Saturday, March 27, 2010

Wastage is Fun!!! ??? !!!

The other day I was having a shower. Now, a few of my friends who have had the misfortune of sharing a flat with me know how long do I take when I go for a shower instead of just a bath. I would say I spend more time in the shower than a normal girl takes to dress up. OK.. Cancel that... Not that long.. Hmm... Maybe half an hour to 45 minutes... OK.. An hour.. That's it...
But anyways during the shower I remembered a mandatory web based training in my company on ecology or something... I just remember some ISOs... 14001?? I guess... and few other things about the environment. One question in the quiz that followed the training was:
What wastes most water in a normal household:
Flushing Toilets
Washing Clothes
Bathing with a bucketful of water
Taking a 10-minute shower

Now the answer if you don't know is the last one which says that 10 minute shower wastes most water. And this started a long chain of thought... I hear some "as usual"?? Well Whatever!!!
If I fill up a bucket and bathe I don't enjoy as much as I enjoy a shower. I believe most people will agree. But the shower wastes much more water. So is my enjoyment worth wasting a precious resource??
Then the thought chain grew. And I remembered the wonderful event... the wonderful festival of colors... Holi... :) That's once a year... I know... But everyone on that day... wastes water and has fun... :)
Then again.. the festival of lights... Diwali... We waste electricity... we waste money on crackers... which infact are harmful to the environment.... and so on.. But we have fun...
Then again Lohri... Wastage of wood... Fuel...
Making paper airplanes... Paper boats during rainy season.... Wastage of paper....
And again... How many of us actually enjoy long drives... I for one love them... though I don't get many chances.... But that again is a wastage of fuel....
That day... the list seemed endless to me.
And I'm not even touching on wastage of money... :p
We can save all these things... But at the cost of the enjoyment they give to us. So are they actually worth saving?? I guess it's again a matter of perspectives. I for one would rather waste and enjoy and have fun because that's the only thing I find worth living for. :)

Monday, March 8, 2010

On Monkeys and so called Managers

I've been thinking on this since past few weeks but because of less availability of one kind of subjects namely monkeys in Mumbai I'm yet to arrive on a conclusion. What's the question you ask. Ah! It's a very simple one. One which most of you have asked yourself one way or other.
The question here is: Who has more brains? A monkey or a self styled manager?
If you ask me, I would say it would be a tie. Very closely contested. If you force me to choose one, I would give the monkeys some benefit of doubt.
Here's the breakup of my findings.
Everyone knows monkeys are copycats. Though I'm not sure how cats figure in the story. But I guess it would suffice to say that Monkeys readily imitate others. Managers somehow have a very strong gene which I believe directly descends from the Monkeys. They too love to copy.
In fact sometimes I feel they exceed the monkeys. There's a very well known management fact that almost every manager knows by heart. It is:
A certain airlines saved $40K/year by eliminating 1 olive from their salad.
The idea, you ask me, was brilliant. Most people wont notice that one olive is missing. I think very rare would.
But now comes the sad part. All over the world the managers saw this and started finding things where they can save. Even our own Indian Railways too. Everyone started removing one thing and another to achieve their yearly targets of growth and cost saving. They never thought of the impact. They just saw that the idea was successful for the airlines. Here are a few impacts. I could only see the things which affect me though.
Scenario 1: I travel in Rajdhani from Delhi to Mumbai. Earlier they used to provide two eclairs worth 2Rs. to everyone twice. A total of 4Rs.per head. Since a couple of journeys this has reduced to 1 eclair of local quality which I believe would be worth 50p. So a total expenditure of 1 Rs per head. A saving of 3 Rs. Wow... Seems so good on paper. Now welcome to the reality. How many people would not notice this change. You are reducing the quantity by 50% and the quality too. They don't say much because if you are travelling in Rajdhani in India it's assumed that you have a certain status and won't haggle over a couple of Rs.
Scenario 2: Since past 6 months or so, the administration has stopped keeping paper cups in my office. Paper cups, if you don't know, are a very important commodity in an IT company. They are used for coffee mainly, on which apparently the IT industry runs.
The reason they tell us: "Save Paper. We need to go green"
"Why don't you go for the plastic cups then??", I ask.
"Plastic is not good for environment. We need to go green."
I assume they've never heard of recyclable plastic.
Do you actually believe that the reason is "Go Green" as they say. Oh No!!! You are mistaken. The idea actually followed another idea when the electric shoe shiner was removed from the offices on the pretense of "Go Green"
If you ask me "Go Green" is just an excuse. Both of them are just a couple of Olives in the salad served to employees.
Similar stories are buried in various offices all over the world.
Let's move on to point two: Not understanding what's the limit of something.
Most managers are appointed because a company needs to grow by improving it's processes and by increasing the efficiency. This is the job of managers. But do they understand that everything has a limit. You can improve something up to a limit. After that there may be a need to revamp the process itself. But most managers don't understand this. They want to go on improving the process. And if you can't improve something that's already running fine and is perfectly optimized then it's your shortcoming on creativity. And if you suggest a new solution for an already optimized process, that won't be implemented, because you would be wasting time on something that is already done. What nonsense?? Do they know that a glass can contain only
limited quantity of water. After that either you get a new glass or you empty the existing one. Common sense?? Same is the case with improvements. They can be done till a point. After that you either change the process or start working on any other process. But somehow managers miss this point.
And of course!!! How can I forget. Appeasing the Boss by doing something which isn't productive.
Confidentiality Agreement stops me from saying more on this. But I believe everyone already knows what I would've written here.
Ah!!! I can go on and on, on this topic. But I can never get to the conclusion. Benefit of doubt goes to the Monkeys. What do you think??