Head -Haunt

When you are hiring you better be tough or the tough gets you. Something of that sort happened to me recently only thing it left me melancholic. Sometimes we come across people who you really want to help, but are helpless. I interviewed 2 candidates and I will not forget their faces so easily.One was a girl who was academically brilliant. She got a double promotion and passed her SSC at the age of 11. She received the President's award for the same. She completed her intermediate at age 13 and her parents got her married soon after as they did not see the point of her studying further since she had already completed her basic education. Her husband died few years later leaving her with in-laws who didn't accept her and parents who didn't want her. She had a brother who encouraged her to study and she cleared her Engineering entrance and got admission in a good college and passed with distinction. She is now 24. Her only drawback- her communication skills. Unfortunately the hiring panel doesn't go by these stories and they just see the marketability of the resource and she doesn't fit into that.

Another youth who came to me looking for a job is the nephew of one of our important clients and I was only obliging him by meeting this candidate. It turned out that he scored 90% in his intermediate and wanted to join the defense and got enrolled in NDA. 6 months prior to his completion, his mother pressurized him to return home as she was really worried about his posting and did not want him away from family as he was the only son. He gave up trying to convince her and returned home. He had already spent 4 years in the entire process and finally joined a commerce course and pursued some computer courses alongside. Now job hunting and frustrated because he really can't figure out where he fits in all this demand and is ready to do any job just to support himself.

I am not sure if I can help these 2 people but definitely won't give up without a try. Question that I am being asked is how do you know if they are being honest. I can't, but I choose to believe them. I don't know if people are such good liars that they can lie with their eyes too. 

I hope parents learn to trust their children and to see the world as the child sees it rather than making the child see the world with their eyes. Here were 2 brilliant students who could have won the world that they aspired to be in, instead had it shattered because of one wrong decision the parents chose to make.

My sincere request to all the parents to allow their child to breathe. They are your children and if that doesn't make you proud, nothing else will.

Street Fight!

(written on August 08,2010)

The animal lovers may not like this…but today I fought like an animal or a street side thug as Ravi would call it. What started out as a normal lazy Sunday ended up rising my blood pressure which is still not down. Mom and I went shopping today and we bought some jewelry then went to buy some clothes and dress material and added the shopping experience with a nice Willy Wonka ice cream from cream stone. As with the female hormones, shopping always relaxes and we didn’t want the day to end. But time and pocket says otherwise. So I agree we were a little late in getting back home yet at a reasonable time for taking a public comute (auto rickshaws). We agreed to pay a sum of Rs. 45 after much haggling (which is again a part of this city's culture of autos). Anyway, the distance between home and this mall is not more that 4kms so technically we were still paying a high price. Now when we got home this gentleman who was driving demands Rs. 50 saying that, that was the amount agreed upon, which was an outright lie and both mom and I argued. Of course he thought otherwise and was so upset with his passengers that he decided to take out his frustration by throwing the money on her face viz.. moi! One can only imagine what happened after that! I was only short of punching his balls out and we both fought like hungry animals on a piece of meat. Towards the end he wanted to give me a ride till the police station to sort this matter out and I was ready to drag him by the collar to the cops. Luckily for him, my mom interfered and stopped it. We paid what we had decided to pay and walked off. He also after much grumbling left. Therefore, he survives.
To my Children,  if ever you read this, remember it is not the 5 rupees that I fought for. It is the question of ethics. It was dark and I was alone and all the while that I was standing just short of hitting him, I did not feel scared. On the contrary it was just sheer disgust of having come across such a person who has no values whatsoever to stand by his own words. One may argue that with that class of people how you can expect ethics or values. True, and I don't. Not with that class, but with any class. I expect it of myself and I don't sell myself short of that because some class of society doesn't fit into it. It would be easier to give up and throw a 5 rupee coin but tough to stand my ground for what I believe was correct. I did so today and will do so again and again and again till eternity and so must you if ever required because your self respect is what you will take to the grave.
 I Love You!

Girlfriend Syndrome!

Oh!It does feel great to be back. Been out of touch lately, majorly due to the heavy work pressure of the corporate world which is also back in action ater a year of dormancy so all in all busy time but no excuses. My apologies! Somebody commented on one of my posts that he/she liked reading my posts so Thank you so much and sincere apologies for being out of touch!

Well, coming back to the topic of the day this is going to be interesting so hear me out before judging me. When one has time, one ponders; and when one ponders one also observes things/situations which allow them to ponder more. So in the past year while I haven't been doing anything much at work, I have been observing people and have come to the conclusion that each of us suffer from something called a 'girlfriend syndrome'. Most of us work on an average of about 8 to 9 hours a day so anyway the rest 15 to 16 hours is spent doing our own things and yet when at work; we expect the sun moon and stars for the 9 hours of services. Ok,thats not bad at all to expect and neither is it unjustified, but lately I have seen most employees have developed lots of whims and fancies. The usual signs include complaining about work :either excess or the lack of it, cribbing about administrative issues,always wanting to be molly coddled, expecting incentives (read gifts) for good work or bad work, expecting to be on top of things and the list goes on. Once expectations are fulfilled, they'll get a new set of expecations to work on or they'll crib about the existing ones.
These signs are very similar to having a girlfriend. (With all due respects to my female fraternity). They expect you to be on time, to give them gifts, to read their mind, to wear the colors that she likes,to eat properly, to behave properly. Girlfriends expect. Period. Girlfriends also crib a lot. They crib about the same things that they expect you to do but once done they'll find out a point to crib on it.
Get the comparison? So my theory is that employees are expecting to be treated like girlfriends. Hence Girlfriend Syndrome!

 A point to ponder, what does one do when the girlfriend becomes over bearing? ;)