The Prelude:
It was 8.30 in the morning when the alarm bell rang. I woke up swiftly only to disable the alarm and roll inside the rajai to continue my sleep. This event repeated twice; once at 8.45 am and at 8.53 am before I woke up at 9.00 am. I forced myself out of sleep for the next 15 minutes trying recklessly by walking around the room, playing songs really loud (my mobile has a sucky sound system) and every other possible way. Then I took a shower, got ready in the next 45 minutes, ate some parattas and got out of the TQ.
Then started the real trouble; I had to walk some distance to take an auto, the shining sun ruthlessly absorbed all that I had in my body. I had to wait for 10 never ending minutes, the sun now showing its might and so was my frustration. An auto, another auto and a rickshaw made my trip to office. Finally I reached the office at 10.30 am drenched in my own sweat, stinking like one of those clumsy guys from a college hostel. The very moment I entered the office reception, the centralized A/C gave me a soothing welcome. I walked the way to my desk pondering on the contradicting places, areas, feelings, frustration levels, and everything that Shakespeare wrote about, though I never knew what he wrote.
First hour at Work:
Okay, now coming to what I do everyday at work (present tense intended). The first thing I do is going to grab a cup of tea/coffee. This helps me waste upto 15 mins before starting my work. So, I spend some time near the coffee machine enjoying tea/coffee all alone. I get bored standing alone. So, I start smiling at people who pass by, hoping to get somebody to talk, in vain most of the time. Sadly, tea gets over within a couple of minutes. I walk my way back to my cubicle thinking about how fast the tea time was over. I sit on my seat very reluctant to switch on the monitor screen. I then force myself to switch it on. Now that the monitor is on, and the system unlocked and the messenger showing my status as online, I feel that my PL needs to know that I have come. So I take a quick walk around the place silently informing people of my arrival. I make some eye contacts and get some smiles in return. I start checking my mails. I spend the next 5 minutes doing it. I get a few mails everyday, most of the mails from RMG alerting me to update Passport details in Ultimatix. I now have no unread mails, yet a lot of time to waste. So, I read old mails once; then re-read; then re-re-read; finally spending 15 mins with my mail box, pretty successful in killing time.
Sametime the Saviour :
Now coming to the actual purpose of coming to office – “Work”. All of us have some work assigned to us; some work assigned a week ago or a day ago or moments ago, all or most of which incomplete or untouched; grinning at us, wanting to humiliate us, create awkward moments in front of the manager or PL, make us feel like committing a homicide, and every embarrassing thing you can think of. But we all have one thing to say to it – “Who cares as long as I’m getting paid?” . As a normal human being, I also feel the same way. So, I keep killing time, like the others do, at times kill time finding ways to kill time. Nevertheless, all of us are blessed with the mother of all the ways to kill time, the epicenter of all the time-killings happening around in the organization, the dictator of every IT professional’s time-killing side of the heart – “Lotus SAMETIME Connect” – a communication software that we use in TCS – they call it “the best way to communicate with workmates” – I call it “the best way to kill your time, others’ time, everybody’s time”. It is the elixir of every pro’s thirst to kill time; ‘chat chat chat, drink its blood, quench your thirst’.
And yeah…coming back to my typical day at work, the next thing I do is open Sametime and say “hi, gm” to everybody who’s online. Some people reply immediately and some aptly neglect. I do not blame those who do not reply. It is just that they have their PL s standing or sitting right behind them. I pity them. Those who reply have a better seating position. That’s it. Now those who reply have only one set of questions – “h r u? hows Lucknow? Hows work?” and I reply “m good, Lucknow is decent and work’s fine” to every set of questions I’m asked. I do not blame them too. They just try to be kind. They generally forget the fact that they are only reminding me of how sucky I am, how stinky Lucknow is and how pathetic my work is. Thanks to all of you who remind me of these every time you talk to me. And so Sametime eats away a good share of the office time. God knows what all crap I talk to people.
A South Indian vs North Indian food :
And its lunch time now and my Team Lead calls me to have lunch with him and a few other teammates. I go with him hoping that he doesn’t ask anything about work he has assigned me to do.
We do not have much to talk about. So to break the ice, he casually asks about the very thing I did not want to hear – “What is the progress of the work? Are you understanding it? How easy are you finding it?” and all crap like that. And I come up with standard answers like “Ya…ya…I’m…uhh….doing it…i’m working on it…might take some more time..uhh……. as I have very little experience in this technology…hmm….yeah…I’ll complete in some more time” and so on. Why do these people disturb us with questions like these? Do we ever ask them these questions? I never understood. Anyway that’s how it is, isn’t it?
I go to the cafeteria. There they provide this North Indian meals. I don’t wish to eat that. Basically being a Tamil and having the typical Tamil tongue for taste, I do not like to have any of the rotti and sabji items too. Also I have decided to avoid Chicken. So the only option left is to have Egg Fried rice or Egg Biryani which I find reasonably good in quantity and taste. So I order Egg Biryani and while they prepare, I join my teammates for a quick chat. My PL asks me “Naveen, kya order diya hai? Egg fried rice ya Egg Biryani?” with the stress on ‘biryani’ and a sarcastic smile all over his lightened up face which normally is gloomy. And while I return back, the cafeteria guy comes up with a comment – “You love ‘eggs’, don’t you?” and I come out of that place with a sheepish smile and a killer instinct.
Time to work?! :
Fag, a walk and I’m back to where I do not want to be, my cubicle. Post lunch hour, I bet, is the worst time to be working. I sit there staring at my monitor screen. I do not do anything but stare at the screen. I mean, I just stare pretending to be seriously involved in a piece of code or a document, awaiting somebody to ping me. And there’s always somebody of the same wavelength sitting somewhere in India and this person takes the initiative and pings me. The message normally goes on like this. “hi Naveen…it is very boring here…have no work… Am feeling sleepy…donno wat to do?”. This is when I feel that I’m not alone. There are people who care for me at least when they are bored and have nothing to do but ping me. These are the people who know that I am jobless all the time and that I welcome every opportunity to kill time. So, chatting watting continues for an hour or so and so does killing time.
Then I start the day’s work, do work, generally crappy work, for the rest of the day, periodically interrupted by tea/smoke break and small chat breaks.
I’m tired of writing. Let me stop here now. Thanks for reading or at least taking pain to scroll down till this part of the page. Looking forward to kill more time. Will come up with more crap like this. Thank you again and bye.
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