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Saturday 14 September 2013

A view from the cabin

You see everybody has a boss & boss also has a boss. Targets are given by the boss & you don’t want to miss them at any cost. Then you take a look on your team & begin to wonder how the target will be achieved.
  
Sitting in the cabin I could see the team of officers working in the hall – a happy sight indeed. It is one of the rare days when all of them are present. If one of them is on leave not much of problem is faced. If two of them are on leave or missing other four take it with a pinch of salt. If three of them are off then the remaining officers start grumbling. Their smiles change to frowns & temperature rises in the hall despite it being air conditioned. So coolant needs to be applied before the heat reaches cabin! 

This is particularly so with Ms Sharma as her departure in the evening gets delayed. She keeps on working & simultaneously keeps on murmuring about workload at home & in office. She keeps adjusting her spects back & forth, her remarks become terse & her working style erratic. Don’t you provoke her by saying that Mr Sharma shall take care of kids & cook for them. She would flare up & narrate history & geography of Mr Sharma, his parents & even grandparents! Seems he drinks a little too much & his speeches thereafter in garbled English are awful & therefore the kids are getting unruly. If she is around Mr Sharma & the kids have to behave. At times Ms Sharma uses the same commanding tone with clients also leading to unnecessary complaints. As branch manager you got to keep her in good humour.

Not so with Mr Goel also called Lalaji by staff because of his bulky figure. He is easy going & amicable in contrast to Ms Sharma. Work or no work he carries on in his own leisurely style & is never in a hurry. Rather amusing to look at occasionally he will doze off on his chair. He is to retire this year & likely to become a grandpa soon & therefore taking life easy. But this very quality lands him in trouble some times. Once he almost missed his flight as he took his time from car to check in counter & from there to security check. After the check he sat in the lounge sipping cold drink & reading magazine. After several announcements desperate staff located him & took him to his seat in plane. Keeping his qualities in view he was usually kept for back office work. This keeps him happy & motivates him for putting another extra hour or so in case of need.

Team Work
As for Mr Gupta, he considers himself to be a smart guy & loves to attend female clients. Always neatly dressed with polished shoes, he keeps a comb ready to set the thinning hair in style now & then. Likes to wear perfumes. On such occasions when he is dealing with ladies his smile broadens, his tone becomes intimate & he becomes a little more active. He has been nicknamed ‘Majnoo’ by the colleagues & everybody tries to push female clients to him & nobody is disappointed. He has lots of contacts in the market so before going for shopping do consult him. He can advise you about menus of lunch & dinner of different restaurants, about sale of bed sheets, suits & sarees etc. Such fellows are good at PR jobs & he is given the job profile accordingly. He is of great help in case you want to entertain or arrange gifts for bosses or auditors.

Quite reverse is the case of Mr Rustagi. He is less inclined to work & more inclined to quote rules & regulations. Generally keeps aloof as if walking under cover of a mosquito net! He keeps himself abreast of all types of news & is ready with negative side first. At times it looks that he manufactures the news out of thin air! He would present the news as if it is confidentially known to him only. For example ‘I tell you such & such incident has annoyed the boss & transfer letter of so & so is on the table for signature’. So if you want to spread the rumour as news he is the man for it. He prefers to talk to boss of the boss rather than the boss. He seems to say that ‘I have talent but why should I work?’.

While I break my head over sketches of members of my team vs my target please have a chilled one.  


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