Going to office on a Saturday...Think Again!!!

It was well over two hours since the alarm clock had breathed its last in its desperate attempt to wake me up from my slumber (I later checked the alarm to see that it was really working and I must have somehow missed its frantic screams though I am not entirely sure about my neighbor). I was already late for the office and was seriously pondering whether to give up on a luxurious full day undisturbed sleep for a boring run of the mill day in the office. To make matters worse I knew that my manager had a meeting to attend and most probably he won't be there for half the day (if I am lucky may be the full day :)). Now I know why ignorance can sometimes be a bliss.

I shook myself out of bed and within 30 minutes I was presentable enough to go to office. I reached the bus stand and waited there for about half an hour. Unable to get a bus that will take me somewhere within the walking radius of my office, I finally hired an auto rickshaw (after numerous refusals this auto driver was kind enough to take me where I wanted to go). After we had traveled some 4 km, we came across a sign which said, "This road is under repair. Please take the diversion." Ouch !!! There goes twenty more bucks towards reviving the Indian economy. Now if only the Western countries could learn from India the world economy wouldn't be in such a gloomy state. The auto driver looked at me and I wondered if he expected me to remove the barricade or he is making fun of me by thinking, "I asked you for a few extra bucks and you refused. This is what happens to people who refuse to give in to auto walahs' terrorism. Serves you right!!!". I smiled back in the hope that he will take the shortest diversion to the office.

My office is situated in the UB city. Now everyone knows Mallya is a rich and a spoilt brat. If you ever have doubts about the latter come to my office and I will show you the view from my cafeteria. It's exactly a foreign sea beach (with all the goodies of course ;)) with the sea and sand replaced with a large terrace. BTW the Bangalore Municipal Corporation (BMC as we fondly call it/use it to curse anything that goes awry in the garden city) did not quite agree with the taste of Mallya and decided to add a personal touch to the area. The result was a huge crater dug at the dead center of the main road leading to the UB city. They hope to give a boost to tourism in India. And the most wonderful thing about this crater is that it keeps changing its position once every two days or so. Nice work BMC!!!

When I reached office I was officially late by an hour and a half (that is the price of vacillating too much). When I entered the office I saw four other heads (attached to their respective bodies of course). Great!!! I can't be termed a latecomer when I was fifth to reach office (the strength is over fifty). I knew that there was an annual review meeting at Taj but I had never imagined that the meeting would be scheduled in the morning. I could have skipped...Never mind. I settled down at my desk.

One thing that I have learned in management (it may very well be the only thing) is that behind the veil of fancy titles people do cumbersome work (at least sometimes). If you manipulate accounts you will be called a fraudster (remember Raju) but if you are an MBA you will say, "He was an expert in the art of earnings management". Similarly you can refer a telecaller as a market researcher only if you have paid 12 lakhs to earn that right (read MBA degree). Now don't ask me the connection between my work and these blabberings.

A few minutes later I started my interactive session with the disgruntled customers. And at that precise moment someone had the good sense to switch on some music. Great!!! I banged my phone down and looked around for the source of musical inspiration only to find that it was my neighbor who was adamant at playing 1960's Hindi songs at a loud volume when I had to call up the customers and ask them why they had cancelled the orders for no apparent reason (as per the company). May be she believes that the music will soothe the soul of the disgruntled customers or may be they are not our customers (anymore) and hence screw them. Someone please pass me the earplugs.

After struggling through for a couple of hours and not finding anything interesting I turned to cricinfo to read the preview of the match that was going to take place that afternoon RCB Vs. MI. The page took five minutes to load thanks to the temporary dial up internet connection that the company has blessed me with. Then I found that the toss was delayed due to some reason. :( And finally I saw the reason. Two blasts had occured in the Chinnaswamy stadium (which is approximately five hundred metres from where I was sitting). Google had the good sense of providing me regular twitter updates on the search page. After watching the tweets for five minutes I had no more information about the blasts than what I had already garnered from a two line news report which I had read in some site a few minutes earlier.

I left the office in a hurry to see what had actually happened. When my bus passed through that area, nothing seemed to be out of place. There was a huge traffic jam as usual, the senseless plonking of horns and the omnipresent queue to enter into the stadium. I thought it was a false alarm. It was only when I read the newspaper the next day that I realized what had actually happened.

On a slightly lighter note, "This is what can happen to you if your organization doesn't know what WEEKEND means". So the next time you want to gift your boss something, don't forget to consider the oxford pocket dictionary with the above word highlighted and a bookmark at the right place (you can even highlight a few other words depending on your relationship with your boss especially if you have a job offer from another company :O). If it does nothing, at least you can claim to have attempted to increase the literacy rate of India.

Please note: This is the personal view of the author and the author is not liable for any decision that you make based on the above narration. Incidents narrated above are part of a bad dream and any relation with the "matrix" is purely coincidental. Standard disclaimers apply.

P.S. The last para of this post is hazardous. Readers are requested to keep it "out of reach" of small children (read your boss) to ensure your own safety.

an Obituary to term 2

Nothing excites me more these days than writing an obituary for something connected to IIMB (Please Note: students are excluded for NOW). When it comes to this place nothing matters: everything that we learned about in trend and seasonality analysis can be laid back to rest in coffin till we find the optimum way of utilizing the same in our lives. I will try to do justice to all the subjects that were part of second term but the readers always have the luxury of colorful feedback forms to fall back on.

Coffin

The most interesting subject that I have come across in my life. Why did it interest me? Because everyone in the batch knew that coffin was a very tough (understatement due to lack of adequate literary skills at finding a more suitable word) subject. Yet they studied it day in and day out. If that was not foolish enough, they also expected to answer some of the end term questions. Die hard optimists I must say.

The best thing about coffin was that if the respected authors said that “Factor X doesn’t affect the value of the firm” in chapter 16 then they would have written the subsequent chapter explaining how factor X does matter in finding out the value of a firm. So if you were one of those lucky ones who did not get time to study due to pressing engagements (read: date, sleep and sports in the order specified), there is nothing to crib about.

And those who managed to add all these pressing engagements to their ever expanding “to do” list, I sincerely hope that they quickly learn not to repeat the same mistakes in Term 3 (Is anyone listening, I suppose not or else I wouldn’t be hearing a lot of “No” these days).

Quantitative Methods II

This subject had the potential to become the most interesting subject in term 3 but thanks to the enthusiastic instructor it met the same fate as other potential interesting subjects. She had the exceptional talent of delivering each and every lecture in the same monotonous pitch & tone and with the same facial expressions. I doubt even if she were to detect a live bomb in the class room any of her expressions is going to change.


Marketing

Fact 1: I detest marketing.

Fact 2: Yet it was the most interesting subject in term 2 by miles (can also be attributed to the book by Kotler which had lot of pictures and if it were not for the sheer weight it could have qualified as a nursery picture book).

Deduction: Other subjects were….(yeah you can deduce the rest, remember CAT was not that long ago).

At the end of the 20 sessions even though I was not comfortable using terms in marketing, I had internalized the HMV-T series case, Pepsi-Coke case and the “Hamara Bajaj” campaign by Bajaj. Each must have been discussed in the class at least six times. One moment of glory that refuses to go away from my mind is the lecture when we were analyzing the Santoor advertisements. After seeing six different ads of Santoor in which the most beautiful lady (remember Einstein’s theory of relativity) in the commercial ends up being the mom of an omnipresent child, someone had the audacity to ask for a replay as he had missed something important. Even the creators of the ad would have felt honored had they been present there.

One last line from our dear rotund professor “Marketing is all about perception. It has nothing to do with reality.” It is left for readers to interpret the statement (of course at their own risk).

Operations Management

“The lecture will begin sharp at 1145 hrs and most probably will extend beyond the stipulated one and half hours”. That is my first note in the OM notebook (duly encircled and highlighted). Students had qualms about missing the chicken dishes in the mess if they did not reach the mess on time for lunch. But these mere worldly desires couldn’t deter the enthusiasm in our professor. Ask him anything and the first two words in his reply will always (fill rate of 100 %) be “In Ahmadabad…”.

Err...Excuse me sir. Can I know your name?
"In Ahmadabad, they used to call me…” (Readers are requested to complete the sentence).

Managing People and Performance in Organization

This paper is not for the faint hearted because you are expected to get everything by heart that is written in the book and the two voluminous reading materials that had been supplied for reference (read exercise, yes the physical one) purpose. If your resume (verified one of course) doesn’t mention that you are the national level mugging champion then you can very well forget about doing well in this course. Even all the motivation theories (we read about ten different breeds of them) could not do anything to make Maniwala rise even once from his heavenly chair.

Management Communication 2

If you are one of those restless souls (like me) who are intelligent enough to figure out that they have screwed up all the above papers and there is absolutely no way that this trend is likely to reverse in the coming semesters, then you need to take Management Communication 3 as an elective (i.e. if the academic council ever decides to offer it). It is not because you will do well in the subject but because it will teach you how to package and sell those horrible grades in the final placements (or maybe I am expecting too much from dear AK).

Please note: This is the personal view of the author and the author is not liable for any decision that you make based on the above narration. Incidents narrated above are part of a bad dream and any relation with someone living or dead is purely coincidental. Standard disclaimers apply.

musings on Summers 2010 cont...

DATE: November 9th, 2009
PLACE: Conference room, PDC (Prisoner Development Center), Kaala Paani
TIME: 2000 HRS

Around thirty odd young people dressed in prisoner’s attire were swiveling nervously in their chairs. There were three guards keeping an eye on every movement that was taking place in the room. They were waiting for the command from the higher authority. The situation was gloomy and the faces inside the conference room told you the story. Just then the door creaked open. None of them turned around except the three guards because they knew who had just entered. Aplihs was what she was known as within the walls of the prison. Her real name was not known to anyone and no one dared to ask her. The guards smiled at her and all they got in return was an icy cold stare. She walked up to one of the prisoners and said, "You are ordered to report immediately to the control room."

“Mr X. We received your release order a few hours back but we thought we would let you have a little more anxiety before breaking the news (Bloody sadists). You are now free.”

This was the news that I had been waiting for the last few days. I was relieved and that was the only emotion that I truly felt on hearing the news. No joy or happiness but sheer relief.

It was day 3 (fourth day) of the summer placements and I had absolutely no interest in the role that I had just accepted. But then one of my friends had urged me to show genuine interest in something that I was not really interested in. Her advice worked but then the question still remains. “What am I supposed to do during the two months?” But the silver lining is that I can hope to clear the dues of placecom from whatever little I will be receiving from the company.

I cannot desist myself from mentioning some of the “out of the box” discussions that took place during these days. Let us have a look at the best (actually the worst if you are the candidate) of the lot.

In-Dra-Mah & In-Dra-Mah (Prior to the GD):
"We as a company want only Bingo chips. Some among you are Bingos and some of you are Lays. We have designed this GD to identify the Bingos among you......". "Ahhhhh %#*^&%#@ stop it please." (That was my exact reaction.)

Ton-Ben-e (prior to the GD):
"Did any of you attend our pre-placement talk?"
Pat came the chorus reply from the group, “No, Sir.”
"Good. Have you any idea about the role that is on offer for the summer internship?"
This time the reply was, “No, Sir” followed by giggles (yeah I know we will never grow up).
"Excellent, now I can see why all of you are so interested to join the company!!!!!"

Kitt-Rec Ser-Ben-Ki (in the interview):
"We have a new God in the market. How will you sell him/her? What will be the gender of the God?"
I wished I could have replied,”Do I look like a member of RSS to you? May be VHP or Al-Qaeda?”


Please note: This is the personal view of the author and the author is not liable for any decision that you make based on the above narration. Incidents narrated above are part of a bad dream and any relation with someone living or dead is purely coincidental. Standard disclaimers apply.

musings on Summers 2010

Congrats Kasby, Rotlu, Nartaki, Tamatar, Lizzie, Satprem, Chandu, Deb and Shini. Phew!!! Finally the list is over.

Welcome to the world of summer placements @ a B school. If you thought that clearing the CAT would be the end of all your troubles, then think again and may be, for heavens sake, use something that exists between your two ears (if you can't figure this out then probably you have just empty space there).

The Parrot Idea: This Eureka moment occurred at the end of dayZ (day 0) when we returned to our rooms dead tired. The idea is very simple. Buy a parrot and place it in a cage ( sorry IIMB, pun unintended). Arrange for cards that have company names on it and another set of cards which have the names of the students on it. Prod the parrot to pick a company card. Ask the company representatives how many students they want to hire as summer interns and then again ask the parrot to pick the required number of students. Job successfully completed. No scheduling issues (ask people who were at the receiving end of it during dayZ), no biases (unless someone knows how to negotiate with a parrot) and of course no need for commando type walkie talkies which fail to function everytime you need them.

My only concern is, "Will I be able to pay the dues of placecom from my internship money?"

Just for the heck of it, I have included some excerpts from conversations which have happened during the placement week:

"The newspapers only publish what we do not tell them". Laughing at this intended joke is mandatory. Otherwise you might be risking your summer placements. Now you can all guess who said that.

"If i am unlucky and I get selected by Morgan Stanley, then what will I do?" Shitty situation, right?

"50 percent of the reason why everyone is here is summers and the rest 50 percent of the reason is the finals"

"All this is a lucky draw. At the end of this madness you will find the right company. This is just a part of the process and it has little significance in the long run. Do not worry if you are not selected". This was mentioned by the HR of firm "X" just before a candidate was going to be interviewed by the VP of that firm. A few deductions from the above quote:
1: The HR derives sadist pleasure by freaking out the already freaked out candidates (if that was possible).
2: The VP of the company has nothing to do but interview those candidates who have potentially been rejected by the HR (it is anybody's guess as what the HR was looking for).
3: The longer the run, the lesser the impact. (Be ready to live for a thousand years if you do not want to be overtly disappointed at being rejected for a job).

To be continued further......

Please note: This is the personal view of the author and the author is not liable for any decision that you make based on the above narration. Incidents narrated above are part of a bad dream and any relation to someone living, dead or yet to be born is purely coincidental. Author assumes that the readers have enough gray matter to distinguish between fiction and reality. Standard disclaimers apply.

Journal entry for a day @ Bschool....hope the balance sheet matches :)

"Oh shit, that alarm clock is just not loud enough. I will have to buy a new one". A new day. Same old profanity. Ask the block neighbors and they would be swearing too ("whose damn alarm was that !!!!!"). Luckily I do not have time for that as I have exactly ten minutes to reach the classroom and I do not want to be standing outside a locked door having sacrificed my sleep. After brushing my teeth (just for the sake of it), I do a quick search of my room (Why have they not thought of Google room search ?) to find the notebooks. But wait a minute. "What day is it ? Oh no its Tuesday'. I had to read a case (not that any other day would have made any difference !!!!). NOW RUN. I make it just in time to occupy my allocated seat. The professor walks in, shuts the door and looks around as if trying to spot someone who doesn't look sleepy. All the students stare back at him as if shouting "Hey c'mon, it is 8 in the morning." The only thing I remember from the lecture is the prof saying "Any questions ?". Ahh, it's time to get up. At half past nine I rush to have my breakfast (remember I brushed my teeth :)) and come back to attend the next lecture. It is a better effort from me this time as I manage to watch other people around me trying to find innovative ways to sleep. The prof acts as if he is the only person in the room. After one and half hours its time to wash my face, yet again.
The next lecture is QM. If I do not stay awake, he will probably find out the conditional probability of my getting a DCP in his lecture. After all the torture its time for lunch. No, I argue with myself that sleep is more important. I skip the lunch and head straight to my room. When I get up the comp screen is full of reminders. I go on clicking the snooze button till all of them disappear.
I am in the Mancom presentation class and everyone is waiting for the professor to arrive. He is the director of the movie "Seventy five ways of not giving a presentation". After capturing our skills on camera, he promises to send us the videos so that we do not miss out on the fun. I remember that there is a place-com form submission and I am yet to fill up the form. I open the booklet and the first question is "Tell me about yourself". "Oh no Not again !!!!" After struggling through the questions, I start wondering how the hell did I clear my interview. Then I deposit the form with a place-com member and he gives me a "thou bloody mortal" look. Yeah the place-com members consider themselves God here. They might just be true. I do not know and I have no enthusiasm to find out.
It is dinner time and I can not decide which one is worse....skipping the the meal or eating the food on offer. I need something to survive and I push the food down my throat. The cell rings. Oh I have a group study session (the best way to pass whatever time you have in a B school). After trying hard for two hours to study, we decide that we need a break and we head off to the Amul shop. There we meet other groups and now it is a inter group study session. After wasting enough time, some one has the audacity to propose that we should break up. Everyone looks at him as if he had disturbed a very important business meeting. After two more hours everyone is too tired to continue and we trek back to our rooms. I fiddle around with my alarm clock and then dive on to my bed.

I wish someone could turn off that light.....


Please note: This is the personal view of the author and the author is not liable for any decision that you make based on the above narration. Standard disclaimers apply.

B school life : a sneak preview

"OMG I have made it to IIMB" quickly changed to was it the right decision, should I have waited for a few more years, is it really worth the effort, is this what I wanted from my life ? But then we don't have the luxury of retrospection without actually taking decisions. Many will argue that there are thousands of people waiting outside desperate for a chance to get into these hallowed portals. Well the grass always looks greener on the other side. I would love to ask them about their opinions after they had a chance to experience this sort of life.
Lets get back to all the action. I will try to give you a brief snapshot without being too biased (if that is possible). First week was the most terrible of the lot (soon I realized I couldn't have been more wrong). The seniors played prank upon prank on the hapless souls (facchas & facchis) who were too dazed by the momentous occasion in their life to even react to what was going on. By the end of the week I had grown apathetic to everything that was happening around (a great start to a B school life !!!). Then the second week came and the professors warned us that the fun part was over and it was time to get serious (wtf). Before I knew what I was supposed to read, we were bombarded with a slew of assignments, presentations, quizzes (for the uninitiated they have nothing in common with a GK quiz but are the innocuous looking synonym for a "graded test"). A few hours later (or so it seemed) I found myself sitting for my midterms. Throw in a few mandatory documentaries that you have to attend, a few placecom GBMs, some guest lectures and you get an idea about the kind of freedom you are getting in a post graduate course. Quite an exciting life !!!! The worst part is people here did not have time to go out after the exams because they were busy with their projects (give me a break). If you want your life to be full of worksheets, slides, bullet points (and of course the money), this is the place to "B". Unfortunately I do not share the same aspirations.

I feel lost in this crowd of super achieving individuals.....


Please note: This is the personal view of the author and the author is not liable for any decision that you make based on the above narration. Standard disclaimers apply.