Much to my horror I found out that my name was in the late comers list in office. I had come in late 4 times in the month. Upon checking my record, (we have an electronic system) I found out that on each of these occasions, I had been late by 2-5 minutes.

Now I am an employee who takes much pride in the work that I do (All HR employees usually say that. Rather we are hired, to keep saying that). So getting to know (in ways which cannot be termed as sweet) that I have been a DEFAULTER, confused me.

I wondered as to what really defines productivity and although I cannot say what does, I did come up with a list of what does not!

 

 

# 1

The In Time and Out Time

The sight of people waiting since 5:45 to punch their cards at 6:00 is very fascinating. We are still judged by the time we came in and went back home. But can this ever meaure ones productivity at work? Thanks to service industry and with more and more marketing people flouting all rules of In time and Out time, this scenario seems to be changing, albeit for some industries.

Also Indians are obsessed with late sitting, and working on weekends. In most western countries, you will not find anybody in the office at 5 pm on Fridays. Are they not productive?

 

 

 

#2

Time spent at your place/ on the computer:

Now now now… do I need to remind anybody of the “things we do” in our seats? Internal chat, internet, games (I know a few people who still play solitaire and minesweeper!), facebook, watsapp and ……

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#3

 Meetings

“I’m in a meeting. Can I call you back later?” a colleague from another location forever seems to be in some meeting or another. On one day I ask him point blank “What was the meeting about?”

“Regular Monday Morning meeting. Thankfully got over in two hours”

“2 hours?”

“Yeahh… One hour we hear about the Weekend Adventures of Amit (his boss) and then get fired for the work we were supposed to do over the weekend”

Management Gurus have since time immemorial, stressed the importance of meetings. But people don’t know how and why to conduct a meeting. Without a fixed agenda, meetings become a place for internal gossip and tea ( with Co. sponsored biscoot)

 

 

#4

 No. of Mails you receive

I called up a senior colleague one day to find out why he had not been sending employees from his team for trainings. “I get hundreds of mails each day. Probably I missed yours.” Hundreds of mails? Time for some delegation of work I say! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am sure you can come up with so many things on which we judge our employees.. the question then is if not this then what?

 

For me a productive employee is on who :

• Delivers on time
• With Minimum Revisions required
• With Quality that is appreciated by Internal and External customers.

 

 

Whaaadsay???

 

Abha Deshkar

20th May 2013

 

From copying assignments for 4 years straight… to worrying that the credit of my work shouldn’t go anybody else..

THINGS CHANGE

From finding the comparatively cleaner jean amongst the 3 hanging on the door… to arranging clothes for the entire week on a Sunday afternoon…

THINGS CHANGE

from “I’ll eat something between classes” to “I must have breakfast before reaching office”

THINGS CHANGE

from purposely entering class at 9:15 for a 9 – o – clock lecture to making sure the card is punched before 9….

THINGS CHANGE

from putting your heart in everything you do…to keeping your heart and brain separately in the office…

THINGS CHANGE

from watching a movie at 10 am at 80 Rupees to shelling out 300 bucks for a weekend show

THINGS CHANGE

 

from “I dont care” to “What will others say ? ”

from Day dreaming to to being Proactive…

from picking up fights to being articulate….

DAMN!!!  THINGS CHANGE!

 

from bitching about girls….to bitching about girls…

thankfully some things in life never change

 

Abha Deshkar

4/3/2012

The little girl is now in her teens

Although a little awkward, she does what she believes,

Treading her way, finding her path

Life is a little bit jumbled right now

 

Parents and teachers are just all fine

It’s the friends, who are difficult to handle all the time

First crushes and the breakages come along

Life is a little bit jumbled right now

 

She comes back from school with a mood that’s sour

Shuts herself in a room and cries for long

“Im going to bed, I don’t want food”

Life is a hell jumbled right now

 

Her mother is a silent spectator

Angry with the way life is dealing her baby

She too has been through this and so she agrees

Life can be a little jumbled sometimes

 

She knows her baby needs a cuddle

A little love can clear the muddle

She knows everything will be alright

When she tucks her in for the night

 

She knocks at the closed door

And is greeted with an angry “GO!!!!”

“How many times have I told you,

Im really sick and tired of you…..”

 

Hurt and in despair, the mother backs out

Knowing that its best to stay away

She continues to worry, but that too from a distance

She misses her daughter, who hugged her at each instance

 

And said…..“Mommy mommy tuck me in…”

Such that the dragons of those bad dreams

Cant take me away when I’m asleep

and I sleep a sleep that’s deep

 

Years have passed, the teenager now grown,

Leaving the pleasures of her dear home

Settled for a job that is far away

“its necessary” is what they say…

 

She wakes up one night, it’s a horrible dream

There is nothing right, or so it seems

There are dragons all around (or are they within ? )

I wish somebody would tuck me in!

 

I wonder why I need it now

The silly games of childhood seem so forlorn

Until I realize its my mother I miss

How I wish she would tuck me in!

 

Sleep comes but not too easily

The guilt in the chest makes it hard to breathe

just for tonight, any other day I wouldn’t insist

How I wish somebody would tuck me in!

 

“tujha majha jame na tujhya vachun karme na”

Abha Deshkar

5/1/2012

Nah. Not really. Actually I am all for those mushy mushy love stories… the tall, dark, handsome men, who are considerate and ambitious and perfect husband material. 

What I do hate is the reality.

Whatever happened to those men who went down on their knees.. bought flowers…and liked taking long walks…

Are they real or are these writers writing stories just for emotional fools like me!

So one day I sat down to compare these “Perfect Men” with the real ones and what I found surprised me immensely…. Here I have compiled most of it

The real men don’t carry flowers.. coz they carry waterbottles for us…

The real men don’t need villains to cause a rift with their Lady Love. They have an inbuilt mechanism for it called “EGO” …..  and yet when this very EGO fetches them a Job on themselves, there is nothing more we are proud of!

The real men don’t fight hooligans in the train/bus. “When you are with me, we are taking a cab” they declare.. now how do you fight that???

The real men fail to understand why a pen drive is not such a good idea for an anniversary gift. And yet when you remember them every time you use it, you know that they were right somewhere.

The real men for some reason best known to them hate walking in the rains. But isn’t that the most romantic thing ever?  “Lets wait, we will get more time with each other” and now no matter how hard you try you can’t get angry when they put it this way.

Unlike the Heroes who thrive only on love the real men have mundane things like colleges and offices to attend. “That’s for us” they say…  and we stand there speechless…..

The real men somehow don’t understand the Eye language ( now how difficult is that!!)  and yet they write programs in languages called C and Java that actually run the company!!

And unlike the end of every movie….Its surprising how the real men do not put their lady love in trouble. Sheaa… I will never get to be the heroine I thought I would be one  day………          Instead they say “you are my responsibility…..” and suddenly its better to be weak

 

So dear Shahrukh, Hrithik, Ranbir and Tom,

Your ratings have slipped

I’ve realized how easy it is to be perfect for 3 hours in a movie, but difficult be even be 50% of that in real life. That explains why English movies are even shorter!

All the real men out there, you move ahead!!!!

The more I get to know the real men, the more I love and respect them.

Cheers to the REAL men! (though we can do with some flowers )

Abha Deshkar

23/10/2011

 

At last I have some time for me

I proclaim one Saturday evening

as you are not coming to see me tomorrow

coz of this stupid exam thing

 

I thought of the many things I could do tomorrow

things I’ve been postponing for quite some time

take a long Sunday bath, clean my cupboard

or I could even put down a rhyme…

 

But its Sunday morning now

and all I can do is fume

I even finished painting my nails

And now I roam from room to room

 

I hate cleaning my cupboard

lack of time is only a blame I put on you

and what’s the use of cooking something

when people to eat are so few…

 

I thought I’d go shopping

coz you never let me do it with you

But I’m bad at shopping alone

and then you’ll disapprove of it later too

 

And so I sit down to write this letter

on this rainy Sunday afternoon

to tell you how much I miss you

without you I have nothing to do..so just come back soon…

 

 

Abha Deshkar

28/8/2011

 

Just about now, I was chatting with my good old friend Ojus Narawane about the lost and gone good old days when he dug up a long lost poem which he had written from his mail archives. Being the nostalgic person that I am, I could not resist the temptation of posting it here, with his permission of course! Its called-

Be Right Back

There are times, when no one understands YOU,
Even your near dear ones, seem very distant to YOU,
Clearly there is something wrong with YOU,
’Cause the entire world seems crazy to YOU,
Wandering all alone, your beliefs and faiths you QUESTION,
Asking whether your grandma’s advice still works in today’s GENERATION,
Sometimes there just seems to be a lot of CONFUSION,
And your mind gets exhausted with too much of the TENSION,
I don’t know WHEN my life, will be on TRACK,
Or when will I retrieve, the patience that I severely LACK,
But when things get fine and a joyful life becomes a FACT …
I’ll give you a big tight hug my friend, and tell you – I’m BACK !

—-

And when I was posting the first poem he dug up something else from his bag of archived poems written during the engineering days. Here is one called –

The Wait…

FEELINGS are the soul’s EMOTIONS,
LOVE is the soul’s CRAVING,
A lonely soul asks for NO MORE,
Just SWEET gestures of LOVE and CARING,
HAPPINESS is what some desire when they ask for BLESSINGS,
PEACE is what they expect to find when they practice MEDITATING,
But a lonely soul, my friend, asks for NO MORE than,
Just SWEET whispers of LOVE and CARING,
The lonely soul craves for its LOVE, HOPING,
Its arrival will give its life a NEW MEANING,
’Cause it remembers, once, a pretty angel SAYING …
BLESSED will your life be,
when you feel this JOY OF LOVING,
And a smile on your HEART is what you will be always WEARING!

 

Sigh…Nostalgia!!

Cheers to those golden days,

Pranjal Wagh

25 July 2011

PS : All poems written by Ojus Narawane

This work by Pranjal A. Wagh is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License

 

So they came to your college and rattled a lot on how great the Company is. How the “Learning Culture” will help in your development such that you will climb the “Corporate Ladder” very smart and smoothly…

They told you about you job “profile”, and how exciting it is gonna be. They told you how they “empower” young minds like you, to take important “Strategic Decisions” on behalf of the company

And obviously they told you how great the “Package” or CTC (Cost to company) is. How they are the leading pay masters, and even if they are not, how you will in turn get more “in hand”  than your colleagues who are joining other organizations..

And then you get selected!

You buy new clothes and new shoes and reach the office a few minutes early…on the designated day of “joining”After all it your first day in office.

You slog it out in the first month, forget food/ sleep and everything else…

And then- The most eagerly awaited day comes.

you even sing… “Khush hai zamana aaj pehli tarrekh hai” coz you are gonna get your first pay check…

Well, still better you get a message in the Mid- morning from your bank

Rs ZZZZ has been credited in your bank account.

 

WHAT?????

You think its a mistake. But that is surely not my salary. God..these HR people are so careless.

And so you go to this young lady, (they usually keep young ladies for such jobs) with whom you have been interacting in the past few days.

“I think there is a mistake”, you say. “My in-hand salary was supposed to be XXXX but in my bank Rs. XXXX – 5000 has been credited”

She gives you a smile, which by now you have realised is a constant on her face. You did like it till yesterday, but now suddenly its become annoying

“There is no mistake.”

 

“Let me explain it to you.” And this my dear friends is the time you know you are fighting a battle you have already lost.

“See this is your Basic”. (yea rite! like I cant read)

“this is your DA…HRA..”

“And this is your bonus per month which is accumulated and given after completion of 1 yr.”

But doesnt the word BONUS mean something over and above my salary… you wonder..

“And this is the Production Incentive Bonus, which  you will get depending on the production in the earlier month. What is written here is the Max value for your grade, but usually you will get half of it.” 

“And now this is you PF(provident fund- employee contribution) which is not given to you directly. (Then how in the world did it land in my in-hand!)”

“And this is the professional tax again deducted and this is the income tax deducted from your salary”

 

So, XXXX- YYYY= a meager ZZZZ

You now need support to stand…”But But..When you came to the  campus you said the in-hand will be XXXX.”

“Company policy” and that my dear friends, is a dirty word which you must get accustomed to and in simpler terms means “Go. Get lost!”

“And anyway, your salary will be revised next year during Appraisals..”  (another dirty word used generally by the bosses and the HR to show who the boss is.)

At the end of the day you take a bus instead of a rickshaw to which you have got used to by now. After all you don’t really earn as much as you thought you did.

And the irony is when your ipod plays… “Paisa…aisa kaisa paisa..saari khushi paisa…saara jaahan chahe yeh paisa…”

Well, money may not be everything…but that is only when you have lots of it.

 

Wondering if after reading this my dad will still continue my pocket money. 

Abha Deshkar.

4/6/2011