5 Reasons I Hate Working in Corporate America

Working in a corporation is SUCKS!!!

There is no other way to put it. My top 5 reasons they suck...

1. We are an EOE

The way they measure diversity (be it race or gender) is take the total employees and find the percentage of minority and females among them. But ask them to show the stats by level (that is lower, middle and upper management) they come back with a coy answer.

2. HR

I understand they are a necessary evil. They justify their existence by creating process, rules/procedures and paperwork that are so complex that you are scared to get rid of them. They make up policies like Total Rewards (previously know as salary, but my pay still sucks and I do not consider it a reward), Knowledge Sharing, Talent Management. They only inflict pain and suffering and suck the fun out of working.

3. CEO/President/Senior Management

How is it that they makes millions of dollars and when asked to cut cost they fire the rank and file that make $40K a year.

4. Meetings

Meeting are the new happy hour. Since HR abolished happy hour, meeting around breakfast and lunch have increased. Seriously just buy me lunch and let me get back to work. It has become so bad there are now pre-meeting, post-meeting, wrap-up sessions, agenda meetings....desperation to interact....

5. PowerPoint

Edward Tufte, said it the best and I quote: "It's used to guide and reassure a presenter, rather than to enlighten the audience". This is a directly correlation to point 4, which is a direct correlation to point 3. I have seen presentations that have way too many words or pictures and then to annoy me, they make each word fly from different corners. After such presentation is want to just check myself in a psychiatric facility...

OK...I do a lot of presentation and I never use more that 2 colors in the slide and never use transition.

How to become a sales star...

My company had its annual sales meeting in Austin Texas. Not a bad place to be at actually.

Day 1: The Prom Night (warming up....)



Day 2: Singing away your career (peaking...)




Day 3: Dancing with the starts

Thank god I have not seen any pictures for me Salsa dancing. The legend is that our official photographer (he was more like a paparazzi...during one of our social nights I saw him on a ledge photographing us...either he is dedicated or plain stupid)did not make it back after karaoke...

PS: My colleague rocks!!!...she is a mom, works full time, is brilliant and fun and know how to party....

Vanity has its price.

So on my friends blog, I chanced up a site that you can upload your picture and check which celebrity you resemble the most. I am not sure why anyone would want do this but being vain and shallow, I decided to give it a try. The results were...



WHOA...I resemble some good looking people. Being pleased with the results, I immediately spammed my co-workers. Got the usual comments....

Then a couple of days later a colleague, that I barely speak to, come up to me and said, "Never knew you were a professional dancer". The comment threw me off and I probed him further. He told me there was a picture of me dancing posted in the break room/kitchen/devil's vending machine room. I was frantic, was this the picture of me dancing during the holiday party or was it that time when we went to celebrate our fabulous year. Good Lord, I wondered...how could this happen

I ran into the kitchen and came to screeching halt seeing this picture posted...



Apparently our very talented Administrative Assistant took my picture and photo-shopped it on top of Joey Fontone when he was performing on "Dancing with the Stars". I never knew Joey Fontone was a star.

Service Industry says the danmest things!!!

I travel quite a bit and am always amazed with some of answers I got from the service personnel (that is people in hotel, restaurants, airports etc.) to simple questions.

Hamburg Train Station
Was waiting at the train station and wanted to make sure the train was going to be on time because I had a flight to catch.

Uber: Excuse me, will the train to Frankfurt be on time.
Station Attendant: Sir in Germany the train is never early or late, it is always on time

Geez, you thought I insulted their country they way he started at me

Houston Airport
My flight was supposed to leave at 5:30 PM. Till 5:40 PM they had not yet announced the boarding. So I went up to the gate to enquire about the flight status

Uber: Is the flight delayed?
Gate Attendant: No sir, we have just not announced the boarding yet.

New Zealand Country Club
Was there for a sales meeting. During lunch I ordered a ice tea.

Uber: Excuse me this is not ice tea.
(The ice tea tasted like sprite for those of you wondering)
Waitress: This is what we call ice tea in New Zealand. This is not USA unfortunately
Dave (my colleague): He is actually from Japan
(Dave was referring to the fact that I was living in Japan at that time)
Waitress: But you are colored?

For the first time in my life, that at least I can remember, I did not have a comeback line

Doing a Venn on Culture Difference

A lot of my non-Indian friends have repeatedly queried me as to why arranged marriages are still prevalent in India. My answer to such questions used to be the standard "Culture Theory". But somehow the theory did not seem to enlighten the audiences.

A week ago while giving a presentation I had an epiphany. The complex question can be easily explained using a Venn Diagram.

Here is the way I see most western relationship before and after the wedding.



And this is how I see the same relationship manifest when the "Indian" variable is applied




Assumptions

1. This is based on my experience
2. I am not arguing that one culture is better than other. I leave such talk to politicians
3. I am not saying that every relationship ends up like this.

In the end all I am stating is that this is the foundation on why arranged marriages will always be prevalent in India, since you marry the girl and the girl marries your family. Guess men do come with baggage to...

Just because I am Indian...

Yes I am an Indian.

If you meet me or one of my billion fellow Indians, please avoid asking us the following questions.

1. "I love Indian food". Hye, I love Italian Food, but you do not see me yelling that at every single Italian I meet.

2. Your neighbor named Raj. Oh! he is from the same town as me. Nope, still doesn't ring a bell. Remember we are a nation of a billion people. Count all the Indians who immigrated to other countries that number becomes huge with lots of zeros at the end. So we knowing someone you know is a long shot.

3. So you saw Monsoon Wedding and you loved it. And you are telling me this because...? Do you tell every Japanese person you love Godzilla. And lastly my wedding may not be like Monsoon Wedding. Similar to how your wedding is not like the Hollywood depiction of wedding. It is a movie for dumb sake.



4. I do not practice Yoga. I do not know of any Yoga instructors. Would you by chance know of someone that can teach me lassoing?

5. And finally...I am not a PC Help Desk just because I am Indian. Yes a good number of Indians are in that field. But I am not. Do you ask every Chinese to sew your button or fix your Nike shoe?


For crying out loud, the above will not help you get into my friend list. You will not even get into my contact list. Hell I will just block you totally from my life. You are not worthy to even be in a spammer consideration set.