Oops

I work in Production dept. Yesterday I received few emails that were sent to my departmental group discussing few productions issues. The email thread was started by the Chairman by sending a mail to the COO and the COO replying to the Chairman with CC to my departmental id saying it will be better if we have a meeting on these issues. The Chairman said 2:30 tomorrow will be fine and someone send request through Outlook to everyone in the department for a meeting with the Chairman and the COO at 2:30 pm.

Today morning I received a message on the company's internal chat messenger from the person scheduling the meeting at 2:30 whether I had accepted her request for the meeting. I closed the message because I had accepted the meeting request and she should have received the message of my acceptance in her inbox. The senior manager sitting next to me shouted what is the need to confirm we will attend the meeting when our accept or reject decision would have been lying in her inbox.

After lunch the person scheduling the meeting came to the production floor and asked the senior manager had she accepted the meeting request. The senior manager said of course, I have and the person left. After the person scheduling the meeting left, the senior manager told me something really bad is going to happen in the meeting. I told the issues in the mail were not serious and she asked me then why is the person scheduling the meeting asking us again and again are we going to attend the meeting. Her comment made me nervous and till 2:30 all I did was to track the India v Sri Lanka watch on cricinfo.

We reached the conference room at 2:30 only to find it was occupied by the COO and few marketing people. As we waited for the meeting to finish, the person scheduling the meeting asked the COO for how much more time the current meeting is going to continue and the COO said 5 more minutes. We stood in front of the conference room for 15 more minutes discussing why the Chairman had called meeting of my whole department and were relieved when we got to know the Chairman yesterday had asked the person scheduling the meeting what was the need of sending meeting invitation to so many people.

After waiting for 15 minutes in front of the conference room we all came back to our desks and after 10 minutes got the message the Chairman and the COO were waiting for us in the conference room. We reached the conference room and the first thing the COO said before we could sit was, “Sorry. We need inputs only from senior managers.”

Happily we all left the senior manager sitting next to me in the line of fire and went back to our workstations. Few hours later the senior manager came back to the production floor and gave me a piece of paper. The paper contained few issues that my department was facing and after reading one after the another issue I started suggesting the solutions. I stopped while reading the second last issue and told the senior manager I don’t know what does this means. I really can’t fathom what they want to do with an internal software that we are using. The senior manager said the VP(Production) will send a formal mail regarding the issues raised in the meeting and by the time we received the mail she had left for the day.

I read the word again, scratched my head and realized the person who had developed the internal software was still working with us. I reached to his desk and found he had left for the day. I went to his assistant showed him the word and asked him what does this means. The assistant smiled, told me give me 2 mins and reached to the mouse of his computer. I told him you are not allowed to google in such a tone that people working near him stopped working and started looking at us. I was feeling like a jackass when the assistant touched his mouse because I had forgotten google has all the answers and for the answers it doesn’t have, the management will never ask you to work.

The Assistant told me then I must contact his Sir and I went back to my desk and called his boss. The boss said he was driving and will call me back soon. He called me back and asked me what the problem was. I said I want to know the meaning of this word and he replied, “Huh!!! Abhishek, really, can we talk about it tomorrow?” I said ok and the call was disconnected.

Now my only hope was google. As I said before Google devta knows all the answers and so I googled the word. Google told me this word belongs to the field of pure mathematics that deals with shapes, also known as geometry. As I was trying to understand how geometry will fit into our internal software a colleague passing by my desk asked me what you are doing.

I told her I am unable to understand how geometry can improve our internal software and she replied, “Abhishek, don’t worry. Even I don’t understand this word. You know, I am sure tomorrow the VP(Production) will send a mail clarifying the confusion that this word has caused and it will say – Sorry for the typo. The correct word is ………”

To sum up

Thanks to everyone that is making mistakes at my office. Without you this blog post wouldn’t have been possible.