Friday, March 24, 2006

@ Work

Two weeks back a new Marketing Manager joined us. She is an IIMite. That makes it two girls in our department including me. However her opening sentence to me after introductions caught me off guard. She asked me rather severely if I was in charge of the rather ‘badly’ done collaterals in the company. Luckily my Boss had gone back to his cabin or Madam would have got a mild reprimand right in front of me. I looked at her squarely in the eye and told her that I was indeed incharge of the ‘tastefully’ done collaterals. That was it; she declared a sort of unofficial war from that day. Over the next week she went out of her way to harass my team mates prompting me to send her a mail that all work sheets has to routed through me and she cannot approach my team on her own. So she would wait for me to leave my cabin and then go and disturb them at work. Boss was traveling and I really didn’t want to call him over such a petty issue. Finally the proverbial straw broke my patience when she went and loaded the graphic designers with some work disrupting a long queue of work from other departments. I put a halt to all her work and called my Boss. He chuckled and sent her a mail telling her to read the departmental procedures before she formally took over the reins of her marketing zone. The mail did the trick, she came and apologized and guess what??? Beneath all that haughtiness and arrogance she is actually a nice person!!!! This incident taught me a valuable lesson and that was not to lose to my cool and stick to my guns. I have to give credit for this to my team lead from whom I took over. Wherever you are, Madhusudan I owe you a lot.

On a lighter note, we are trying for a Solutions Architecture Award that has been implemented using XYZ. I filled up the necessary details in the form from the marketing and sales side and sent it to the technical head for his input on the solutions architecture. He sent me a written document with lots of apologies for his poor language skills etc. I told him not to worry and that I would polish the language before submitting the Project Report. I opened the document to see that he had written about the architecture in six sentences and there was not a single English word that I could understand. The only readable English words were the ‘articles’ that held the sentences together. I looked at it for some time and then started giggling and finally collapsed with laughter. Our Chief Sysadmin who was uncharacteristically wandering on the ‘dreaded’ marketing floor came to enquire what the joke was all about. All I could do was point to the document while I clutched my aching tummy. He read the document with a growing smile and then called the technical team who came rushing laptop and all. Soon my cabin was looking like a battle station with five laptops and five techies gravely explaining the whole architecture in ‘simple’ language that would fox even Bill Gates !!! I kept on laughing and the techies grew more worried. Finally my Chief Sysadmin took a spiral pad and drew the whole thing and explained it to me in ‘actual’ simple terms. I was finally able to edit the Project Report but refrained from whetting it with the technical head because I knew he would never understand the ‘englisized’ document. After submission, the coordinator of the award committee from US called and told me a couple of hilarious jokes from the Project Reports submitted by various companies. The poor girl was as foxed as me with the Technical people. All in all it was a laugh riot :))

I missed the car pool and called home to send the car to pick me up. While waiting to cross the road a transformer burst sending sparks all over me and a huge power cable came crashing down and fell within inches of where I was standing. What a day !!!!

20 comments:

Jagan said...

for the last para on the post -
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yMlGCzvDWIU

watch tht video ..am sure u will collapse laughing again ..;-)

Anonymous said...

havent't you learned by now madam, that most seemingly arrogant people are very nice people ahem ahem...

oh btw I could never stand IIMites myself, whenever I come across an IIMite and when they hit me with , I am from IIM', thats when the arrogance radar goes ballistic.. I usually retort with , I am smarter, better looking and earn more than you'... it usually makes them shut up.. only way to make an IIMite shut up is full frontal attack.

silverine said...

@Jagan It was ROFLMAO stuff :))
@Alexis: It's uncanny, but I was thinking the same..about the revenge of the techies :)) Well I havent read The Art of War but then if I had not showed her that I wasn't to be cowed down she would have continued her irritating attitude. Our dept. is extremely organised and streamlined and people like her upset the rhythm. The technical report thing was funny more so because of the sincerity with which the techies tried to show me the working of the architecture. They were using words like, Message Caching, Struts, Failover and Cluster beans LOL
@Jinu: I always knew that a self proclaimed arrogant person was actually nice LOL Actually the rest of the MM's are also IIMites but extremely nice people. My boss is IITian and hence cordially hates IIMites :))

quills said...

Thank God you are okay.You do know you are our fav blogger, don't you? :)

I can totally understand the technical report incident. So funny though. :)) That has happened to me too when I can barely comprehend the technical lingo used by the development folks. :). However, they have always been kind and gone out of their way to explain as best as they can.

Sujith said...

poor IIMites. everyone sits on their head and hates em :-(((

Dr. Pissed said...

Scary. But, if i were you or any other human being, i'd run! Not stand my ground and fight snapped power cables.

silverine said...

@Quills: Thank you dear quills for your concern. It is always nice to see my fellow ball girl here :) So we have another thing in commom...grappling with techie language :))The poor fellows are so sweet but they even talk high tech language lol But someone always manages to explain the technical stuff to me.
@Jithu: Actually all the IIMites in my co. are nice. This gal was an exception. However there is a special IIMAite who write fabulous stories who is the best *hugs* :)
@dr pissed: I did move away from the area as fast as I could, that's why the cable missed me :) And 'no' I have absolutely no intention of 'fighting' power cables lol

Mind Curry said...

While waiting to cross the road a transformer burst sending sparks all over me and a huge power cable came crashing down and fell within inches of where I was standing.

man!!! i knew you had that effect on guys..but now these transformers! :)

p.s. am really glad you are safe.

you know, there was this thought i always had. that we understand people best when we have situations and after an initial collision.. like the one you had.

you take even people in love, a lot of them are in a relationship after a "problem" in the beginning. ok bad example! :) lol..

silverine said...

man!!! i knew you had that effect on guys..but now these transformers! rofl

Now I am feeling much better :P
You are right.Even at work I have made really good friends with people I have got on the wrong foot at first.Sometimes these explosive situations give you an 'instant character appraisal'. I hate any kind of rancour at work and our organisational set up promotes communication and situations like these are extremely rare. Our HR policies are very employee friendly and as a result our attrition rates are also the lowest in the industry. One reason I have been here with the same colleagues for the past two years :)

Mind Curry said...

Our HR policies are very employee friendly and as a result our attrition rates are also the lowest in the industry.

thats atrocious! :)
i agree about the work environment. i get totally put off if its not a friendly and warm environment. i am really glad you are having a great going in terms of work, and its bringing out the best in you, in every way.

silverine said...

@mindcurry:I have a great boss and that makes all the difference :)

Jagan said...

another one -
http://youtube.com/watch?v=o4t87odQvxY&search=TR

Jagan said...

another one ..cudnt help it ..am becoming captain's fan ...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=b3fUJJ3kJKc&search=tamil

Matter of Choice said...

hmmm...intersting!

these iim people must be really hard-hearted people SF

Cheerio
MoC

silverine said...

@Jagan: Rocking links LOL
@MoC: I know one who is :))

Fleiger said...

See, your SysAdmin is a really nice guy under that tough trekkie exterior.

quills said...

So did you win the Solutions Architecture Award? :)

silverine said...

@Aashik: LOL nowadays I think twice befre posting anything on sysadmins because of you :)) This is just a personal journal and you are more than welcome here. My Chif Syssie is damn sweet, it's his assistants who drive me up the Server wall :))
@Flieger: are you by any chance studying to be a Syssie? :)
@Quills; The results will be out somewhere in April.

quills said...

Good luck then! :) Btw, you have a lovely name.

silverine said...

@Quills: That was a major goof up. I wrote that in the "Disaply name" area by mistake. In the morning my friend from the US called up and pointed out the mistake which I rectifed quickly :)) The name is a compromise of sorts betwen my parents. First part was Dad's selection and second part Moms :)