfully meditative experience. Its amazing that we can say something like “It’s important to standardize and benchmark the process in order to effectively leverage information and build synergies” in almost any meeting and get away with it. My geography teacher wasn’t so liberal. She once whacked me with a foot-ruler for making a wild guess about where Digboi was. I still don’t know for sure where it is.For all the freedom I miss the easy, friendly ways of olden days. Last month I suddenly lost access to the server and somehow logged myself out & I couldn’t log back into the server. I needed help and fast. I called the IVR and punched the Fibonacci series of numbers all through the morning before I reached a human being. I gratefully blurted out my problem only to be told to raise a ticket. Catch-22! I need my system to be set right for me to raise a ticket that my system is not working. Finally it took 4 whole days before I could grab somebody’s attention and then a couple of hours for them to set it right. There are times when I wish I could just run over to the corner store and get an excel upgrade or borrow a mouse from my cube-mate. But you can’t have everything, can you?
At least my appraisal is a lot less discriminatory than my progress report and a lot less embarrassing; I don’t have to show it to my dad – can’t imagine that one!
Guess you got Mobilized...:)
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