Saturday night

I love Saturday nights because it means I can drink as much as I want without being concerned how I will attend office tomorrow. On the last Saturday I went to a wine shop to buy whisky and brought wine and whisky.

I came home and started drinking wine. I drank my first glass of wine and realized that there is no point in drinking cheap wine unless one has company. So I called an ex-colleague and he told me that he is cleaning his room but will join me in half hour. 

The ex-colleague came one hour later and till then I had finished couple of glasses of wine. We drank at my terrace, finished the bottle and decided it was time to eat. We checked the time and it was about 10:30. So we went to the neared bar cum restaurant. 

We reached the restaurant and my ex-colleague told me not to order any hard drinks because he had to drive back home. I ordered a beer and told my ex-colleague that he must have one glass of beer with me. 

My ex-colleague asked me whether I had heard what he had just said and I replied yes and I know your capacity. Moreover we can’t eat fish without beer. The order of fish made my colleague understand the logic behind ordering beer and he accepted to share beer with me.

We ate fish and drank beer. Here is a tip if you like to drink. Beer after you have had red wine tastes awful. Don’t even try it. While we were having beer the waiter told us to give order for dinner because the restaurant was closing. Me and my ex-colleague studied the menu and were unable to decide what to have for dinner. We finally decided that tonight in dinner we will have anda bhurji at the railway station.

We reached the railway station and ordered anda bhurji at a thela. We were half way through our first bhurji when the thelawala told us to quickly finish our bhurji because he is leaving. We asked him what’s the reason and he pointed towards a police van. Too late he said. We gave him the money and decided to have our dinner at Cumsome restaurant at Pune station.

We reached Cumsome restaurant and found it was closed. I told my ex-colleague that we are fucked and he nodded. I asked him now where will we have dinner and he replied – Saale Bewade, you screwed us both. Now you provide the solution.

I looked at my ex-colleague and felt if I didn’t provided him with dinner, next time he will never come to my house to drink cheap wine. I thought where we can find food at midnight in Pune and told him we are at railway station and so food will be available inside the station. He said good idea and decided to talk into the station.

It was my turn to tell him Saale Bewade. I told him Saale Bewade and informed him you cannot walk into a railway station without a platform ticket. We reached where tickets are sold and found each counter had atleast one kilometer long queue. I told my friend WTF and he told me – Salle, Daru pila kar WTF kar kiya tune.

I wanted to tell him what he just said didn’t make any sense but the tone in which he had said told me that this is not the right moment to mindfuck him. I told him there is a counter near the entrance of platform no. 1 where only tickets for train to nearby station such as Lonawala are sold. We must try it.

We reached there and found half kilometer long line. However, this was the shortest queue we had seen on Pune station, so I decided to join it. My ex-colleague told me that since we need only platform tickets he will approach directly to the ticket counter. I told him good idea. Do it. 

He came back few minutes later and told me people were shouting at him as soon as he reached near the ticket counter. I told him just like movies and he nodded. I told him he had a good idea but unfortunately the people in the queue were too dumb to understand it. Now what he needs to do is to improvise the idea. All he needs to do is to find someone of our age in the queue and tell him that he doesn’t want a proper ticket. Just two platform tickets. Please help. 

My ex-colleague told me that I want him to tell someone in the queue that – Buddy, help me. I don’t want a proper ticket. Just two platform tickets. Can you do it for me? I said exactly and he went back to the starting of the queue.

I didn’t saw my ex-colleague for the next fifteen minutes and the queue kept moving forward at snail pace. I thought my ex-colleague was pissed off with me, had dumped me and left. Suddenly I saw him talking with a guy and then I smiled because I saw my ex-colleague receiving two tickets from the guy. I walked out of the queue and heard a person say – Bhaiya can u buy…… I cut him off by saying -  Quick, take my place before anyone notices.

We went into the Railway station and found platform number one offered us food that killed our appetite. Since we were no more hungry so we went to platform number two and found a stall selling juices. I asked my ex-colleague did he wanted to eat something from the nearby café coffee day stand and he said let’s have a juice first.

We had a juice each and I asked my ex-colleague was he still hungry. He replied – Dude I had half bottle of wine, one glass of beer, one fish, half anda bhurji and a pineapple juice. Are you still hungry?

I told him I wasn’t. I told him I guess it’s time to go home and sleep and he said yes. We started walking and I told him to stop. He asked now what and I pointed towards the bookstall that was open and told him – Yaar, I got to buy comics.

I reached the bookstall and asked a guy who was busy reading newspaper to show me Bakelal’s comics. He said he doesn’t have any Bakelal comics. I asked him do you have Doga, he said no. I asked any comics of Super Commando Dhruv and he said all I have is Nagraj’s comics. I have read Nagraj and I know reading them is as good as watching Shaktiman. Nagraj is the Mithun of Indian comics. He sucks. But when you are drunk, you want to see a C grade movie where the hero beats 20 guys in five minutes flat with the type action that will make you roll on the floor with laughter.

I picked two random comics and told the bookstall guy to show me Indian novels. He showed me Chetan Bhagat novels and I told him I have read them all. He showed me Trust me by Rajshree and I decided to buy it. If you are a girl then you must read this novel. If you are a guy then you just saved your 95 bucks. It is a great chick lit novel. Girls if you find it, do buy it and guys if you buy it then either you are stupid or drunk.

My ex-colleague told me now since we are through with drinking, eating and shopping, we must go home. I told him that I need to buy one more novel. My ex-colleague told me that you have just brought a novel and I told him I mean a Hindi novel. He told me you read Hindi novels and I told him I love to read Hindi novels.

I asked the bookstall guy to show me Hindi novels and he asked me – Sir, you want romantic or thriller type novels. I told him I don’t want to see any romantic novels and asked him to give me the bestselling thriller. He picked a novel and told me – Sir, Keshav Pandit. I told him – No Keshav Pandit for me. I have read it and I know its baakwass. The bookstall guy told me – Sir, you are wrong. Keshav Pandit is always bestseller. This series has got more than 100 novels. I replied - Wow. 100 novels. I have read one of them and I don’t want to read any of the other 99 novels. The bookstall guy showed me another novel and I immediately brought it. I would have brought it even when I was not drunk because the title of the novel left little doubt that I am going to enjoy it as much as a Mithun movie.  The title of the novel was – Maai Ka Lal.

My ex-colleague dropped me home and I started reading Maai ka Lal. I guess I would have read 50 pages when I fell asleep.

To sum up

Alcohol makes you stupider enough to do things that you would never do when you are sober.

Attending birthday party of a colleague’s son

Few days back a colleague gave me invitation of her son’s first birthday party. I am one of those people who never say no to a party invitation given by colleagues. I religiously give my contribution towards the gift that will be given to the colleague at the party and do not attend the party because I mystically start feeling sick just half hour before the party.

The person who invited me to her son’s birthday party is my quasi mentor. She is the colleague with whom I did my first project in my current organization. She taught me more than my mentor who was always busy carrying out important tasks for management. It is because of her that during my appraisal the VP (Production) said that you are the best when it comes to doing few tasks and gave me 5 stars for dedication to deadlines. When I heard it, I wanted to return the thanks for dedication towards deadlines because few colleagues have referred to me on my face the Bastard Deadline Guru.

I went to the party in a car with a male and 2 female colleagues, one of whom is a senior manager. We reached the venue and the male colleagues informed us that he will be leaving early because he has got some personal work tonight. I said that’s fine because I can always take an auto back home.

The colleague who was celebrating her son’s birthday introduced us to her husband. She introduced me as the chap whose blogs her husband has read. Her husband told you are very funny. I have also read your tweets, very funny man. It is always a pleasure to know that someone has read your blogs when you are sure that nobody reads your blog. 

However, the problem is that I am Cubicle Blues, I was with a senior manager and was saying my head – Fuck, I hope the senior manager doesn’t say forward me link of your twitter page because then I won’t be even given a chance to mail my resignation letter.

We took seats and the birthday cake was cut. We got our pieces of cake and I started gobbling my piece of cake and found three female colleagues and a guy standing in front of me. I wished good evening to the colleagues and a female colleague introduced the guy as her husband. I wished him good evening and then starred eating my unfinished piece of cake.

As I was eating cake I realized the male colleague had left. He didn't told me that he was leaving but I guess he would told the senior manager that Madam I have to go early today due to personal reasons and the senior manager would given him the required permission. I looked around and found idli sambhar chutni  was being served. Bingo. Dinner time.

As I was eating my 6^th idli I heard the senior manager say – Abhishek, what are you doing alone. Join us. Joining 5 female colleagues and one husband, excuse me but I would prefer to eat my dinner alone especially when I have the intuition that the talk is going to be on the topics which my to be wife would find interesting.

Unfortunately, it was the senior manager who had asked me to change my priorities from idli to conversation, and office or out of office, I don’t want to give any hint that I am not a team player. So I pulled a chair and joined them. The group was talking about something and I know they were talking about something because I could hear chatter and was still concentrating on eating enough idilis so that I won’t have to eat my dabba that night.

I felt I heard a colleagues say my name. I found a colleague was addressing me. I looked as her and said – Yes. She told me – Abhishek, I have to ask you one thing. I am surprised. We both have together worked for so long and I have never seen you at any colleague’s family function. Not even at marriages. How come you attend this birthday party.

I wanted to say to her that the colleague whose son birthday party is this is my favorite colleague but saying that in front of 5 female colleagues would ruin my reputation more than confessing that I like to drink beer. It would be like telling your current team leader that I really liked this job when I was working for that xyz team leader.

Since I didn’t wanted to hurt any of my colleagues’ sentiments so I said – Until today, I never got an invite for a birthday party and I love to eat cake.

We chatted for few more minutes and then it was time for leave. The senior manager suggested that the colleague who has come with her husband lives near my home and can drop me. I am a dedicated employee. If a senior manager gives a suggestion, I take it as an instruction and decided to tag along with the female colleague and her husband.

The husband of female colleague asked me where I would like being dropped and I wanted to say on the next red light. However, once you have decided to take a suggestion as an instruction then there is no point in showing attitude. So I told him anywhere in Koregaon Park. They dropped me in Koregaon Park about 5 kms away from my home. I thanked them and left as quickly as possible.

I checked the nearest auto stand and found it was so late that not a single rickshaw was available. This meant after having the dinner of idli sambhar chutni I had to walk for 5 kms to reach my home. Arrrhhhhhhh………

To sum up

I love to eat cake but what I love more is to write blogs about the mundane incidents of my life.

PS. Thanks a lot for reading my blog.

Office problems

Show me an office without problems and I will show you heaven. You can go to heaven only after you are dead. Hence, only zombies work in heaven. In normal office where I and you work, we have problems. I read somewhere that the only place where people don’t have any problem is graveyard. So if your office has problems and you are not a zombie then Thank God for not working in a graveyard.

The list of our office problems is endless. It begins with colleagues asking your help on computer that make you say fuck Microsoft to the useless HR dept whose only reason of existence is to give jobs to good for nothing people. There are people who want AC to be turned on, there are people who don’t want AC to be turned on and there are people who want people discussing about AC to shut up because they are talking on mobile.

If you work in a small organization then forget cafeteria there in not even a coffee vending machine and if you work in a big organization then there is a coffee vending machine and over-priced cafeteria food. If you buy food from cafeteria you get greasy food and if you don’t buy food from cafeteria and drink only coffee you have frequent trip to washroom. Washrooms either don’t have water or have wet toilet seats. Actually wet toilet seats are not a problem for me. I am sorry girls but God structured us boys in such a way that wet toilet seat really don’t bother us.

If you ask me what is the biggest office problem is I would say it is Boss. Now you also work in an office and would say that not true. The biggest problem sometimes is not the Boss but is Deadline. True. Accepted. Actually we both are right and our answers are incomplete. The biggest problem we both have ever faced is a bad boss with a tight deadline.

The bad Boss wants you to work overtime to achieve the deadline and a tight deadline means that you can’t achieve it. The bad Boss blames you for the mistakes and the deadline tell you to make those mistakes if you want to complete the project on time. So what do you do? You work hard and your personal life gets screwed. The management’s had a goal of creating a win-win situation and we end up with a lose all situation.

The only solution to this problem is to find another job. Don’t think things will change in your new job but it will allow you to have some piece of mind during your honeymoon period. Although I never realized why it is called that the new joinees are enjoying honeymoon period when nobody is fucking them but why bother knowing it. After all, a rose called by any other name will still smell sweet and as long as the boss or the deadline don’t make you cry there is no need to upload your resume on Naukri.com

To sum up

Every office has problems. The trick to have a good life is not to act like an idiot and accept more work but is to act like an idiot so that your boss will delegate more work to some other idiot.

Appraisals

The most awaited month for an employee is the month of April. It is a special month for every employee because in this month appraisals are conducted. Although in some organizations appraisals are conducted after every project, April is the month in which annual appraisals are conducted.

The most important thing for employee is his appraisal. It is like final exam. We all study to pass exam. If there were no exams I would have never even bothered to know the name of the subjects that I had in the current sem.

Of course, I am exaggerating things.  There are students who study for knowledge. There are employees who work because they want to learn. People like these make people like me look like assholes. Bloody idiots, I got no interest in Gita (Clarification: I am talking about the book and not the girl). Care for the work and not the results or the results will take care of themselves. Something like that. I don’t know the right line. I never had to take an exam on Gita so I never bothered to read Sharp Exam Notes for Gita (Sem IV).

According to my colleagues appraisals determine our value in the organization. They decide how much an employee is worth and whether he has learnt enough office politics plus developed email writing skills to be promoted. This is a wrong approach to appraisals.

The right approach to appraisals is to treat it like Mario, the video game. In Mario you started with a deadline. Reach the flag before the deadline or you are dead. The turtles are the daily targets. You either killed or avoided the turtles to reach the flag. There were two ways to increase your life. Collect coins or deliberately jump on selected turtles. This is equivalent to doing things that you will put in your CV when you start searching for a job after having a bad appraisal.

Management considers appraisal to be a single day process. For the employee it is not. For an employee the appraisal process starts when he receives the appraisal form. You read the several rows asking you to rate yourself on various parameters. After reading the form you think how you will get enough time in office to fill so many parameters in your appraisal form. You talk with the person sitting next to you that HR is stupid and decide that the best place to fill the appraisal form is your home.

You take the appraisal form home and fill it. You ensure that various scores filled by you are same at that of the manager filling your form with few areas where you deliberately give yourself a bit low or high ranking. You give yourself low ranking so that after working for more than one year in the organization you can hear your manger say to you – Hey, you are better than you think. You give yourself higher (just a tad more) ranking so that you can tell your manager that – I am much better than you think. Those who overdo the higher ranking part come out of the appraisal and speak words about the appraiser that will make their mothers call them bad boy.

Once the form is filled, you read the form carefully as if your life is dependent on your appraisal. Once satisfied that you have given the desired ranking to yourself, you are depressed enough to have a beer, call someone special and then sleep. The teetotalers skip the drinking part, call someone special and after making the special one understand that life in a cubicle sucks, go to sleep.

The only part now left of the appraisal form is the creative writing part. Here you need to provide explanations or do you SWOT analysis. You discuss the explanation part with the colleagues who double up as your close friends in the organization and google to know your strengths and weaknesses. I think people googling SWOT can fill awesome googling skills as their strength and lack of imaginative thinking as their weaknesses.

On the big day those who are hoping of a good appraisal come to office wearing formal ironed clothes. Those who are expecting OK appraisal come to office wearing clean tshirt. Those who are expecting bad appraisal come to office as if today is just another working day.

You walk into the conference room and find your appraiser waiting for you. Usually, your appraiser is your manager and you regret praying bad things must happen to this guy while he is driving. You must have prayed that good things must happen with this guy such as he gets a much better job and quits the organization before your appraisal. You take a seat, the appraiser smiles, you smile, you open your appraisal form, the appraiser opens his form and you both play match the following for the next one hour.

Those who have a good appraisal come out of the room smiling and tell the person sitting next to them that they fucked the SOB during the appraisal. The SOB had to change his ratings and accept that various screw up that happened during the last one year were due to normal distribution. Anyone in your place would have produced the same results.

Those who have OK appraisal tell the person sitting next to them that they think their appraisal got fucked. Those who have bad appraisal tell the person sitting next to them that the company’s IT dept is stupid. After all what’s the point in banning Naukri.com from office.

To sum up

There are no winners or losers in appraisals. There are people who can show-off in front of the management and those who can’t.

The good, the bad and the stupid

Smoking is addictive. The only thing I know more addictive than smoking is tweeting. Smoker die early, tweetholis don’t have an offline life. The only way to stop a tweetholic from tweeting is to cut his access to internet. I am a tweetholic, had access to internet on Saturday but didn’t tweet on Saturday. Why?

Nice question. The answer is not so nice. The reason why I didn’t tweet on Saturday is because it rained in Pune on Friday evening. If you are on twitter you must be cursing yourself for not being in Bangalore whenever it rains. Bangalore tweeps go nuts whenever it rains there and non-Bangalorian tweeps say – Only in Bangalore, rain and Rajinikanth movies have the same effect.

Just like Bangalore, Pune is also scorching these days. Since, it rained on Friday evening, it demanded a celebration. So I went to the nearest wine shop and brought two beers. I came home and decided to watch the movies that I had downloaded during the week and when I finished my second bottle I checked the time on my lappy, it said – 4:17 AM. When you realize that it takes you 6 hours to finish two bottles of beer than you must accept that you don’t have a natural flair for drinking.

I got up at around 10 AM on Saturday. I had received my annual appraisal form on Saturday and realized that I must start filling it. I opened the form and found the Taare Zameen Pe moment of my life – Akshar nache hai.

I kept my appraisal form aside and thought what I must do now. I checked my wallet and found 2,000 bucks. That’s a lot of money if you want to buy wine. I went to the wine shop and brought wine. Time around 11 AM. Last night God had told me that you must leave drinking to the more gifted ones but I thought practice makes a man perfect. After all what is genius? 1% inspiration, 100% perspiration…wait, that would be 101%. Damn it!! I am still carrying a hangover.

I drank wine. Actually, I substituted popcorn for wine and drank lots of wine while watching movies. I drank the whole bottle of wine and realized it was past 6 PM. Well, a day spend drinking is a sign that you are either an alcoholic or have enough drinking power to become one. Since I don’t have any of those, I had to puke.

I went to washbasin and opened the tap, closed my eyes and waited my nose to tell me that I must be ashamed of myself. Well, I waited and waited for quite a lot but my nose just kept smelling water. The problem with puking is that it is like love. Either its gonna happen or its not. You may think you are in love, you may think you are going to puke but when the moment of action arrives, you know the truth.

All I was doing at the washbasin was praying to puke and feeling God’s server was overloaded with too many requests and giving fail whale message. With my prayers rejected, I walked back to my room with a heavy heart and severe headache. I went to my bed, threw the annual appraisal form lying on the bed away and slept.

I woke up after midnight. The headache was there but was not severe. This meant I could eat the tiffin that was left at my door at 8 PM and go back to sleep watching funny ads on youtube. Not a great end to Saturday but tomorrow being a Sunday, I knew I had enough time to overcome my hangover.

I woke up on Sunday at around 11 AM. At noon I had no hangover. So I decided to have a good time and brought a Kingfisher. I finished the beer and like a good boy went to sleep. I woke up at around 5. Since I don’t have any friends outside office, I decided to kill boredom by shopping.

I went and brought a jeans. As I was walking to the cash counter I found a scheme that said buy 1 tshirt, get another free. Since I had brought a jeans and the offer was good, I picked two tshirts. I gave the clothes to the guy at the cash counter with my card and he told me the bill amount. I did some mental maths and realized the cost of tshirts was more than 600 bucks. Now I didn’t like the 1 + 1 offer but the tshirts were good so happily signed the receipt. Time 6:30 pm

It was still not time to sleep so I decided to go Crossword. I picked three books and then I came across Time’s collection of best articles published by it. Time is an American magazine and I am Indian. I can hardly relate to its articles and the cost of the book was 485. I read the first article and said to myself what the heck? What do I work for and gave 4 books with my card at the counter.

I know I should have said what the heck when I heard the bill amount at the clothes shop and should have gone back home with jeans and 2 tshirts but I didn’t. I went to Crossword and not to a friend’s place. It was not that I didn’t want to go to friend’s place but I had no option. I spend so much time in office that even after living for more than one year in Pune I don’t know anyone outside my office.

To sum up

Retail therapy was not invented for women. It was invented for losers like me. People who have no friends and always have money in their bank account at the end of the month.

Dear HR

Today is my CEO's birthday. How do I know it? A HR person mailed the CEO an e-birthday card with everyone@companyname.com in the CC. I appreciate the HR telling us that today is CEO's birthday and I have one small suggestion. Next time put everyone@companyname.com in the BCC. Noone in the company is gonna tell the CEO that you informed him that today is CEO’s birthday and we will love you for telling us not to forget to wish the CEO happy birthday.

Today evening I received the time of my annual appraisal. The time was 10 AM. I already knew the date of my appraisal because the HR had asked me whether I was planning to take a leave on 21^st and I had replied no. 

The person sitting behind me also received her time and date of her annual appraisal. She had said to the HR that she will be on leave on the 21^st. The date given to her for appraisal was 21^st April and timing 2 PM.

The person sitting behind me asked what must she do? She told me that she is ready to attend office half day for the appraisal. I told her to say to the HR fuck you because when HR doesn’t care for the employees then it should be fucked and without any guilt.

The person sitting behind me told the HR through the company’s internal chat client that she is ready to attend office during the first half on 21^st . The HR replied to her that her appraisal timing cannot changed.

The person sitting behind me consulted a senior manager and the senior manager asked her to tell the HR that if the HR wanted to schedule the appraisal according to their wish then why did they asked her whether she was on leave on 21^st. The person sitting behind me did the same and the HR didn’t replied to her message.

The HR sent her an email that her appraisal has been rescheduled to 10 AM on the 21^st of April. The same date, the same time by the same people that will be conducting my appraisal. This meant we and the person sitting behind me will be having our appraisals together. Well not bad, I will like to talk with management about increment when a friend is sitting beside to me.

Few minutes later I received a outlook notification that my appraisal has been rescheduled at 2 PM on 21^st.  I had already accepted the earlier notification send my by the same HR person for my appraisal at 10 AM. This meant the HR after receiving my confirmation changed the timing of my appraisal without asking me.

Now I had two options. Either I could accept the new appraisal timing or drop a message to the HR through the office’s internal chat client to know why my appraisal had been rescheduled. I already knew the reason of rescheduling my appraisal and didn’t have time to listen lies. So I accepted the new timing of my appraisal.

To sum up

I cannot blame all of my problems on my boss. Some of my problems are caused by the stupid fucking HR.

Sandwich

I learnt to cook Maggie and make tea when I was studying. Hence, by bachelor standards I am a good cook. Few days back I went to a colleague's desk to talk about a project and found her eating a sandwich. We talked about the project and during the whole conversation I was looking at her sandwich. I got all the information I needed and before I could say thank you to her, she asked – Would you like to try a sandwich?

The colleague is married and rarely interacts with bachelors. I can tell you that because she offered a bachelor homemade sandwich. Bachelors living away from home have a reputation of cleaning the tiffin when asked would they like to taste some homemade food. I am happy to report you that I kept the reputation intact and did everything that the tradition asked. I grabbed a slice of sandwich, thanked her and came back to my desk so that I will not have to talk with my colleague while enjoying the homemade sandwich.

The sandwich was awesome. I eat all of it and went back to my colleague to know was there any left. She asked me did I needed any more information and I found her eating the last slice. I wanted to ask her would she like to share the last slice with me but it would have meant my colleague would have told all her friends in office that I am mental.

If you work in an office than you know the most important thing for a bachelor is his reputation, especially among girls. I told you that the colleague who had offered me the sandwich is a she and forcing her to share last slice would have made the girls in my office to pass a resolution to avoid me as much as possible. Since my colleague was eating the last slice and I had all the information that I needed about the project, I asked her – What is the recipe of the sandwich that I just ate?

The colleague smiled and told me there is no recipe to make the sandwich because its just wheat bread and butter. As far I know there is only kind of butter and that’s called Amul and I have no idea about wheat bread. So I asked her – What type of wheat bread and she replied – Go to a shop and say you want wheat bread. The shopkeeper will give you the appropriate bed. End of conversation and I can live with it. After all I didn’t do anything that would affect my reputation.

Yesterday I brought wheat bread and Amul. I came to home and made the sandwich. It was ok but not awesome. I don’t know what went wrong. My sandwich was nowhere near that I had in office. Probably I put too much butter or the sandwich needed to be kept in a tiffin for few hours to get the desired taste. Practice makes a man perfect and I guess the same applies to women too.

I ate one sandwich and decided I will not have another. I looked at the bread and butter lying in front of me and decided never to trust women again. What’s easy for them is impossible for men. Anyway I still had lots of bread and butter left and was still hungry. Necessity is the mother of innovation and hunger is the perfect reason to innovate. So I decided to make another sandwich in bachelor style.

I searched my room and found biscuits, bhujia and tomato sauce. I like to eat biscuits before I sleep so I decided to improve the taste of sandwich with the help of bhujia and tomato sauce. I took two loaves of wheat bread, applied butter on them then put handful of bhujia on them and used sauce so that the sandwich could be called bhujia wheat bread butter sandwich with extra ketchup.

I ate the sandwich and it was not awesome but it was also not bad. Anything not bad is edible for a bachelor. So I made another special homemade sandwich and ate it. After having the sandwich I can tell you only one thing. If you thought that in the life of a bachelor the position of Maggie cannot be challenged they you must try a bhujia wheat bread sandwich dripping with ketchup.

To sum up

Do not leave a comment that you liked my post and I need to get married because I don’t want to marry. I have no interest in ruining a girl’s life.

Paisa Paisa Piasa

People in my office can be divided into two types. Those who work for money and those who have lots of money. I don’t have much money and I find asking for money from my parents as painful as getting my teeth pulled out.

I was never a bright student because I have an average IQ. Not a genius but also not Taare Zameen Pe. Being a person with average IQ and average scores, I went to a decent college, got a decent job with a decent salary, at least that’s what thought until Monday.

I decided to buy a chair on Monday. Not a simple chair but a chair with pad. The kind of thing that you might have used if you would have spend two years of your life sitting in an air-conditioned hall of a coaching class thinking – What am I doing here? I am never going to crack this exam and there are no hot girls in this class.

I told my colleagues that I wish to buy a chair and they suggested buying it from Bajiroa road. I told my two friends that I can’t go to Bajiroa road because I don’t have a bike and they both said they are willing to take their bike and me to Bajiroa road for shopping.

Now I had a dilemma. To whom I must say no. Both are my friends and colleagues. One works in IT support, another in accounts and I am in Production. We become friends by choice and not due to team building exercises. We all eat lunch together.

I told about my dilemma to both of my friends and they gave me simple solution. Three people can travel on two bikes provided I don’t have any problem. I said thanks to them and added – Let’s go to Bajirao road at 6:30 pm.

At 6:30 pm I called one of my two friends and he told me that we will leave for Bajiroa road at 7:30. We reached Bajiroa road at around 8: 15 pm. We walked to the furniture shops and found only three shops furniture shops were open. I thought the furniturewalas of Pune have gone on a strike but before I could tell it to both of my friends, one of my friends walked into a furniture shop and inquired about the type of chair I wanted.

A boy working in the shop told us none of the three shops had such a chair but we can buy the chair tomorrow because the furniture market remains closed on Monday. I wanted to ask the boy whether he was working on an off day so that he could take a comp-off later but that would have been a stupid question so I asked him how such the chair will cost and he told me Rs 650.

My friends said what a KLPD and I told them we must go to Ishaniya. It is a nice mall. My followers on twitter told me that I can buy every type of chair there. My friends told me it will take us about an hour to reach there and I told them with two bikes and no problem from my side we must go.

Before I tell you tell you about Ishaniya let me tell me you one thing about me. I studied in Gurgaon, the mall capital of India. I think Gurgoan has more malls serving Delhites than the combined number of malls in Bihar, UP and MP. So when I tell you Ishaniya is huge, it means it is really huge.

We reached Ishaniya and the first thing we found was that Ishaniya has a huge amphitheatre. If you are Mumbai Indian fan in Pune then you have to watch Sachin batting in Ishaniya. Watching the God of cricket at Ishaniya will not be only the best cricket experience you will ever have but it will also be the best Rs 150 you will ever spend.

However, that day Royal Challengers Bangalore were playing Delhi Daredevils and we were in hurry because the mall was closing. So we went to Home Town and asked did they have any chair with tabletop. 

According to Home Town it is a chair with pad / tablet and I was directed to the first floor that had the office furniture section.

One thing I will like to say about Home Town is that the staff they have is the best I have ever met in a mall. These guys patiently listen to you and offer suggestions that make sense. Not buy our products because you have made the mistake of walking into our shop types.

I went to the office furniture section and found Home Town only has chairs with half pad. This means chairs with pad on which you can only keep a notepad and not a laptop. The most shocking was the pricing of chairs. All the chairs were pathetic and the cost of the cheapest chair was Rs 1,200. That’s a bad product with a very bad price tag. 

The chairs shown to me were so bad that if they were gift articles then they would have been in the category of goods that you buy from 49/99 shop. The receiver thanks you for coming to the party and recycles the gift because it is useless, of bad quality and given only as a formality.

Since Home Town didn’t have the chair I wanted, we decided to go @Home. While walking through Home Town I realized most of the products had a price tag that ends with 999. It means sofasets are available for 21,999 and furniture for bedroom is priced at 32,999. I also found a bean ban (lazybag in Home Town) for 1,499. The same bean bag is available at Bajiroa road for 800 bucks. Seriously WTF guys. What’s the point in selling exorbitant furniture like Bata slippers. Indians are not stupid. We know 32,999 is 33K and 1,499 is 1,500 and not 1,400 plus some extra money.

The staff at @Home is also good. They told me that they don’t have the chair I am looking for but I can try a chair and table instead. They showed me branded Neelkamal chair for 650 and two tables for 2,000 and 3,200. End of discussion.

On Tuesday I went to Bajiroa road with the same two guys. I looked at the Rs 650 chair and asked the shopkeeper did he have any other type of chair with full pad. The shopkeeper told me he has but it will be expensive. I asked him how expensive and he told me Rs 1,000.

I told him to show me the chair and he showed me an all black color chair. The chair looks awesome and is very comfortable. If this chair had been gift article then you would have brought it for yourself because it is good, inexpensive and most important value for money.

I brought the chair by giving the shopkeeper thousand bucks. The shopkeeper smiled, said thank you and returned me 50 bucks. Damn it. I have been chanting give me value for money for last two days and when I get value for money I forget the cardinal rule of Indian shopping. The shopping experience in India is incomplete if don’t haggle over prices with the shopkeeper.

To sum up

Ishaniya is a big mall with big shops that will offer you an awesome shopping experience if you have a big wallet.

Overhearing a marketing guy

If you remember the newspapers few months back regularly told us that the India has been affected by recession and jobs have become scarce. This provided a genuine excuse to every Indian company to deny increments to its employees and ask them to cheer up because they were not being laid off. Since I also work for an Indian company the same happened to me with one exception. My company picked some employees from production and shifted them to marketing.

The management told us that the employees shifted from production to marketing were due to their performance. According to me it meant management thought those who were no good in production were been shifted to marketing. I tried to explain this to a colleague and she stopped talking with me. Well actually we didn’t have to much talk anymore. She was happy taking up the new responsibilities that will make her prospective employers’ think that she was a jack of all trades and I was stuck in Production.

What surprised me the most was the fear in people. Not a single person told that he is not going to shift to marketing because he was not an MBA (Marketing). It is so sad that we don’t have any Conan O Brien in India. No one in India dares to say to management that I am not your bitch.

The management after shifting few people to marketing realized that there was not enough space in the marketing department’s room for placing so many computers. So it decided to not to shift the sitting place of new people joining marketing. This meant I can now hear people calling customers and know that the customers think the only thing that is worst than our products is our after sales service.

There is a guy who has been shifted from production to marketing. He is very nice guy, very hard working with only one problem. He carries a slow clock. Due to his the work that others can do in eight hours, he takes twelve hours. Except being a bit inefficient I think he is a great resource. 

I told you before that there is limited sitting space in the marketing department. Hence, this guy sits on the same floor as I do. Today I got a chance of overhearing him having a telephonic conversation with a customer. The guy told the customer his name and the customer I think said he doesn’t know anyone with such a name. My inefficient workaholic colleague then told the customer that we had talked before about the product. I think the customer said yes because Mr Workaholic didn’t launch into an explanation on what our company does and why is he calling the customer during business hours.

I listened to the conversation and decided to concentrate on my work. The marketing guy was talking with the customer in the most co-ordinal manner as possible and I felt the customer was wishing the era where mobile companies charged for incoming calls would have been back so that he could lambast the marketing guy of my company.

To sum up

The marketing guys in my company are awesome. They talk with customers as if they are talking with an old friend and the customer treats them as if the person calling them is their ex-BF/GF.

Office killed the caste system

If you work in office you know that caste system is redundant. We all know work is worship, Boss is God and bonus is the proof that good deeds are awarded. We work in modern India. The place where a man is known is by his work as long as he is not the son of the CEO.

Today during the morning tea break a colleague said something in Marathi. I guess he said Jains are not allowed to do it and another colleague said well so what, you can do it after all you are not a Jain. The first colleague replied – I am a Jain.

The second colleague looked stunned. I thought he was pwned. He replied as sheepishly as you have been caught by your boss enjoying a siesta at your desk. He said – I never thought you were a Jain.

If you think my first colleague made a mistake then I think you are wrong. Caste system is a fail in office. No one cares about it. The only time I felt boundaries exist in India was during the Maharashtra elections.

During the Maharashtra elections Raj Thackeray informed us that Maharashtra belongs only to Marathi Manoos. He touched the cord of Maharashtians and since I work in Pune, naturally he found few supporters in my office. I am a Hindi speaker who in office becomes a Hinglish speaker i.e. all official communications in English and all unofficial communications in Hindi.

Raj Thackeray told Maharashtrians that those who don’t speak Marathi must be thrown out of Maharashtra. No one in office told me to leave Pune but whenever I asked my colleagues to translate me something that was said in Marathi, someone commented – If are in Maharashtra, then you must learn Marathi.

Initially I took it as a joke but slowly the tone became more and more aggressive and now I have stopped asking my colleagues to tell me what did they just said in Marathi. This has deprived me of few ROFL moments but it doesn’t matter after all nowadays all the official communications are conducted in English.

The only thing that surprised me, no shocked me was how can well educated professionals fall in line with Raj Thackeray. What Thackeray advocated was people must be divided on the basis of language when India is the proof that unity can exist in diversity. India is one and people who try to divide India for political gains are more dangerous than Maoists.

 To sum up

Asking me to learn Marathi doesn’t make you a hero. It makes an asshole who has forgotten India is one.

Email from ex-colleague

I learnt in school that volcanoes usually stay calm but when they erupt, they explode and throw rocks at people near them. As a person I am a volcano. I usually stay calm but when I explode my words are as good as big hot rocks. Once they hit a person he/she tries to avoid me as much as possible.

Today I received an email from a person who had quit our organization last week. The email was of the regular type that one sends to friends after he/she changes the organization. The email is marked like a forward to 10-15 people and says that I missing you guys, this is my new email id and stay in touch. The email I received followed the standard pattern with one digression. It ended with I am enjoying work.

As I soon as I read the last line I felt a seismal shift take place in my mood. The volcano that was silent since morning had exploded. I wanted to pull my keyboard out of my drawer and smash it on my table. This action might have made my colleague think I have gone crazy due to work pressure and like any sensible person they would have tried to distract my attention so that the security guard could overpower me and save the innocent computer.

I am sure this would have been a brilliant move by my colleagues but it had one flaw. I work on the second floor and the only security guard of my company sits on the ground floor usually reading newspaper or solving Sudoku. The amount of time taken to send the message that a man is bullying a computer and the security guard reaching to the second floor is enough for me to show my ex-colleague's email to my current colleagues. As soon as my current colleagues would have read ‘enjoying work’ they would have found my action completely rational and would have returned to their desks to smash their keyboards into pieces.

However, before executing my brilliant plan I decided to reply to my colleague’s email. I pressed the reply button and wrote:

Dear Ex-fellow passenger in the same sinking ship,

I am not at all feeling jealous after knowing that you are enjoying work. In fact I am doing great. I have just come to know a VP what has a companywide reputation of being pain in the ass has quit/fired. Also the company is working on a new plan so that our lives won’t ever again get screwed during deadlines.

According to the plan the employees will come to office in morning and will be allowed to leave office only after the project is finished. The management is currently busy making lodging and boarding arrangements for the employees and the HR dept is currently busy trying to figure out the legal costs for defending the company of kidnapping charges.

Some employees have said that they would like to meet their kids on weekends but I don’t think management will be making any exceptions to its policy guaranteed not to screw employees’ life during deadlines but to screw their life during the whole project.

Rest in my reply to the reply given by you to this mail.

All is well

With warm regards,

Abhishek

I thought about pressing the send button but decided not do so because I had worked with the ex-colleague and knew she is not the kind of person that could lie with a straight face. When one of her new colleagues would ask her why she is laughing, she would show her new colleague my mail. She doesn't have enough imagination to tell her new colleague that I just imagined that KKR won IPL, Shahruk Khan is dancing naked and Gangully is watching him.

To sum up

Never send an 'I am doing good at work' email to a frustrated employee.

Office romances

I have spent some time in the corporate environment. Fuck the jargon. It means I have been working for the last few years. During these years I have worked on several deadlines and always wondered when my colleagues told me that Mr X and Ms Y have been caught red handed in a mall, on a date that – How do people get time to flirt in office?

My first experience with office romance was during my first job. There was a guy who used to call his GF after lunch and spend so much time sweet talking with her that I sometimes wished to say him – Saale, pls go outside the room when you are talking on mobile. I once told a colleague that I found his post lunch puppy talk complete bheja fry and my colleague enlightened me that the guy sitting next to me is having an affair with the girl sitting one room away from us. I never bothered to know how interesting the people sitting near the girl found her post lunch marathon mobile chat because once you are enlightened you don’t give a damn to the colleague sitting next to you.

My latest experience with office romance was when I was checking the work of one of my colleagues and felt a sudden urge to the tell the person sitting next to me that this is the shittiest piece of work I have ever seen. The colleague told not to tell the same to the person who forwarded me the file because she was upset. I told my colleague she doesn’t has a problem when she works for the guy sitting next to her but when it comes to my work, I don’t even get crap, I get epic crap.

She told me not act like a jackass especially when I know the person just had a break-up. I told her I didn’t know she had a break-up. She always works for the guy sitting next to her and so we rarely talk. My colleague told me she has broken-up with the guy sitting next to her. I asked my colleague how the hell did it happened, I mean I didn’t even know they were seeing each other and my colleague told me that the whole office knows and what the hell is wrong with you. Nowadays you don’t talk much with anyone in office. Is there anything wrong?

I made a mental note not to spend too much time tweeting and sometimes talk with my colleagues about what’s the latest office gossip and told her – Nothing is wrong. I am a bit frustrated because of the tight deadlines and went back to work.

To sum up

Office romances prove there is little correlation between education and intelligence.

Reading manual

Today I was shifted to a new project. The team leader has a reputation of being one of the coolest people in the company and I can vouch that she is a great manager because I have worked on few deadlines with her. As soon as she entered office, I told her that I now a part of her team. After exchanging the pleasantries of how happy we were to work together again, she asked me was I comfortable with the role assigned to me.

The role assigned to me is related to one of the subjects that everyone hated in my class. It was one of the subjects for which everyone had one universal prayer – Please Bhawgan, passing marks dila de, I promise I will never bunk classes to watch movies. I sheepishly told her that I was not and she gave me a manual with instructions that I must finish reading the manual today so that I can start working on the project tomorrow.

I took the manual, came to my desk and told myself – If I knew I had to study in office then I would have never wasted so much time sitting in classes and day dreaming. I started reading the manual and realized the VP (Production) was standing next to my chair. I jumped out from my chair to tell him that I was just refreshing my memory and he told me that did I remember an email he had send me asking me to conduct a test.

I told him I remembered the email because I had prepared the test according to his instructions with the help of another colleague. However, the test was never conducted because of deadlines pressure. In short don’t mention during my performance appraisal that I can’t give you A for dedication towards deadline.

The VP told me that since there was no deadline pressure right now, we must conduct the test. He told me that he had enlisted the help of one more colleague to help me with the test. I thanked him for the extra resource and told myself that I can now delegate all the work and take credit for successfully conducting the test. The VP replied to me by saying that can we have a meeting regarding test at 4 pm and said – Yes, sure Sir.

The VP left with a smile and I went back to reading my manual. Another colleague told me that I was supposed to look into the matters that a colleague was doing before she left for better opportunities. I told her I will check it with the workflow whether I am supposed to do it and told myself I hate giving best wishes to the colleagues that leave the company only to make me do their work until a replacement is found.

At 3:30 I received a message from the VP that can we have the meeting now. I said yes and me, two of my colleagues and the VP had the meeting on the company’s terrace. The VP told us to prepare a small test because he didn’t wanted to stop work for more than 45 mins. Me and my colleagues were very happy to accept his suggestion because a small test meant we would have very little work while correcting the answers.

I came to my seat and picked up the manual. I checked the manual and found that I had read not even half of the manual. I went to the team leader and before I could tell her I needed one more day to finish the complex manual, she told me – Look I am really busy right now. No time to answer your queries. Why don’t you thoroughly study the manual for one more day and I will solve all your problems tomorrow before I leave. I said OK, came back to my chair, switched off my comp and said – All is well.

To sum up

The best days are not the ones that we spend working but the ones where at the end of the day we say – I don’t understand how did time slipped away so fast.

I hate Mondays

I hate Mondays. Actually I hate everyday on which I have to attend office. But I especially hate Monday because it comes after Sunday which I think is the best day of the week. Sunday is the best day of the week because there is no office, no work and no need to take a bath. I think any person except your mom who says OMG you are sleeping till noon on a Sunday is not your friend.

I don’t know how does time flies away on a Sunday. My Sunday begins with a yawn and ends with the sad thought that I am not sick otherwise I would have taken sick leave and not attended office on Monday.

The best thing about Sunday is that you don’t have to do a single thing because it is a Sunday. You can spend the whole day watching movies and even workaholics will say it was a Sunday well spent. Some of my friends think Sunday is officially the day on which we all must meet and I say I am too lazy on a Sunday to get out of the bed, change from shorts to jeans, go to a mall and watch people trying to have a good time. If you want to have a good time on a Sunday then don’t visit a mall. Just stay in your bed and sleep. If you can’t do it then you don’t deserve a Sunday.

Unfortunately, good times do not last forever and Monday mornings are the proof of that. My biggest struggle on Mondays has been to drag me out of the bed telling me that Sunday is over. The worst part of Monday is that as soon as you reach office, people start wishing you Good Morning. What is the problem with my colleagues? Why can’t they accept reality? It is a Monday morning and being a Monday morning how can it be good morning.

Attending office on Monday makes me remember of my Mom asking me to finish the vegetables in my plate. I never wanted to do it but I had to do it because I had been ordered to do so.

To sum up

Monday, I hate you. Please don’t come.

My earlier posts

Hi,

You can read my earlier posts here.