A day in the life of an I.T. Bachelor, chapter 3: Break up

Here is part 1 and part 2. Barring the occasional edit, this is more or less untouched, although I have cut out an entire section from the end to keep the length manageable. This is the final part.

Chapter 3: Break up

The sugar syrup vending machine now had a security guard who was checking ID cards before letting us fill our cups.

The guard dutifully squinted at our ID cards and used advanced CSI like techniques in his brain to age-advance and match the faded 15 year old photo of my manager (with a full head of hair) with his current dopey-eyed bald look. Satsified, he opened a dusty cupboard with a small key and let us have our plastic cups. He also made us fill a “Cofee Register” with fields such as name, employee number, number of cups, date, time, signature and for some reason, “remarks” as well.

I put in “Did not eat breakfast, therefore fortifying myself with concentrated sucrose syrup” in the remarks column and the both of us started walking back to our work area.

“We have issues”, declared my manager, in a tone of voice that might have announced that the Spartans had attacked our city.

“Issues? What issues?”, I asked, in a tone of voice that suggested that I thought the word “issue” meant children

“We have an escalation”, he clarified, in a voice that might have announced that I had AIDS

“Who escalated what?”, I queried, in a tone that suggested that the only escalation I was aware of was the one to heaven while a lengthy guitar solo played in the background

“Onsite”, he said, in a voice ominous enough to suggest that the people he was referring to had the numbers 666 hidden in their scalp

“But we made the deliverables on time”, I exclaimed, sounding like an advertisement for a Swiss watch

“Onsite did not receive the email attachment”, he interjected, sounding like the “before use” part of an ad for Amrutanjan

“But we zipped it, rar-ed it and LHarc-ed it till we got it to under the 1 MB email attachment limit we have”, I said in the desperate voice of an Arab peasant telling the crusaders that he was just a human being

“But we failed to meet stakeholder expectations”, he said in a disappointed voice that suggested that we had missed a dinner appointment with Rajinikanth.

“But…”, I started, and ended, like a soggy 100-wala on Deepavali. We had reached the door to our work area. We made the necessary register entries and walked in.

“We need to have a meeting”, he declared in the voice of a euthanizing doctor just about to pull the plug on someone.

“I can handle this offline sir”, I said, desperate to avoid “the meeting”, which meant email invites and worse, reminding people on email, IM, SMS, phone and in person

“We need to fine tune our contingency plan and streamline our onsite-offshore communication”, he said, like an art critic complaining that the Mona Lisa needed a bit of work

“We did that last week”, I pleaded, like a prisoner whose parole applications had been declined repeatedly

“Looks like we still have gaps”, he pointed out, like Aamer Sohail to Venkatesh Prasad

I resigned to my fate and sulkily walked back to my desk, hit ctrl-alt-delete to log back in to my workstation. Windows wanted to update itself, and it gave me 2 options, Install now and Install a few seconds from now. I sighed, let it reboot and used the intervening aeon to do testicular surgery on my mouse. I used my nails to remove all of the gunk that had accumulated in the roller mechanism and looked at my monitor, only to find out that Windows had installed some new software and it would be mighty nice of me to let it reboot again. Suppressing a desire to throw my machine out its own namesake, I obliged and let it reboot again. I thought I’d charge my phone in the meanwhile, so I changed into cave diving gear and embarked on an expedition beneath my table to find the plug point. I hit my head and twisted my ankle while softly cursing at the school of IT office interior decorators that teaches its wards to make every plug point innaccessible. I eventually found it and realized that the points were so closely spaced that my bulky phone charger would not fit in along with the rest of the plugs already there.

I was now in that stage of that uniquely male frustration when brute force is considered a valid option for any and all problems. I squeezed in my phone’s charger plug through that geometrically unfeasible gap and when I was satisfied that electrons would have enough contact to flow, I extricated myself from under the desk and rubbed my hands of the dust that had now deposited itself on me.

I looked at my monitor, and to my horror, it was blank and that’s when I realized that my brute force insertion of the phone charger plug had disconnected my workstation power supply. I cursed, and got under my desk again to remove my charger, which was now tightly wedged between the other plugs. In utter rage, I yanked it hard, and briefly made contact with 220V/5A of electricity.

I convulsed, jerking my hand away from the plug, hitting it painfully against the underside of my desk. I lay down, in the darkness beneath my desk, with no desire to come out. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I was in a sanctuary. I wanted to spend the rest of my day just lying there, under my desk, far away from escalations, meetings and deliverables. I was in a state of relaxation, meditative and calm.

That’s when the fire alarm rang and a friendly female voice announced that there was going to be a fire drill and that all employees were expected to stay calm, and follow the instructions of the Fire Warden for their floor. I ignored the voice, mentally banishing it to remote depths of my senses and went back to enjoying my dark under-table sanctuary. That was when I saw ,from underneath, the dirty black shoes of manager, and his mismatched pair of socks walking towards my desk.

“Where are you? You are the fire warden for this floor. Here, take this helmet, wear it and rally the troops”, he droned, in the voice of the chap who convinced Bahadur Shah Zafar to lead the 1857 mutiny

I laughed.

I got out, with vim and vigour and vowed to discharge my duties as a Fire Warden with glory. I took my bag, as I suddenly remembered that it had a packet of chips from last week’s “Employee of the Month” award ceremony. I was starving and I thought I might munch on chips while waiting outside for the drill to get over.

I wore my helmet, and like Leonidas, urged my fellow employees to leave the tyranny of the office and boldly conquer the outside. I was stopped at the main door by a security guard who told me that bags were not allowed during a fire drill.

“But I already have it, so shouldn’t we be making our exit ASAP?”

“No sir. You have to go back to your desk, leave your bag there, and then continue escaping the fire”

Why, I asked. Rules, he said.

The end

Notes

This is more or less untouched, except for the notice, which is new. The initial dialogue originally started out as a fun exercise in trying out similes for different kinds of voices. It’s rather contrived but I had good fun writing it back then, so I let it stay

A day in the life of an I.T. Bachelor, chapter 2: Check up

Here is part 1. As I was transcribing part 2, I realized that the ponderious dadabudality of Ashok from 7 years ago was getting rather tiresome. So I decided to brutally hack long sentences and banish every GRE word to 14 years of exile. Also made it a little more contemporary.

Chapter 2: Check up

After managing to retrieve my ID card using the neighbour’s broomstick through the front window, I boarded the office bus, a big hulking beast that had several shock absorbers, each of them optimally (or is it pessimally) placed to provide the least amount of absorbance where I was seated. The conductor (ok, the chap who was not driving) first made me fill about 3 generations family tree data on an attendance sheet and also demanded to see my bus pass with his scanning electron microscope.

Why, I asked. Rules, he said.

Of course, I did not bring my bus pass because it was in the back-pocket of my one good black pant that was currently in the washing machine’s dryer. I had, after a few months, decided to wash that pant but had forgotten to take it out of the dryer. A week ago.

I asked him to make an exception. No, he said

Why, I asked. Rules, he said

I told him that unless I get to the office on time and feverishly type on my keyboard, the stock market would crash. I don’t care, he said

Why, I asked. Rules, he said.

I asked him if the bus would wait a couple of minutes as I climbed up 4 flights of “stares” to retrieve my bus pass from back pocket of a crumpled black pant. In a washing machine dryer. No, he said

Why, I asked. Rules, he said.

I asked him if he had a heart. Compassion. Understanding. Empathy. No, he answered.

Why, I asked. Rules, he said.

I de-bussed and walked away, sulking, with my bag slung strategically to cover gaping hole in trouser and hailed an auto, which was going in the direction opposite to mine. With no regard to oncoming traffic, he dramatically turned the auto 180 degrees, exchanged a few pleasantries involving home-notification prior to departure with other motorists nonplussed by his sudden change in direction, swerved at the last moment to avoid hitting me, stopped, looked me up and down, and asked me where I wanted to go.

Thiruvanmiyur, I said, instead of saying “TIDAL Park”. I wanted to throw his profession detector off.

150 rupees, he said.

Clearly, my trick had not worked. Must have been the ID card I was wearing. Not in a mood to haggle, I got in, and 20 minutes, and some casual disregard for other vehicles on the road later, I was deposited at the entrance to my office. A security guard, who hailed from one of those states reduced to a single 4-sec tribal dance in the original Mile Sur, blew his whistle furiously, presumably wanting to indicate to us that we were breaking some rule. Only problem, he spoke no language I understood and I most certainly did not understand whistlespeak.

After some impromptu Dumb-C, I learned that the place where I was disembarking was earmarked, as per Rules, for folks disembarking from cars. I asked him if there were make/model restrictions as well. The sarcasm sailed over his head like a Sehwag swat over point.

He continued whistling more instructions, which I decoded as the precise lane that I must use to walk in to the premises.

Why, I mimed. Rules, he whistled.

But before I could step through, another guard waved a handheld scanner at my bag and from the frequency of the annoying beep it made, he deduced the contents of my bag. He asked me if I was carrying a camera. Photography inside premises is banned, he added.

I briefly thought about clarifying if the 5 megapixel photo and video capturing feature on my smartphone came under this category. But I decided not to. I wanted to get to my seat quickly and douse the flames of crisis by the cunning use of the Send-Email button. He waved me on.

I walked down the lane reserved for incoming employees from my company and barring a brief stop by yet another whistlespeaking guard for not having my ID card face up, I soon found myself at the imposing doorway that was mostly sealed except for the small metal detector that all of us had to pass through.

In my hurry, I breezed through only to find myself on the receiving end of a whistle symphony performed by several guards all of whom descended on me like a SWAT team, except without any purpose, speed or weapons.

I had forgotten to remove my bag and place it on the airport style scanner that was next to the doorframe. I tried pointing out that there was no security guard looking at the monitor, but to no avail.

Why, I asked? Rules, they said.

I obliged, collected my bag at the other end, and a senior looking guard asked me if I was carrying any CD ROMS, Floppy disks or iPods. I had a w4r3z DVD, a 500 GB external HDD and a Cowon S9, so I told him no. He waved me on, and I was about to head for the elevator when another guard ordered me to swipe my ID card on the attendance scanner.

I tried every possible direction, left to right, top to bottom, scratch-scratch, tap-tap, hit-hit, but the all important beep that the security guard was looking for just didn’t materialize. One of the slightly more enthusiastic chaps took matters into his own hand and used his own security personnel access card and signed me in. I pointed out that he had just signed himself out. That’s ok, he said, but everybody had to use the card reader before entering the elevator.

Why I asked? Rules, he said.

I was just about to join the crowd outside the elevator when the senior security chap pointed out that I hadn’t filled the register. I told him that I had just been swiped in electronically. He told me that I still had to make an entry in the registers. I asked him why the plural suddenly. He just remembered the personal items register, he responded. I asked him if it did not strike him as a little wasteful to make folks fill out register after register despite there being an electronic record of their entry. He said no, it did not strike him.

Why, I asked. Rules, he said

I then joined to the crowd waiting outside the elevator, almost all of them with headphones in their ears tuning out the oppressive silence of an IT company lobby. I carefully checked to see if any of them were using iPhones, because as per Rules, iPods were not allowed and Steve Jobs tells us that an iPhone is also an iPod. Thankfully no one. Most of this crowd was using Nokia N-series phones, and some of them were, in fact, waiting not just for the elevator but for the music app to load after they had clicked on it.

I waited, and when the elevator did arrive, it was packing about 5 more people than the weight limit allowed. Apparently, the folks from the 1st floor decided that they would rather take a down elevator and then go up instead of waiting for the better part of this century for an empty up-elevator to arrive. After about 15 minutes, I gave up and took the only form of exercise IT folks get – taking the stairs out of sheer frustration at waiting for elevators in these poorly designed SEZ buildings that always have about 4 elevators too less.

I huffed and puffed my way up to the 7th floor and was just about to swipe my ID card to enter the “specially secure” area my seat was in when the security guard for that floor stopped me. He told me that I was violating the dress code and that he had been instructed by HR to catch and bring all violators to their lair. I asked what section of the code I was flouting. I was wearing a formal, soul-deadeningly executive shirt and my roommate’s slightly damaged but impeccably formal Van Heusen trousers. He pointed at my collar and said that as per the new dress code, this kind of collar was not allowed. He added that my (roomie’s) pant also had one pocket too many and was of a cut that was against the Rules.

I pleaded with him to let this slide and let me get to my all too crucial email client, but he said no.

Why, I asked. Rules, he said.

He marched me to the HR bay, and after making me fill another register named “HR Entry Rejister”, shooed me in to an area filled entirely with well-dressed women, all of whom immediately seemed to know what my strategically slung bag was hiding. Some sniggered. I looked at my wrist, and finding no watch, fished my phone out of my pant’s front pocket. Some loose threads got stuck in the camera shutter mechanism on its way out and I heard the small snap of the shutter  breaking.

The time was 10 am, and my project’s crisis was now beyond salvage, so I shifted gears into full combat mode. I walked over to the most senior looking HR lady and asked her what the point of such a ridiculously detailed dress code was. Her response included several words my brain had learned to tune out, like “corporate”, “brand image” and “standards”. I was not going to give up so soon, now that I had the rest of the day to blame my woes on HR. I told her that I was perfectly complying with last week’s dress code and that these new collar/cut addenda were unknown to me. We sent you an email, she interjected. Oh, but I have an automatic filter that moves emails from HR to the trash folder, I blurted out.

At this point, the climate in the room became distinctly chilly in a way that only a room filled entirely with women and one unpopular man can become chilly. Clearly, they did not like the fact that I deleted their emails, all of which were usually 2 MB colourful announcements that used inspirational MS Office clipart and featured striking typography in Comic Sans and Monotype Corsiva, and tended to fill up my 10 MB corporate mailbox allotment pretty quickly. I said nothing more, and waited for the guillotine to fall. The senior HR lady pointed to a workstation whose label (printed in Monotype Corsiva CAPS) read “FOR DRESSCODE VIOLATORS” and ordered me to fill out an online form that logged my crime for posterity.

I walked back to the door and tried getting out. Not so soon, said the security guard on the other side. He pointed at the “HR Exit rejister”.

Why, I pleaded. Rules, he said

I trudged towards my work area and tried to swipe myself in. No beep. The guard asked me if I had signed myself into the building at the lobby. I said no, another guard signed me in. He briefly paused to consider the implications of what I had just said. Was this a code red emergency, he wondered. But thankfully, he just fished out another register named “No Access register” and made me fill it in before he let me in.

I carefully avoided eye contact with several colleagues who would have faced the wrath of “onsite” thanks to the morning’s crisis and were now looking at me accusingly. I slunk into my seat and hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete and after a few minutes, Windows Vista deigned to let me type in my login credentials. I hit enter, and twiddled my thumbs as I waited for 4 anti-virus software, 3 web-browsing filters and 2 other daemons designed to limit employee productivity to start up.

I was just about to open my email client when my manager walked over and asked me to join him for coffee.

We headed back towards the exit door, and after making entries in the “Secure area Exit register”, walked to the coffee area that had a sugar syrup self-service vending machine operated by a security guard.

To be continued…

Disclaimer: All details are mostly fictional and are not set in any real world office

A day in the life of an I.T. Bachelor, chapter 1: Wake up

I recently unearthed an old diary of mine that, to my surprise, contained a few short stories I had written a really long while ago. I found one that I thought will make a good digestive pill after the Mile Sur post, a post that, despite the 400+ comments, I am not a big fan of. I don’t really like scathing humour, and I usually end up with a bad after taste the moment I hit submit.

This is a short story that I have split into 3 parts, and here is part 1

Chapter 1: Wake up

I woke up coughing, and with a neck ache from my roommate’s pillow, which incidentally was a solid block of iron and frequently found its way to my bed as part of an un-negotiated exchange offer with my roomie who was probably sleeping on my soft pillow at this very moment. I  was still coughing when I attempted to extinguish the fumes of a dying mosquito coil before my eyes started burning. My hands reflexively rubbed my blistering eyes, which was when I realized that I had forgotten to remove my contact lenses before I slept. With one lens taking temporary residence on the bridge of my rather stately nose, I staggered out of bed and hit my leg painfully against the edge of a small table that was most certainly not where civilized folk would put it, resting at that casually vicious position where groggy gents climbing out of bed would most certainly make skin-breaching contact.

With an alacrity unusual for the time of day, my brain, like the Holy Inquisition, worked feverishly to assign blame for the misplaced snack table but concluded its investigation rather quickly as newly woken up neurons deposed to the effect that it was I who had snacked on Haldiram’s Cornflakes mixture last night, normally equal parts crunchy goodness and cloggy cholesterolness, but thanks to my roommate’s general dislike for lids, was completely lacking in the former quality.

I enlisted a few more reluctant brain parts and put them to work on orienting myself towards the bathroom, and while still wincing in pain, pseudo-limped towards to the wash basin and went about that crucial task of picking out my toothbrush from the bunch that contained, among other brushes of various vintage, the one must-be-avoided old toothbrush that was now used to clean combs and occasionally apply hair dye.

I picked mine out, a dull yellow medium hard brush with frayed tips, looked around for the toothpaste, and with 50% vision thanks to one contact lens on a nose vacation, went straight for something that looked red and tubey, which of course was not willing to dispense paste on account of there not being any left in it. So in the rich Indian tradition of making something out of nothing, I uttered a guttural growl, mustered the required Newtons per square cm, and birthed a tiny bit of paste that, as soon as I directed the brush towards my molars, carefully skirting around a nagging cavity, turned out to be Old Spice shaving cream. I immediately rinsed my mouth only to find, to my horror, a blackish, foaming mix of water, saliva and cream staining the wash basin. So I had, after all, picked up the hair dye brush.

I turned the tap on full to purge my mouth of dentally inappropriate products just find the water turn slowly into a trickle and finally come to a stop. I mentally devised the most ingenious torture devices for the Electricity Board bureaucrats who, in their good wisdom (teeth, I am assuming, and probably nagging) decided to shed load between 7.30 am and 8.30 am. I continued insulting their lineage as I filled a mug with water from a nearby bucket to complete my ablutions. The water tasted slightly um..elasticky, and against all the advice from several parts of my brain, I looked inside the bucket a little more carefully, only to find my roommate’s undergarments, soaking at the bottom.

I re-calibrated my daily hygiene requirements in the face of this sudden lack of usable water, and examined my face in the mirror to find out if I could convince myself that I did not need a shave (and a wash) right now. Against some internal protest, I constructed this illusion that I was actually pretty fresh looking and walked out of the bathroom after settling my hair with a comb that turned out to have an illegal immigration problem involving my roommate’s lice infested hair strands.

I purposefully strode towards the refrigerator, hoping to find some non-alcoholic liquid that could purge those final bits of hair dye and shaving cream from my taste buds. I gulped down from a bottle that read “Lychee flavored mineral water” and spat it out immediately when I realized it was vinegar. With a mental vow to run for office, get elected and pass a law against reuse of old bottles without corresponding removal of old labels, I staggered back into my bedroom, opened my half of the closet and conducted an olfactory inspection of all my shirts to determine suitability for office wear. I settled on the dirty grey checks with the coffee stain, but I could tuck the stained part in so I wasn’t too worried. Unlike the rest of the shirts, the odour of sweat on this one was matched reasonably by the Baygon-spray like scent of Brut cologne. As long as I kept some distance from the ladies today, I should be able to get through, I thought, as I searched around for some matching pants, found none with working zippers and decided to get even on my sleeping roomie by borrowing one of his.

After leaving no stone unturned in a house where most stones were in a state of being turned most of the time, I found my belt which, it turns out, had not kept up with my late night snacking. Using the last hole on my belt required me to constrict my abdomen in ways that my diaphragm and lungs strongly disapproved of. I looked around for a screw driver and hammer, found none, and attempted to use a small pair of scissors to eke out one more hole. The scissors bent out of shape, but managed a workable hole that for now resembled a really small plate of leather kotthu parotta.

I then sprayed the only pair of socks I could find (crumpled inside a really old pair of shoes of mine) with more Brut and put on my shoes after issuing eviction notices to a pair of cockroaches that were being shown around the insides of my shoe by some sort of a roach real estate agent. I looked at my watch, realized that I was late for some unimportant, yet crucial meeting, and ran to the elevator which had a board that read “Out of service. Please use Stares”.

I glared at it for a few seconds, and ran down 4 flights of stairs and breathed a sigh of relief as I found my colleagues still waiting for the office bus. But I had forgotten my ID card, which in an IT company usually results in several years of hard labour in Siberia. It also struck me that I had left my keys inside my apartment and locked myself out, with a sleeping roommate who generally required something in the 8.5 range on on the Richter scale to wake up.

I also felt a bit of air circulation in areas inside my pants that were not normal and with a great amount of casual caution, I explored the nether regions of my trousers to find, instead of comforting stitch, a gaping hole.

To be continued…

ps: If you survived this point, you will have realized that I had a major fascination for endless sentences 7 years ago. Also, I might add, like Dan Brown, that each of the individual mishaps did occur, just not all in a single day.