The other day I asked the office boy who has been assigned to me (for whatever crimes I have committed in the past), “Where will I find this file?”
He leaps onto the computer he has already been barred from using, double clicks like a maniac leading me through a bewildering maze of folders, sub folders and sub sub folders to a sub sub sub folder labelled “PRINTABLES”. This kind of sums up my entire experience of working between three of four languages in order to achieve something by weeks end. I am between a rock and a hard place, between the Indian way of doing things and the great expectations of the West.
The reason he has been barred from the computer in my office is more to do with words like printables than his inability to follow instruction, more to do with the fact that he failed to turn up at the office when an important piece of paper was required and less to do with his appalling English. For his sins he has been banished to the reception area which is on the other side of my glass walled cabin. When he was called into the office to receive this news, that he was to be put onto one task to see if he could actually achieve that, he took the news in silence. I was afraid he would burst into tears, but when prodded for a response, he wanted to know two things only. Neither of them was about taking responsibility for his failure much less to explain how he would work better harder faster in the future. All he wanted to know was whether he could keep his desk in the Sales and whether he could keep the title Sales Executive and his three inch banner signature at the bottom of his email.
I had already pointed out to him the difference between his signature and that of the owner of the company. While The Boss signs everything with his two initials, the Office Boy has the biggest meanest wordiest ugliest e-signature in the entire company. I felt sorry for him at this point in his grilling and afraid of his tears, I pointed out that reception was the first face of the company, it was where people drew their first impressions of the company and also that he was being given a task and an opportunity to shine. I knew I would soon come to eat these words. I could see him already figuring out how to put a spin on his new demotion, being able to keep his desk and title meant that he was thinking that he could be between two jobs and totally screw up both at the same time.
Since then my words are like bitter almonds in my throat as I cope with him settling into his new environment. He still arrives at work and puts his stuff behind the Sales desk, switches on the computer there and opens up the mail. I have told him and asked his other (male, Indian) supervisor to clarify that he is NOT to deal with our mails but he is having a hard time letting go of that. I also went into his email settings and changed his signature for him. Then I logged into the company server and oversaw the task I had given him for the week he had been given to complete. The male supervisor reckons any ordinary person could complete that task in a day, and that he could do it in an hour. Since the boy was to also carry the reception load and since I knew it would fall to me to supervise him, I insisted that he be given an achievable target. Every hour I would check on his progress and get up from my desk, walk into reception and show him, tell him, insist that he do as he has been told.
“You are not paid to think,” I tell him. “You are paid to DO.”
He puts on his Bollywood Intellectual Face, knits his eyebrows in the style of Shah Rukh Khan, strokes his jaw and nods intelligently at me and yes ma’ams fall like rain. Not knowing whether to laugh or give him one tight slap, I sigh and return to my office stopping to bang my head on the wall. After two or three minutes the phone on my desk will ring.
“Good Afternoon Ma’am.”
“Good Afternoon.”
“Ma’am, its *&##@ this side”
I work my jaw until my ears pop.
“Yes *&##@?” Through clenched teeth.
“Ma’am I just want to….”
And then he proceeds to explain how he is going to totally screw up my efforts at training him.
“No, No. NO!” I say and hang up, get up and stop myself before I reach reception to bash his head against the wall.
But like everything in India, like the Airtel story and many many others I have worked through in my time here over the years there is a space you eventually arrive at which is the space between the rock and the hard place. In this space you can shrug your shoulders, accept the lot that fate (or karma) has allotted you and simply get on with the job, handicapped by outrageous fortune.
Images from http://memsaabstory.wordpress.com/