I hate skype

hate skype. not that any other online messenger would have proved help in that scenario. that was an ill fated time and it happened to me. will not keep you guessing for long as to what happened that fateful day and how was skype responsible for it.

here’s what happened.

boss was out of station for 4 out of the 5 working days in the last week. then he was coming on friday and everyone was bent on his/her computer to show that they are working. lemme confess, i learnt that i am able to work more and better in a less noisy environment.

so, do i work in a noisy environment? my colleagues will kill me for writing this. yes. the office i am working at only fears the boss. as soon as the boss is out, work comes to a standstill. the vellas come out of their confines and the noise and clutter and bollywood songs begin.

on friday, boss returned to office and the vellas once again went to the confines of their cubicles and all noise subsided. then the only means of communication is the skype.

although skype is for official internal communication, it is seldom used thus. it is used to pass jokes, puns, and sometimes horny things one comes across on the internet.

boss had come out of his cabin to use the washroom and i felt a sour smell following him. trying to show my smartness, i decided to share this information with a colleague on skype.

but the skype reached the boss.

how? because i was fated.

this will be too technical to explain and i will not want to explain it here. boss had recently sent me a skype and when i clicked on skype, it was his skype window that opened accidentally. unaware of this and not waiting for a second, i sent him this message – lagta hai boss ne gandi wali itr lagayi hai (looks like boss has applied a bad and cheap perfume).

i realised this after the message was sent and i was awe struck. now what…

i rose and announced to other colleagues that i had made a blunder.

watching my face and open mouth, everyone knew there was something serious.

what, they asked.

me: i have sent a skype to boss which was not intended for him.

colleagues: so who was it intended for.

i pointed to the colleague. everyone knew what this colleague and me shared on skype.

me: no didn’t send anything of that sort.

colleagues: so what’s the fear?

me: it was about boss only.

colleague: don’t tell me. what was it?

and everyone came up to check on my laptop.

then the rush of ideas followed.

until he has come back to his room, go and delete that skype.

no that will be dangerous. what if he returns and finds me doing that. that will also delete all his past skype history.

boss returned to his room after a good fifteen minutes. i thought it will be better to tell him the truth. but half truth.

it was right there on his laptop. my stopping him from reading the skype message made him more curious.

he read it but didn’t react in the manner i had thought. no flaring up and rebuking me for misusing the company’s facilities.

instead, he scolded me mildly for indulging in such womanly activities.

i must have known this. he is such a confident person that incidents as these cannot create inferiority complex in him. sometimes i feel like being like boss – so adept at handling the different situations in life.

i couldn’t convince him that it wasn’t meant for him.

but i knew i will not be spared with so less. boss has his own way of traumatising people.

when i came out, everyone was waiting with folded hands about what happed behind closed doors. they relieved a sigh of relief when i told about his reaction.

since then, people couldn’t stop from laughing.

as for me, i didn’t know how to face boss. then there was the fear of boss’s next step.

he called me half an hour before we were to leave for home. it was a meeting of four of us. i came late and he asked me to sit in the middle. i knew the ragging session had begun. then he played the song aditi from jane tu ya jane na and asked me to dance. i said i don’t know to dance and everyone laughed. i had got the indication – any other attempt at belittling the boss can be dangerous.

the turbulence has passed. know that boss will not remember this for long. but as someone told, impression is like a glass. once it breaks, the scars remain forever. thought it would have been so good had there been a time machine and i could have altered just this incident from life. sorry, i didn’t have the luxury.

Take a leave and get beaten

imagine that you join office after a day’s leave and your boss and some of his favourites start beating you up for taking a day’s off.

“what crap! I am not a bonded labour to get such kind of treatment”, you say.

but one people’s representative was subjected to this kind of treatment when he didn’t attend the confidence vote at the lok sabha on 22nd July, 2008.

The MP, Chandrabhan Singh, alleged that he didn’t take leave because he didn’t want to vote with his party, BJP. He said he was ill and so didn’t attend the Lok Sabha session. His party, the BJP, insisted that he willingly didn’t attend the session to benefit rival congress.

syndicated from the DNA:

Expelled Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Chandrabhan Singh on Thursday alleged that party leaders LK Advani and Rajnath Singh were conspiring to murder him and had planned the attack by the party’s youth wing members on his New Delhi residence.

“The attack was planned by the party chief Rajnath Singh and Leader of Opposition LK Advani. They wanted to murder me,” Singh said.

Police said the MP was in his North Avenue home – a stone’s throw from Parliament House, the President’s Estate and key central ministries – when it was attacked by about 60 members of the BJP youth wing.

The placard-carrying activists hurled stones and bricks at the house, smashing many windows. They also damaged a two wheeler, broke a wooden door and destroyed all the flower vases in the house.

The lone constable at the spot tried to stop the protesters, but soon called for help. The police then whisked away about 20 activists.

“They threw bricks at the house and broke window panes. One person has been arrested and security personnel have been deployed,” a police official said.

The MP from Damoh in Madhya Pradesh was expelled by the BJP on Wednesday for abstaining during the trust vote in parliament on Tuesday.

“I did not abstain to help the government during the trust vote. I was not well at that time and vomited blood. I was rushed to Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) hospital and since there was no space in the ICU, I was referred to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). Had I been well I would have voted in favour of my party,” Singh said.

“Had Advani and Rajnath vomited blood, would they have gone to vote? The members of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha were chanting ‘Advani zindabad’ and ‘Rajnath Singh zindabad’. It is clear that these two leaders sent people to vandalise my home and murder me,” he alleged.

BJP leader V.K. Malhotra refuted Singh’s allegations, calling them false and baseless.

“We took four of our MPs, who were critically ill, in special ambulance to the parliament. They came and voted from the lobby. But Chandrabhan disappeared at the last moment,” Malhotra said.

“All his allegations are false. No one was sent to his house by Advani or Rajnath Singh. No one was even chanting slogans. His fear of losing his constituency and membership of parliament is forcing him to level such baseless allegations. We are demanding the cancellation of his membership in parliament. He has betrayed the party,” Malhotra added.

On Wednesday, BJP activists held a noisy protest outside party MP Haribhau Rathod’s residence in Mumbai and attacked his house at Yavatmal in eastern Maharashtra for staying away from parliament during the trust vote.

Rathod was among nearly 10 BJP MPs who were either absent during the voting Tuesday or voted for the government in defiance of the party whip. One was present in the house but did not vote.

A too nice manager

was going through the newspapers as usual when i spotted this article on Live Mint on how being a too-nice manager is equally bad; instead niceness make things worse. you can read the article here

this brought back reminiscences of my own time as a supervisor/manager.

the role of managing newbies came along with longer time of stay in the company. lemme tell you, staying for long was not at all an easy task in this company. there was a manager who played favorites. a colleague who was waiting to taste your blood at the slightest mistake as she was the manager’s favourite. the management was deaf and blind.

Guess who

At office all dread him. if he is present during the lunch hours, you can be assured that you will have to go with a half full stomach. Boss’s pet as he is, be ready for gossips to reach the boss’s ears. He will talk at the top of his voice, no matter how strongly you want to concentrate on work. Talk about competition, he will use any tactic in the world, good or bad, to win the game. Cooperation is a strict no-no; yeah he is always ready to take credits of the cooperation. And the best of it all, he is a master at sneezing; asthmatic as he is, his sneezes have his distinct feel. Much that you try to hate him, he is there sitting just opposite to me, trying to get one more favour from one of his numerous contacts.

Watching World Cup

Today India plays Pakistan in the world cup and won. I seriously didn’t know what i would be doing. See it looks so odd with the entire world excited for the match, even the girls with their own reasons, and me not with an iota of excitement about the match. Boss gave us permission to leave early to see the match. And i didn’t want to leave the opportunity.

As i was coming, the enthu of the crowd did make me anxious to have a look for the scores.

I came home and switched on the TV. India was playing well. But soon two good players were bowled out and i feared if i was unlucky for them. So i changed the channel and on star one channel they were showing a much loved film “the chosen one”.

I was intently watching the tele-film when light went just at the climax. The crowd outside started shouting against NDPL. Some men from the neighbourhood sat just near my window. Finally i opened my laptop and started making some decorations with my other blog as i have done with this. Also i changed the blog name to make it more acceptable.

After 20 minutes electricity finally appeared. I switched on the TV and found that Pakistan had started batting and were performing very badly. They had lost 4 wickets. The men standing outside started to peep from the window. I didn’t want to disappoint them by switching off the TV or changing channel. So i continued with my work while they were watching the match.

And see their enthusiasm was infectious as i too developed interest in the match. This twenty 20 match is really very cool. You really don’t know when the tables can be turned on you. And at one point it really looked like Pakistan will win in spite of losing many important wickets.

When it was just 6 runs to win from 4 balls, i felt i must better leave or Pakistan will win. And see i just went off to have a glass of water that the last wicket fell. India won the world cup after 24 years. And i was witness to this great event.