Words and Meanings

I must have a few wires crossed in my brain (What do you mean – this is the first time you are hearing about my having a brain? I cannot be responsible for your ignorance). These crossed wires seem to mess up the meanings of quite a few words for me. They are especially active when it comes to the new age words.

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There is this term ‘Go-getter’ used with great respect and awe. For some unknown reason, this term always evokes the image of a sniffing, pointy-nosed dog – retrievers, they call them I think – in my mind. You know that sort, don’t you? “Jimmy, Go get that ball” and off goes Jimmy racing after the ball, comes back with it triumphantly and sits on its haunches happily wagging its tail till you feed it that dog-biscuit or bone. Now, maybe, the wires are not all that crossed. I mean, from what I understand, a “Go-getter” is the chap to whom you say things like “Jimmy! Go get that sales order” and off he goes, gets it successfully and comes back slavering for his raise or promotion. At that, the dog has the better deal – he is surer of getting instant rewards in the form of bones or dog-biscuits.

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When it comes to ‘Team-player’, however, you really cannot blame me. I mean, how am I to get the meaning if all of you will use it mainly in the negative sense. You say “He is not a team-player” more often and you say it when you mean “He does not spend the evening downing beer with the boys” to “He is rude enough to point out when the team is making a mistake” to “He does not laugh at our jokes”. Now, if I am to work out the meaning of ‘Team-player’ from that, am I to understand that a Team-player “gets passing-out drunk with the boys” or “makes all the mistakes we make and a couple more for originality” or “laughs so much at my every utterance that he makes me feel like Jim Carrey’?

To me, a “Team-player” is the chap who would rather hide his scintillating genius behind the team and not be singled out for the firing squad. An effective “Team Leader” is the chap who can let the team take the credit for any cock-ups while manfully shouldering the blame for a good job done.

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I know that a heterosexual gets turned on by the members of the opposite sex and a homosexual gets turned on by members of the same sex. I even know of transsexuals who get turned on by the dress of the opposite sex. But, for the life of me, I cannot figure out what a ‘metro-sexual’ is? Gets turned on by the metro? Exits a metro train after an hour’s ride looking all dreamy-eyed, flushed and languorous? Is the increasing number of metro-sexuals the reason why there is such a clamor for a metro in every city?

If I am to go by ads – the only source of ‘authentic’ information I have – a metro-sexual man is someone who makes up for what he cannot do with girls by getting turned on by bikes, cars or clothing. If in the mood for S&M, he goes over and gets his chest and legs waxed. A metro-sexual woman has it even easier – she just gets turned on by male deodorants.

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The problem with all these words is that their meanings are experiential. So, if your experience varies from mine that does not invalidate my definition. There are lots of other such words – most of which escape me now – and, as soon as I can lasso a few, I shall be back with samples from the rest of my dictionary.

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On Presentations

A presentation is something that is neither blessed to give nor to receive. Maybe that is just me because I am the chap who misplaces his tongue and can only make gurgling noises every time I get up on stage and loses his consciousness every time I sit in front of it. Going by the popularity of Presentations I must be in a minority (of one, perhaps!)

Hey! Now! Wait a minute! What are you thinking of? This is not the twentieth ugly painting or the eighty-fifth bouquet that you get on the day of your wedding that I am talking about, you know – those are presents and anyone who mistakes this one for that one must really hate presents or, maybe again that is just me.

Things were not bad too far back when these abominations were being made on thin films of plastic – apparently you only got a shellacking for a botched job but you really did not have to redo it due to paucity of time. Bill Gates messed it up for all of us with his noseyparker ways – I mean, who was really begging him to go and create that abomination – Power point? Now PPTs are all the rage and if the combined curses of all those who actually had to work on it really took effect, there would be a new version of Hell created especially to cater to the just desserts of Mr. Gates.

Thankfully, I did not suffer the misfortune of having to work on it because of my handwriting. What had my hand-writing got to do with it? You see, I started corporate life in the era of the so-called transparencies and presentations were hand-written on them with marker pens. Now, blessed with a hand-writing which even God would have needed a Rosetta stone to decipher, I was the last choice for making those presentations. When Mr. Gates popped in with his Power point, it did not strike my bosses – unlike you – that my handwriting had been rendered irrelevant to the decision and, thus, I escaped unscathed.

That meant that I was in the wonderful position of neither having to make a Presentation nor to give it and could truly enjoy the process of a Presentation being reviewed and modified. Ah! For an observer, that is truly fun.

CEO: Let us get on with the review of the PPT of our Annual Budget.

My Boss: Yes, Sir!

(First slide with the mandatory Company logo, second slide proudly proclaiming “Annual Budget….” go by unscathed. Third slide on production performance shows up)

CTO : I don’t think that this pie-chart looks great. Why don’t you shift to a bar-graph.

My Boss: Sir! A bar graph shows up the decline in production in three of our five units.

CTO : Don’t argue on irrelevancies. I think this pie-chart looks ugly. A bar chart will give a more pleasing effect.

CFO : (trying to support his section) Maybe you should change those colors on the pie-chart. For example, that purple there can be changed to sky-blue and…

CEO: I think a bar-chart is best. (trying to keep the CFO happy) Yes! You can dispense with the purple and use a sky-blue. Also, change the font to Arial. Now next slide.

And on and on and on! For three hours, it is great fun to see grown-ups wrangling about shapes, colors and fonts of texts till you are completely convinced that the actual facts and figures presented in the slides are the least relevant things in the whole PPT. The only time I actually regret having made a premature exit from the corporate world is when I think of all the fun I could have had out of the background image selection from the vast resources of the Internet.

By now, you may possibly have got the erroneous impression that making a PPT is dead easy. All that you need to do is to think of your prospective audience as a group of children playing with crayons and it is a piece of cake? You know scant little about children and how fickle their likes are.

The next time you bring in the PPT for a review, the CTO finds that pie-charts look better after all, Orange has acquired appeal in excess of the sky-blue and Calibri is the font of the millennium. Back to the drawing board, guys, and drown your sorrows by inventing a new curse for Mr.Gates!

What do you mean that, as the audience, you are not a child playing with crayons? If not, why do you have your eyes glued on the corporate equivalent of the idiot box instead of paying attention to that inviting snacks tray in front of you?

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Back to Ad Agonies

The more I see ads the more I wonder at how much the world has changed. All the certitudes of my long gone youth have vanished into mist and the brave new world simply seems too brave and too new for me to recognize.

Just imagine the scientific advances in talcum powders. Once all that they could do was spread a fragrance that turned heads towards to smugly smiling user. The latest advances now enhance character. I mean it infuses the heroine with the determination to drag the reluctant hero along in eloping with her. I am sure that those people are working on the next enhancement that will ensure that the user has the courage to face up to the parents and marry with their knowledge if not their consent. Truly, Science is a wonderful thing.

I can imagine consuming a chocolate which will make you look as though you fell face down into muck after you do so. A chocolate that, if you take your attention off it for a few minutes, would make it look as though you scrabbled around elbow deep in slush to come up triumphantly with a chocolate wrapper. I can even imagine such a chocolate finding a market despite all this. But, never in all my dreams, had I ever conceived of the possibility that someone would believe that such a chocolate would find a market precisely because it does all this. And, apparently, it does find enthusiastic buyers! Ah! Me! Where is the nearest cemetery? I am too old to live!

The ad that really tested me, however, was a recent dish-wash liquid ad. There is this lady doctor coming home and her husband bids her Happy Anniversary with a sumptuous spread cooked by him. There you have this doubly miraculous man – he not only remembers anniversaries but also wants to make his wife happy by cooking a feast – and what does the wife say? Shed tears of joy and murmur sweet nothings? Reality Check: “Now my kitchen is bound to be a disaster area”!

Next – surprise, surprise – the husband has even cleaned up the kitchen (Note to married men: Kill this man where you find him! He has no right to set the bar so high!). At least now a happy wife? One overwhelmed by the thoughtfulness of her husband? Reality Check 2: “What? With an ordinary dish-wash liquid, my dear expert? That leaves a lot of germs – etc. etc.” Quite the sort of health lecture the husband was thirsty to hear in appreciation of his efforts to make her happy on their wedding anniversary.

What I will never understand – and will be glad to have clarified – is how this expert wife had that ‘ordinary dish-wash liquid’ in her house in the first place? Or do we believe that the husband went out on purpose to get that liquid avoiding the proper liquid that the expert wife had so thoughtfully provided near the sink?

I always knew I was shy a few marbles upstairs. After this I feel that I do not even have two to rub together!

Disclaimer: Any perceived gender stereotyping is all to the credit of the ad, please! After all, when the woman says ‘My Kitchen will now be a disaster area’ and all, the natural presumption is that the kitchen duties in that household have normally been the responsibility of the lady – and I make no value judgments about that!

If you liked this you may like to check out the index of other posts of this genre or read a selection of similar posts.

Pre-placement Talks

It seems to me that premier educational institutions of the country form great grounds for fiction-writing, if nothing else (and most may say ‘but nothing else’ but we are not concerned with their prejudices here). I see no reason why they should not also contribute to some smiles every now and then.

Having revealed – and reveled – in the revelation (Ah! I knew I would get a hang of alliteration some day) that I graced the portals of IIM-Bangalore (a fact that IIMB would have been happy to bury in the depths of Tartarus if it could have had its way), I must present one of the most entertaining episodes that I ever enjoyed there – the Pre-placement talks. For those who are happily ignorant of what these are, I must dispel their happiness now – these are the talks that companies give to interested prospective employees from that institution to interest them in applying for jobs with them.

Depending upon the state of mind with which the companies approach the prospective candidates, they may be classified into four broad types – each of which have a specific approach to what they say in the pre-placement talk.

The You-are-lucky-that-we-are-here type:

“We are looking for confident and articulate people

(That needed saying since IIMs specialize in selecting nervous, silent shy violets)

with a good grasp of the fundamentals of their area

(Of course normally companies prefer people whose knowledge of fundamentals is slippery as an eel, so they needed to mention that they were more demanding)

willing to put in the necessary effort and take up responsibility proactively

(Yes! Yes! Get on with it guys! I am sure that you are not alone in not liking lazy and irresponsible people like me)

We are looking for go-getters and people who make things happen.

(Hmm! Go get what? Make what things happen? Would making a fire happen in the canteen or making the water-cooler go kaput count?)

For the right candidate with the right attitude the sky is the limit

(Does it mean “We have a nice suite of offices in a High rise building conveniently located close to the terrace(and the sky, of course) from where you can take a swan-dive into eternity when the latest derivatives product you engineered brings down half the world’s economy”?)

The underlying message here is, “We are not here to market ourselves. You guys need to market yourselves to us failing which we will go over to Harvard or Stanford and let the students there peddle their wares to us”.

The We-are-both-lucky-that-we-are-here type:

“We are sure our company needs no introduction to you. We are the leading blah-blah-blah

(The second lot, of course! The first lot is so sure that they do not even bother to talk about their company)

We are looking for competent people who can fit in with our organizational culture

(Now what is organizational culture? Folk dances on Founder’s day and Rangoli in the reception? Not exactly! All it means is that they prefer people not to rock the boat)

We are a strongly process-driven company with compensations ranking with the best in the business

(Ah! So no brash young MBA getting catapulted to Vice-President overnight – Dick Whittingtonish ambitions to be whittled down? And no eye-popping headline-making pay packages)

We try to maximize job satisfaction for all our employees. We are sure that those of you lucky enough to join us will enjoy your tenure with us.

(Maximize job satisfaction to all employees? Sort of sounds like the father-son-donkey conundrum – trying to satisfy everyone!)

The underlying message here is “If you want a decent job with prospects and if you suit us, we will have you. You may find other suitable jobs but so can we find other suitable candidates”

The We-are-lucky-that-you-are-here type:

“We are a company that offers great prospects for stellar growth for the right candidate.

(Hmm! Long on prospects! Short on cash! More stock options than cash-in-hand)

We need people who have the ability to take risks, are decisive and can grow into leadership positions soon.

(Well! If someone does join them, they need to be risk-takers so that is one criterion taken care of! And if you cannot pay enough to hire leaders from outside, what choice do you have anyway but to grow your hothouse plants fast?)

The right candidate will find an exciting career with a spectacular rise in career unmatched by any other company.

(Of course! Living on the edge of disaster can be very exciting. If the company succeeds, then the rise will indeed be spectacular and the chap can boast about taking calculated risks. If it fails and the chap stays on too long, others will talk of him on the lines of ‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread’)

The underlying message here is, “Wow! There are actually a few people here to listen to us! Maybe we will find a competent guy or two with enough risk-taking ability to take a chance with a newbie company but not enough to start one of his own”

The We-are-both-unlucky-that-we-are-here type:

“We are a 50-year old company manufacturing blah-blah-blah

(Hmm! So ‘we got along very well without you MBAs for this long. God (alias the new broom CMD) knows why we are here and only you guys know why you are here)

Our payscales and allowances are comparable to the industry standards

(That means not equal to but a measurable fraction of the industry standards!)

We have 10 vacancies in finance and six in marketing

(If ten of your finance guys and six of your marketing guys apply, we shall perforce have to select them. God help their bosses! They will have to put up with all your nonsense of ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’ and all such new-fangled notions which we have gotten along fine without for this long)

We have a standard policy for promotions though we do have a special fast-track for deserving candidates

(You will be promoted only when it is due and there is a vacancy. We shall fast-track all means to ensure that there are no deserving candidates)

The underlying message here is, “We rue the day that this new CMD took over and pushed all sorts of new-fangled notions. If you choose to join us it will be you who will be ruing this day for as long as you are with us”

That, I think, should have been illuminating enough for you to read the company from their pre-placement talks. After all, all of you are confident, articulate people with a good grasp of the fundamentals of your area and are go-getters who can make things happen!

If you liked this you may like to check out the index of other posts of this genre or read a selection of similar posts.