Sabhi Line Vyast Hain

It has been a hectic week , what with the World Cup finally looking less like book cricket and more like an actual tournament.Apart from the usual pressures of worrying about our middle order collapsing like a set of people in a bus which has stopped suddenly, I have also had to deal with some tight deadlines. The worst bit about deadlines is searching through a thousand conversations trying to find that one mail of relevance and sitting around conference calls waiting for the person on the other end to finish so you can go for a cup of coffee. What can also be extremely irritating , is the fact that the advent of mobiles has ensured that one is never given a moment of solitude and isolation. Gone are the times when we could sneak away for a few hours in the blissful confidence that even if someone needed to contact us (specially the Boss), there was no way to get in touch with us.

Yet another Airtel customer pissed at Customer Service

In this regard, I believe BSNL (which is the Mayawati among PSU’s) should provide a new service titled ” Sick of Service . Get NO Service ” . The special plan, available exclusively to BSNL customers, will be activated through SMS commands titled ” Resume Normal Service” and ” Stop Normal Service”. Once the plan is activated, BSNL will focus on providing service as usual, which will ensure that everyone trying to contact you will be informed that all lines , even in a remote village like Mahipalpur , are busy. The beauty of the plan is that BSNL need add no infrastructure or additional effort in providing this service and customers can now count on not receiving any calls, be it from irritating colleagues or HDFC Salesmen.

Amongst other irksome duties of all employees in major cities is maintaining of a Sodexo account. Since most companies choose to feed their employees through Sodexo coupons, there is an active market for Sodexo schemes, which has been tapped to a certain extent by Dominos and other food outlets. What I propose is that pubs start a Sodexo night , where all booze has to be paid for in Sodexo coupons. TASMAC(not  the university)  could even tie up with Sodexo to actually provide special booze coupons which could then be used for purchase at standard TASMAC shops.

While we have already considered two major factors troubling the youth of this country, we have not considered the biggest distraction to productivity – Email forwards. With the smorgasbord (yes I have successfully used yet another word most of us wouldnt understand, much like management jargon) of IT folks out here, it should not take too much time for people to design a filter such that Email Forwards are saved and reforwarded to the next person who sends you an irritating forward. The said filter should also include a special trigger such that any mail which contains the words ” and must be forwarded to ten people or else” should immediately be checked and the email id posted on the Orkut Hinduvta Community as that of an Pakistani fellow who hates India.

While all the above tend to look at improving work life balance and employee productivity , what the corporate world really needs to understand is : NO Ties. If you have not understood that yet, take a look at Sidhu and that should be a cautionary tale.

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