Horror Stories from Work

The Daily Grind – 2723 – 190718

Day 10. Of publishing everyday. An average of 1000 words. Yay to that.
No, none of the posts has gone viral. Yet. So, Nay to that.
As I write this, I am not sure what to write about. There are ideas and thoughts and open ends and all that but I am not sure any of those are worth writing about. I mean most things that I wrote about over the last few days dint have any great insights!
Ok so I know what to talk about. Work! After all that’s what’s been clouding my head over the last few days.

I run C4E. Which on most days is a brilliant events agency. And the days we are not brilliant, we are so good that people actually look upto us. I get so many queries and all that that I am often vain about it and gloat and all that. wtf is all that?

The question begets, why do you have days when you (aka C4E) are (is) NOT brilliant?

Because those are the days when I dont have work! Thing is I am the happiest when I am working. And work for me is creating things. If what I does not allow me to create things, I dont want to!

For example, when we do events for clients, we actually create a temporary “experience centre” if nothing else. And when we do other things that we work on (investments, content, stories etc), we create new things.

So, in an ideal world, I should be working on mandates from various clients. And I ought to be so busy that I dont have time to even die! And when I do ~~get~~ squeeze out the time, the money I make from work I do for clients ought to help me create things that I am typically not paid for – things like IMHO, Podium, OnW, TRS, DIY etc. And the loop has to continue. You know, enough clients giving me enough work to keep me busy for a large part of my time and then enough interesting projects to allow me to get the gratification of creating new things, while I ensure that I enable others, make that dent and make money in the process!

Simple. No?

Just that despite all my intentions and attempts and all that I cant seem to get enough work to even quit all the side gigs, let alone pay the damn rent, get that car and then invest into all the projects and side gigs. Sigh.

You think you can help?

PS: Not really a post per se but I had to write to keep the continuity going. May be I will write a longer one tomorrow?

PPS: This is one of those days where I need divine intervention to keep my spirits going high and prevent my sanity from going… poof!

Writing Off!

Alert. This is a ranty post. Why am I writing this? Because I dont know what else to do about this. I ~~want~~ HAVE to talk about this to someone and get the load off my head. Ideally, talk with a life partner or a business partner. I dont have either. I mean I do have business partners but none of them have any place for emotions in their heads. I also have a few friends and mentors that can lend a patient ear but I am not sure if they understand the battle I go though on a daily basis. Neither do I know if they understand what I am upto in life. I could vent out on the Facebook and twitter but I am not sure what purpose will that serve in all the cacophony around. For that matter, I am not sure what purpose will this blog serve. Once I publish, I will probably forget. But thats the point I guess. To vent out and move on. Here goes.

So, this stint of working for myself, I started in the Feb of 2015. As I write this, I complete three years of being on my own. And its been one helluva ride. There have been one or two ups and a lot of downs. Its definitely been a great learning experience. Truth be told, I am not really doing that great (compared to how Id be doing if I were working for someone else) but as I think back, I dont think theres anything else that I would have done. There are no regrets, if I may.

However, if I had an option to go back, I would undo a lot of things. Things like never working for someone without taking an advance.

And thats what the rant is about. Stay with me.

In the last three years I must have worked on 20 large projects and about 10 clients (both big and small). And out of those there are 3 clients and 3 large projects that I did NOT get paid for. And I am talking about serious money. About 11 lakhs. In sunk cost and opportunity cost. It may not look like a lot of money to you guys, but to me, its big. Big as in B I G.

The point of this post is to tell myself that I ought to write those off. And write an open letter of sorts to people who get work done and do not pay.

So, here I am. Officially and finally, writing the payment off. I dont really want to name the companies (or the people). Neither do I want to talk about the circumstances which lead to me not getting paid. But there is this thing that I do want to put forth.

Thing is, I am someone who doesnt really have an easily monetizable skill. I am NOT a designer, coder, photographer, fashion blogger, singer, drummer, rich heiress, son of businessman, baker, chef, make-up artiste or anything like that. These people are blessed in the sense that they can make a living whenever they choose and wherever they choose.

Neither am I a career professional who’s spent years in a certain industry (or a discipline) with large companies and thus has a CV that can get a super cushy job. Most of my friends from MDI fall in this category.

What I am is a hustler. What is a hustler? You dont know? Stop reading right now. Close the browser. Leave.

People like me, the hustlers, are often the Jacks of all trades. We are aggregators have no marketable skill and often have to fake what we do. We rely on services of others, often working with make-shift teams and arrangements, trying to deliver a great product (or a service) that makes the customer choose us over other more “established” businesses. If I may use a better word, people like me have to hustle and hustle hard to make the ends meet.

And why? For ofcourse the independence. And to make ends meet while hoping that things we do, work on, they add up. Add up bit is important. What do I mean by adding up? That someday all the work we’ve done, all that we’ve been through gives us enough name, clout, attention, contacts, relationships, ideas that we can go make that dent in the universe.

So yeah. As long as you get work that adds up, work that continues to pay you and keep the engine going, all is well.

Till the time a client fucks up on the money that is promised to you.

After all, every rupee earned is a tiny step towards that dent. And every rupee lost is a roadblock. When a client decides to not pay, for whatever reasons, they put a roadblock on the path to my progress. In fact I’d say I am dragged back 10 steps – after all, to take up a project I had to let go of other opportunities. No? The other opportunities could mean working on a different project. Could mean that that book I’ve always wanted to write will have to take the back seat. Why? To earn bread!

In fact, by not paying you dont just put a dent in an individuals meticulous plan for life. But you are an impediment to the whole notion of Karma itself. When you dont pay, you stop, you pull back people like me from realizing their life goals.

You know, the most important commodity is time. And when I invest time… Wait. I dont “invest” time. I “exchange” my time with a client’s money. And in this implicit contract, once I have done my part of the deal, I expect and its probably fair for them to hold up their part. And pay up.

But often, they dont. And when that happen that sucks. You are way too small to fight and argue and you’d rather move on. Its just sad.

What makes it worse is that people like me do not belong to the entitled class. We are not big corporations for sure. Neither do we have bankers or VCs on our side to look out for what we work on. More often than not, its an individual like me, trying to hustle hard. To do things, add up and make that dent in the universe.

The simple act of momentarily selfishness by a client stops the wheel of life. And thats not a cool thing to do. No?

So, dear big companies, rich men and other such people, next time you get someone like me to do something, please PLEASE PLEASE pay up! For you its probably loose change. But for someone like me, it could be a shot at a better life.

Thank you!

P.S.: Here’s a pledge. I WILL always pay once I have agreed on a number. Even if you take me for a ride, you dont deliver, you do shoddy work, you dont meet expectations, I am willing to understand and give you that extra chance. After all if people like me will not pay it forward, who will?

Introducing #tumseNaHoPaaega

So, this is going to a long, whiny, cribby post where I am going to talk about work. Which, if you follow this blog, you would know that I hardly do (I crib often but I talk of work rarely). And now that I am gonna talk about it, I am going to pour my heart out. I will be a whiny old man and I will crib like I do it for a living. Also, I started writing this post yesterday, did not have it in me to end it then — got too depressing. And no, I dont need any consolation.

P.S.: This post is in three parts.

Part 1
Today, I lost this pitch that I knew I was going to win. Team and I had poured our hearts into it. We had worked hard. I even visualized how that would it look like when I am actually gonna go it, as they preached in The Secret. You know, if there is one thing that I was ever sure of, it was that I was going to win it! It was like a done deal.

Just that it dint happen.

Most times I am not the kinds to cry about the times I lose. This time, I cant stop the fucking tears (literal tears, it still doesn’t hurt enough I guess that I bleed my eyes out) The pitch was super important for a lot of reasons. To start with, it was the first time we actually had a shot at doing something substantial after almost a year of failed attempts at generating new business. Plus it would have been such a big piece of business that it would have meant a runway for almost 3 months. 3 may sound small to you. But to me, at the scale and level that I operate, each day is a battle. Plus it would give me the confidence that I could be an outsider and do well. Plus this time I had a friend who could tell me where I was fucking up and where to correct the damn course. And despite her help, if I cant win a pitch, I dont think I can ever win one.

Not winning it also means that I let down myself, my investors, team, vendors, friends, believers and a host of other people (in that order).

The funny thing is, there is no rational reason for not getting the project. It just dint click. Like you know, at times you plug on something and it just doesn’t start?

Of course I can console myself by saying that I, we did everything that we could and there are things that you cant control. Well, that talk is for losers. The fact of the matter is that on the day shit was supposed to go down the wire, we were not good enough. And I am told that being great, good enough or shoddy is directly correlated to your inherent talent, amount of hard work you put in, the hustle and that bitch called luck. Luck. Well, it confuses me. There are times when she sleeps with me and gives me the best orgasm ever. And there are times when I do all I can to woo her and she wont even look up at me.

Coming back, probably we werent good enough. And that is non-negotiable. Thing is, for me, work is personal. The two, personal and professional dont exist in silos. To me there are no boundaries. I exist to work. My purpose is to create great work. Try at least if not deliver greatness. If I am awake, I am working. If I am not working, I am thinking about work. If I am not thinking about work, I am asleep. And if I am not asleep and not working, I am dead. It is that simple.

There are two places that I can go from here. Down the valley of despair. I could hide myself in a cold dark room and not come out of it for months. Or I could take lessons and move on and come out stronger, better and all that. I think I’ll the middle path. Start by crying and coming out on the other side.

Lets see. Thanks for tolerating the post.

Wait. You think the damn post is over? It is not. Because I was busy with an event while I was writing it. And something just happened that made the hole bigger and I will have no other option but to jump in.

Part 2
So, I am at a project venue. And I am a small part of a big team that is working to pull this project off. And the team has fucked up big time. And as always, I am trying to sort the muck that has been forced upon me. And I dont like it. I want to do things my way. Do less work but do good work.

More than not liking things, at the event, there was a big big goof up under my watch. Because of something that I was not responsible for. Of course, it was a team effort and if someone from my team has failed, I am responsible for that. I had to go and apologize to my team, clients and myself.

Dont want to get into details but you can read more at…

Just when I thought I’d be ok after the loss, show chud gaya.

What a fucking day man. What a fucking November. And this year.

It sucks to be me right now.

— SG (@saurabh) November 17, 2017

Right now, I feel like shit. So shitty that I dont know what to do or who to talk about. I want to bury myself in a pile of quilts in a cold, dark room with no communication to the outside world. Update. I did that. After I checked out of the event venue, I got into the next hotel and did that.

Part 3
And this is where I announce the launch of a new hashtag on my blog. #tumseNaHoPaaega. It will evolve as a collection of things and places and opportunities where I’ve fucked up. All those posts will be tagged #tumseNaHoPaaega and will be accompanied by the following image.

Why? Because this one dialogue says more than what an entire book can! For the uninitiated this is from this movie called Gangs of Wasseypur and if you need context, see this.

Over and out!

Update (in case you care). I slept off for the most part of the day after and I am ok now. Ok enough to be little ok and write this post. But not ok enough to let go. I will prevail. Wait and watch.

Notes. The other things that I thought about and wanted to include in this post, but could not, are…

You are alone.
Show business is unlike any other. There is so much excitement and there is so much hard work and it just takes one small incident to fuck up things.
Confidence is at an all-fucking-time low man. Need something, someone to help me get out of this. I dont know what.

The Reputation Research

Last few days, a few things have happened that has made me re-think my love for visual anonymity. Lemme quickly talk about the incidents.

1. Last Saturday (or was it Sunday?) I accompanied a friend to an open mic night. The idea of open mics is pretty simple. You are an aspiring stand up comic. But because you are aspiring, you cant gather an audience. Along with other standups, you get in a room, invite your friends and use them as Guinea Pigs to practise your jokes. I was one such Guinea pig. Plus, often, places that give you access to a quite room and a mic and AC tend to be expensive. So you get friends to pay and the friends, because they are friends, bear the bad jokes and help you cover the cost!

So, I went with a friend. There were some 30 odd people, about 10 performers. Each person gets 4 minutes to perform a set. And audience gets all the time to react!

Most of the performers were very average. May be they are average performers. Or may be they were trying new material that required practise. Irrespective. It took balls to be able to stand in front of the crowd and deliver a piece that you know is going to bomb!

2. I met Komal the other day. I told her about my dislike for dressing up for the occasion. She said that I ought to think like an actor and each interaction as a role. Like there are different roles, each dictated by a different situation, life encounters are different and they demand a different approach. And each role demands a different piece of content to be delivered. And if you are going to act and make people believe, you better know how to pull various roles off! After all, in life, newer roles come along all the time on an ongoing basis!

In my case, I am an actor and when I work, I ought to play the work role. Which I suck at. All this while I have been playing my personal role at scenes that demand me to play a certain role – work, social, gathering etc. So may be, I need to re-think and change. Or may be I want to be a Steve Jobs where I wear the same thing over and over and over again till that becomes as irreplaceable as my name? Or may be I need to identify certain archetypes, practise them like crazy and then put those archetypes in various roles. Or may be something else. Lets see.

3. I presented my company creds on a stage where I had some 30-40 people in audience. I had a great deck to present and I have used that deck at multiple places in the past and have got great reception. But all those times have been in the boardroom. This time, it was on stage. And it sort of bombed! Not bombed per se. People did recall seeing it. But they were not blown away with what I had presented.

Thing is, I want to be able to create a reality distortion field when I talk to people! Of course I dont have a product like Steve Jobs. Neither did he for that matter. But he had something that I definitely dont have! I need to identify and work on that!

4. Mihir talked me into doing a video podcast. That means I now have a video (43 minutes long) where I am talking about life and philosophy and raison d’etre and other such things. Now, to be able to do justice to the effort that is going in, we need to push it out and market it like a bitch. And that will mean that my notions of closely guarding my pics / video on the very permanent Internet is under heavy questioning.

…

So, now that I have captured these four things, the real reason for the outburst is hence.

As I get along in life (read, I am supposed to take on larger responsibilities), I am realising more and more that to be able to get things done, I need to have a reputation.

Reputation is a complex “thing” and its often a combination of things like association (with people, things, brands etc), popularity (read personal brand where you are known by people outside of your third degree), experience (in terms of years you’ve worked, things you’ve done etc), expert status (in chosen field of expertise), contacts (how many famous / rich / powerful people you know? Who has saved your number? Who will pick your call in less than 4 rings etc), performance (when you go up on stage to perform a stand up act or you are expected to perform in a certain way depending on the societal context or when you are making a presentation or when you are peddling gyaan) etc. You get the drift? You now know where I am coming from?

The funny thing is while all my life I have been aware of this, I have shied away from it. To date I have issues in talking to people where I dont have a context. I cant seem to hold a conversation with a client if there is no work. Compare this to a lot of people who are by default agony aunts for every Tom, Dick and Harry. In fact in my previous organization, there’s this lady, lets call her A, who has this knack of befriending everyone in the very first conversation that she holds with them. And from there on, by the time A meets someone for the second time she is thicker with these people than their respective best friends for 100 years! And who do you call if you have to commission a new event? Of course your new best friend!

I am not saying that I ought to be as slimy as A but the point is that your reputation is super important and having great people skills is the starting point! Which I lack.

So may be, the reason I am unsuccessful is because I dont have the social skills to succeed? I cant work on the way I look but I can change the way I dress up and all that. And then top if off with some level of polishing.

Any help anyone?

PS: unless, you are someone who is happy being yet another employee is a large organization, making a ~~great~~ fat paypacket, this post may not be a good idea to read. This is counter-intuitive and is meant for hustlers. Are you one? Lets connect and help each other!

Untitled Rant. Work.

First things first. Aka Context.

Apart from C4E, I run a marketing communications and digital marketing business as well (So, what if…).
Since I dont have any marquee names on the team (talent), I dont have a great portfolio. And since I dont have a great portfolio, I dont get to work on big brands. And since I dont get to work on big brands, I cant get a marquee name to take a risk and work with me. It’s a vicious circle. But then I cant cry about it. So, I’ve found a sweet spot – companies that dont need fancy people or creds. They just ~~want~~ need great work done. In reasonable amount of time and budgets. Thats something I can deliver. For sure. And with such companies, I wish to establish my reputation as someone who gets things done.
In my previous avatars, I have been a brand planner (at CLA and now at SWI), an event manager (at Gravity and now at C4E) and a social media strategist (at Mirum India and now at SWI). So my understanding and experience is limited to these things. This means that when I get a project that requires experience of a full-blown creative agency, I am often left scampering to seek favours from friends and contacts. To be able to deliver.
And I aspire to use the aforementioned delivery to entice bigger brands to look at me as an alternative to their fancy people. That means that I need to do exceptional work with whatever clients I get – even if its super hard and super hustle.
Finally, unrelated, I refuse to train myself as a master of one. See this TED talk. She speaks of EXACTLY my emotions where she says that once you “get it”, the challenge ceases to exist. Plus I love being at the intersection of things. I may or may not be great but thats who I am and where I would be. Look at Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos!

Now that you know what I do and how I do, here is the [long] rant. I had to get this out of my system.

So I have this friend. Lets call him F. When I quit Mirum and got a friend to trust me with work, I approached EVERY one I know to help me deliver the project (with contacts, working capital etc.) And no one but F trusted me and supported me. Even though he and I weren’t friends exactly, he helped me. Backed me up. Gave me his name and his people and his money. To allow me to deliver and stand on my two feet. And then from that one project, we got more work and eventually, that one client started giving me enough to start dreaming of doing that elusive first million! Plus, F helped me make my first 10 lakhs. So, in my head, I am sort of indebted to him.

One fine day F called me and told me that he had this project from someone he knew and it fits into my scheme of things – a company that is not stuck up on marquee names or portfolios, wants to get work done in reasonable time; and apparently great people to work with. Plus I dont say no to whatever F asks me for. Plus, I never say no to work. Beggars cant be choosers. No?

Now this company, lets call them C. They operate in a category that is growing by 25% a year and they have been going DOWN by as much each year. I visited the factory for a few days, met with the owners, the team and I realised that they are a classic case of an owner-manager trying to do a lot of things at the same time, once one business (typically cash cow) starts to do well. And the MBA in me tells me that these issues are not too tough to solve. Any management consultant would’ve loved to work on this company and could easily turn it around in one season!

So I took up a design project, hoping that it would give me a foot in door. Despite their size (~500 crores), they don’t understand the importance of branding (actually, almost NO ONE understands the power of marketing / design in India. Repeat. No one. True, there are exceptions but people do NOT understand the discipline. Rant for a different day). So, at most companies, especially at family-owned businesses, all marketing projects and initiatives are treated like cost centres. And thus they pay ridiculous money (too small if you are wondering what the definition of ridiculous is).

I knew I couldn’t demand a lot of money. Thus I quoted a fee that would mean just enough profit for me to invest into paying a website guy to put their logo on my clients page! But they wanted me to work for half of it. And I said no. After exchanging a million emails and negotiation tactics by F, who’s always on my side, they agreed to my terms.

We started the work and all went well. I told myself, my team and F that we were worried for no reason; they are a big company and they are unlike others that we word for. Lets deliver great work and even if we don’t make money, we would make them respect us and slowly we’d teach them the importance of marketing and brand and take it from there.

But (there’s always a but around the corner) when we delivered what we thought was a good output, we were in for a surprise. We were told that this is not what they expected. The list of deliverables was made a mile long (5x than what we had agreed, while the cost was kept the same), the contracts of the models (there was some sort of photo shoot) was extended (without paying them extra). And worse of them all, the conversations became condescending and on each call we were reminded that the project is a favour and how we are not capable of handling it and how the team is worthless. Well, you call me names, I am fine. But do not abuse my people!

And then they started to reject things that have been previously “approved.” We kept calm and continued to change. At a point when the team could no longer give new options, I got an external team to work on this. Let me remind you, I was making nothing on the project and by getting this extra team, I was now actually gonna lose money on the project. But because I could see a bright future, I decided to “invest.”

Even though it looked like a ~~good~~ great decision at the time (and I stand by it and I will do this again to make a client happy), I now know I shouldnt have. Not because I did not want to lose more money or time. But because the way I and my team were spoken to should’ve told me of their intentions and approach toward work. Agreed that we did not do path-breaking work but thats what they had signed up for. They knew what we were gonna get to the table.

So, we fired the client. Lol. Did not fire per se. We just refused to do any further work for them. And no, I did not leave the brand hanging in the middle. I delivered what I was expected to (even though it was not part of scope originally agreed upon). I gave open files. I paid my models and vendors and external consults. I took the financial hit and then I sent a polite email thanking the client for opportunity to work and then asserting that I wont work with them anymore. And I told them if they could pay me for the time and effort and investment and all that, great. If they could not, I would consider it as charity. Thing is, I cant get into arguments. I am an Indian. I let go of things. Chalta hai. There are, after all, bigger battles to fight.

Also, in case you are interested in the other side of the story, well, I dont have it. I’ve been trying really hard to get them to tell me what flipped the switch but answers are yet to come. I know we are not the best team but we try the hardest. I know we are not super fast. But we are faster than most I know of. Anyhow, hope they have good reasons. For me, there are lessons and takeaways.

Here’s a list.

How do I work? How do I want to work?

Customer, client is the king. I want to pamper them like Amazon does. Probably more than what Amazon does. After all, in a services industry, most often it’s the buyers market. And since you feed me, I am willing to go the extra mile for you. And more.
Respect. Above all. To people who work. I dont want people to out of their way but I expect them to have professional courtesy. If you are polite to me, I will bend over backwards for you and open my pants, if you will. But if you are not, I may be small but I am independent. I answer to no one and thus, I can tell you to take a hike!
Win-win trumps all. Agreed that its business and everyone wants to make money. But then you are paying me for my time and I am delivering a certain thing. Its a transaction and like most transactions, it has to be fair. You come into it with an ulterior motive and hide things and expect to squeeze me, push my back to wall, trust me things wont go well between us. Rather, be open and honest. Allow yourself to trust me. I will trust you. Lets aim for a win-win. You give me enough money to be able to push my team to deliver great work. I will give you enough value that you’d want to compensate me more. Dare you not get into that cat and mouse game where it’s a zero sum game and you think you will only win if I lose.
Loyalty to work and nothing else. I am not here to massage egos or make friends. I am here to do great work. And if theres something that I cant deliver, I will say so in as many words. And help you find the right person. The idea is bigger than you or me. Look at the sky on a clear night, preferably from a hill station. You will know what I mean.

Thats about it for the time being. I am sure there are more lessons but lets park it here for the time being.

Phew! Finally this is out of the system and I feel great! Thank you for the patient hearing.

Wait. Dont go. Are you looking for an events / digital / marketing agency that would put in as much skin in the game as much as you do? Are you looking for marquee names or you want someone who’s as passionate about your brand as you are? Do you want long term partners that believe in win-win? May be speak to me and see how we could work together?

What I want from life. And two sidenotes.

~~Today~~ Yesterday, the 11th of June was a mother of a day. It started like any other day and I was obviously late for work. Not that I cant wake up, but the place I live at, the cars are parked two rows deep and its a herculean task to get your car out of the driveway before 10 in the morning. Sounds stupid but these are the things that make India awesome and Indian life full of fun and excitement. And even though I love these at times, most times I curse and want to get out.

So I was late. On normal days its not a problem because I work at a setup where we dont have HR (or HR policies) and thus we dont have time sheets. This means that you merely need to show up at work before your boss does. And my boss, the hedonist and party animal he is, comes by 2 (in the afternoon). And most days I get away with it and am fine.

~~Today~~ Yesterday, I apparently had a meeting at 11 that I wasnt aware of. While I was blissfully driving towards work (FYI, drive to work takes 2 hours, each way), for no reason at all, the battery of my phone conked off. And I swear that I had charged it to 100 percent the night before. But like all other humans, I am helpless when technology wants to play funny games. And that is when a regular old boring day translated into a time sink.

I use another phone when I am in Mumbai and a very few people have that number. And since no one could reach me on my regular number, everyone started calling me on the number. Every one from my boss, my admin guy, the client, the neighbor of the client, my team, everyone called me atleast thrice. All for the meeting that I was supposed to be in, that no one had bothered to inform me about, that was supposed to start at 11. The meeting at 11 had some 11 participants in it, I was the 12th. Everyone, including a lot of high ranking officials from one of the largest companies in the world aka client aka God aka the creature that is never wrong, were waiting for me. I reached the meeting room as 12 and when I opened the door, I saw 11 bored faces staring at me. One look and I could tell that at least of 10 of them wanted to be anywhere but in that conference room. And all of them were expecting me to lead the meeting. I obviously did not know what I was doing there or who had called that meeting or what would I talk about in the meeting. Hell, I didn’t even know the names of 9 out of those 11 people.

But, thanks to my MBA, I faffed my way out of the meeting. Funny that most people in that meeting were MBAs themselves and yet they could not figure out my faff. Wonder why. I somehow wriggled my way out of the meeting, only to get stuck in the bureaucratic maze that my workplace is. Bureaucracy, in a company that has just about 100 employees and in a branch that has just about 50. We do take somethings seriously here.

And then after that I dont remember what exactly I did but when I checked the time next, it was 8 PM. Luckily, a very dear friend was nearby and I invited her over for dinner, at the place where I had this meeting. We had our food and Diet Coke over a conversation that had no purpose apart from catching up. Like most of my dinner meetings with friends, I would have spoken for 80% of time, the other 20% spent in eating and drinking. Poor her. Side note: If I could have more days like this where I do a lot of work, I catch up with a friend after work, write something when I am home, I would be sorted for life. Ofcourse I need to add a few things – namely atleast a cuddle with sgMS, lot of money, lot more time to cook up new projects, a shower couple of times a day and a lot of travel to break from the monotony. What else could we ask for from life? No?

So, coming back to the day, I dropped my friend to her car and plunged into work. And then suddenly it was 1130 PM. I was tired out of my wits, not because I had lifted weights or something but because I had a million things on my head. I think exhausted would be a better word. I realized that mental works tires you more than physical labor does – may be a lesson for training, once I get fit again. I also noted that I had walked quite a bit during the day. I need to buy some good walking shoes. Heard that Asics are good but havent tried em. Ok, so I walked at least 9672 steps, as captured by Moves (Side note: amazing app. Must have even if you are not trying to lose weight).

The next day (which is technically today, since I am writing this at 1:33 in the morning) I had an early start. I needed to leave home by 630. And hence I left at 12ish. I reached home, did some bits of work, wrote this (still writing) and finally off to wonder land.

Of course not without dreaming of Nidhi and sgMS.

P.S.: Just realized that I am beginning to talk a lot about work in recent posts. Note to self. Stop doing that. Work rather on creating a brand out of thyself.

A ten hour long meeting

Day before yesterday, I started reading this book called ReWork by the founders of the famous 37 signals. There’s nothing new in the book to be honest but it had best seller written all over it. Nuggets of one page quick-read “advice”, interspersed with motivations “doodles”, counter-intuitive tips that can assure success and anecdotes that dont necessarily fit in to the context. Nothing wrong with it. There is a constant demand for self-help books for the entrepreneur types (like me) and these are the people who are living the ~~American~~ entrepreneurial dream. Am sure a lot of people would love this book. I do too.

So, one of the important themes in the book is about talking less and doing more. And one of the things that, in their opinion, makes you work lesser, is meetings. They say that if you drag 8 people in one hour meeting, its not really a one hour meeting, but its a 8 man-hour meeting. So what you achieve in those 8 hours must be economically worth 8 man-hours. Today I entered a meeting at 11 and came out of it at 9. Of course we broke for lunch, dinner, coffee, pee etc. But the point is, there were seven people in the meeting, for all these 10 hours and there were atleast 5 people on the sidelines. Of course these 5 people are amongst the lesser equals, so their time is not important. But the other 7 people, I think they bill mini-fortunes per hour to their respective companies and by the time today’s meeting ended, their companies may be staring at a fiscal crisis, if not a prospect of bankruptcy.

We invested 70 man-hours of effort today in a meeting and I am not sure of the output. I am sure that in 70 hours, I could have done so much more. Here is an indicative list…

Drive from Delhi to Mumbai. And back. One of the things on my bucket list, since I can remember.
Log in a week full of ten hour days. This means, more than one fourth of my monthly work time.
Write a novella. I am working on one and I could easily complete it at the rate of 300 words per hour. This post, 2700 words, took 9 hours.
Walk 3,50,000 steps at the rate of 5000 steps per hour. Roughly about 300 KMs. Enough to reach some hill station to escape the heat in Delhi. And burn 17000 calories. Or lose 34 KGs of weight. Wow! I could actually be fit if I spent these 70 hours on myself.

I am sure there are many more amazing things that I could do if I had 70 hours to myself. But no, the job I do requires me to massage the egos and put everyone else’s time ahead of mine. And today I read this amazing piece by KK. I can tell you that these 10 hour long meetings and reading people like KK is a bad bad combination. Worse than those alcohol induced tweets about your ex.

And yes, thats it for the day. Until tomorrow…

P.S.: I have stopped using the tag 1000WADv2, because if I am going to write everyday, I dont really need the tag. However if there are times when I dont write, or there are times when I have an announcement, I shall use it.

Anatomy of a bad day

So this is how a ~~bad~~ shitty day looks like. And this is a long post. After all I am going to talk about 24 hours!

0600. The alarm kicks in. You are awake before it rings because you have been getting very light sleep for last few days. You can see the alarm ringing but you are so tired, mentally and physically that you cant move your hand to shut up the alarm.
0615. The alarm is still ringing. You can now fidget and move your hands around. You try to locate your phone, the phone doubles up as the alarm, the eyes are still groggy with sleep and you cant see clearly. In distance, you see a silhouette that has to be your phone. You make great effort to reach it. only to realize that its the TV remote. You curse and fling the remote as hard as you can. It lands 5 millimeters away. In the meanwhile, the alarm is still ringing. You give up and shut your eyes.
0630. Its enough. The alarm has been ringing for more than half n hour now. You get angry at yourself and you throw your blanket and locate the alarm. You get up, locate the phone, which has somehow hidden under the pillow, shut the damn thing off.
0631. The alarm rings again. You realize that you hit the snooze button rather than dismiss. You carefully, slowly, find the dismiss button and shut the alarm. Go back to sleep.
0830. You realize that you are late for work. And for the pitch that can potentially win your company 10 crores of business.You curse your luck and life and drag yourself out and try and get ready. Of course your favorite shirt is gone for ironing and you have to wear a boring shirt that you otherwise detest. You try to find your lucky charm and your pen and you cant. Since you are late for work, you skip breakfast. You dont even say bye to your ma. But you do miss the time when you called sgMS everyday before you left for office. Obviously, now you dont.
0845. You reach your car parking to realize that there are a million cars parked behind your car and you cant take your car out. You make rounds to neighbors and plead to remove their cars.
0907. Finally all cars blocking your way are out. You call people in office and realize that the dependable kids in your office were partying last night and they havent done anything for the grand meeting. You wish, for the millionth time that you had people that you could trust.
1017. You struggle for an hour in traffic and reach the client’s office for a meeting that was supposed to start at 0900. It may be put on record that the distance is mere 7 kilometers but the traffic makes the five minute journey a long drive.
1105. The meeting hasn’t even started. The client is busy doing God knows what.
1155. You are still waiting for the damn important meeting to happen.
1220. The client emerges from the depth of his office and he apologizes profusely for the “little delay”. Just when you thought that the endless wait has finally ended and you were about to get up and move towards the conference room, the client says “oh I forgot something. I would be back in a minute”.
1245. You are still waiting for the minute to get over.
1248. Mysteriously, the client is back the moment you type this. Hands full of Samosa, chai and jalebi. Dunno hows he juggling the three things together. Ushers your and the team into a conference room.
1249. Before you could present your stuff, fucks your happiness over the “mundane”, “kiddish” and “juvenile crap” ideas that you have presented. Does not forget to add “please take this merely as a feedback”. Even without reaching the second slide of your mundane presentation.
1250. You are out of the meeting room. These were the longest two minutes of your life so far. You hope to eat something nice and end the bad morning. The boss wants to say hi to some old friends. He asks you to wait.
1315. Since you dont have any old friends, you cant say hi to anyone. You call your boss and ask him how long will he take. He says five minutes. Which translates into an hour, which thankfully you know, since you have been working with him for two years. You step out of clients office and go buy a Red Bull and some chips from a nearby petrol pump. You go sit on a traffic intersection and munch onto the chips. Thinking about sgMS and knowing that she would be eating a dabba from her mom.
1400. You get a call from some HR consultant, with bad accent, and she promises you a job with a “leading media conglomerate”. When you tell her the money you expect, she hangs up, without saying bye. The boss is still nowhere to be seen.
1530. The boss emerges. You head back to office. Only to go for another meeting. But you have to drop the boss to office because he is too lazy to drive his own car.
1630. You reach the other client. The meeting drags on forever. The agenda of the meeting is about peanuts and biscuits.
1730. The meeting is still on. You are still debating the quantity of chocolate chips in the biscuits.
1930. The meeting that you thought would go on forever finally gets over. You rush to the parking lot because you need to reach office and write another presentation. It needs to be presented the next day.
2010. You reach office and get started on the presentation.
2100. You have no clue. And you are staring at an empty document.
2230. You are still staring at the empty document and powerpoint because you cant think of shit. Your brain died after the afternoon when you were waiting for your boss to get free from his social calls.
2330. The thoughts and screens are still blank. You give up and decide to go home.
0030. You reach home. Thankfully there’s no traffic around and you reach in record one hour.
0040. You gulp the dinner that has gone cold. Since you have been coming home this late most days, you dont even bother heating the food.
0045. You try shuffling channels on TV and they are showing the worst movies ever. You fling the TV remote. You recall the episode of the morning when you couldn’t find the alarm.
0050. You are fucked up in the head and you dont know what to do. You scroll through the address book on the phone and try to find someone who you could speak to at this hour. You realize that most of your friends are either married or they dont care. You fling the phone in the general direction where you fling other things, including the TV remote.
0100. You sulk and sleep because there is no one you could call and talk about shit that the day has been. For first time in the entire day, you miss the fact that you dont have anyone to call your own. Not even #sgMS.

And thats it ladies and gentlemen, for the time being! And no, this is NOT a piece of fiction. This is inspired from real life incidents.

The Compulsive Eating Disorder

Spoiler Alert. This is one of those rants that has ~~been inspired by~~ surfaced because of shit at work. Readers discretion advised, I tend to use profanities when I am pissed off like this.

So, I work at a place where, in the words of the great Mr. Daniel, we are in the business of saving other people’s jobs. And I guess we do our jobs well cos the clients keep coming back to us and we have no time to go and chase outside business. And all this while, new clients keep queuing up outside our office and keep begging us to work for them. We are awesome.

But then this is not about my work place, or my clients or about all the things that we do to keep clients happy. This is about me. Its about how stressful my job is (apparently, what I do is second highest on the list of jobs that stress people out, after the Air Traffic Controller and no, there is no scientific evidence to support it). And its about how stress makes me hungry. And how much I can eat when I am hungry. And how the location of my office is not helping the cause, with a million road side vendors selling everything from Chole Kulche to MoMos (thats Dim Sums in English) to Maggi to Omelet (what? Omelet is not spelled as Omellette?) to ice cream to parathas to chaat to samosas. Like they say, in retail, the three things that matters are location, location and location, I am strategically located to hog like a pig. And the feedback and inputs from clients dont really help matters.

So today started as any other Sunday would. Woke up, got ready, had an awesome breakfast and left for office. The drive was brilliant. There is no traffic on Sundays. In fact while driving I thought what if I could work only on Saturdays and Sundays, it would be so amazing. More on this later. So it started like a regular sunday (p.s. another social experiment. I am linking each piece to the tweets that I posted and lets see how it goes) and it got screwed moment I reached Gurgaon. I wore my shoes, called the client, entered the flunky in the white shirt mode (more about being the flunky in white) and started to wait for the ~~God~~ client to call me. He did after a while and in the meeting, he took my arse royally. And then I came to the office and this is where I realized that all the effort that my team and I had put in last few days has gone for a toss. And this is when the hunger pangs first hit me.

And then, I made a choice. Do I give into the pangs and eat the next things that I spot. Or do I wait and do something to divert my mind and attention and save myself those extra miles on the treadmill (as and when that happens). The result, ladies, gentlemen and PD, is in front of you. I did go for a stroll in the sun but then I refrained from ordering anything stupid and here I am, in office, typing fervently on the keyboard, hoping that someday, the infinite monkeys inside me, actually start making some sense!

The lonliest job in the world

Of all the things that people chose to do with their lives, there are some people who knowingly or inadvertently chose stupid ones. Gynecology comes immediately to mind. I mean there is nothing wrong with being the hands of God and helping bring a new life to this wonderful world but why would you want to subject yourself to blood and flesh all the time? And why would you chose to work for something where you could be called anytime anywhere and as a result, wreck havoc with your personal life? There are more such professions but I am not talking about tough ones right now. I am here to create a list of lonely jobs.

So, I define a lonely job as something where in the process of discharging their duties, people are left to themselves and all they have for company is monotony and their thoughts. The main aur meri tanhai kinds. I know there must be lot of people who like doing such things but then I wish I could peep into their brains and understand what drives them.

Anyways, here is an indicative list of things that I think could qualify for being the lonliest jobs in the world

A security guard. Recently at the Auto Expo, I realized that the security guards that we hired for helping us manage the maddening crowds probably had the lonliest job of em all. I mean they are expected to stand for upwards of 12 hours and manage people. It has to be the most monotonous job in the world. Doing the same shit over and over again all the time. And then when you are not managing crowds and just manning a gate for example, you have nothing but the scenery to keep you company. Of course people change, situations change but end of the day, it remains the same.
A model standing next to a car in an auto show. The model has to have that regulation, plastic smile on her face all the time. And more than that, she has to stand with her back straight. Worst, she cant engage in any small talk with anyone. She is just expected to stare in the zero and smile and ensure that her back is straight. Ofcourse she is paid a bomb and she gets to chose the guy she wants and all that but come on!
The liftman. Ofcourse. All he does in his entire day is press some buttons and solve sudokus and croswords. There are people that he is supposed to greet, salute etc but he must be really lonely. Imagine shutting yourself down in a 3 feet by 3 feet cubicle for an entire day and play with buttons. And he doesnt even have a water cooler that he could visit to engage in office gossip.
The sentry at a remote watchpost. Someone manning a light house. Or someone guarding a royal palace. In fact I have thought of a love story of a royal guard and the princess. The guard has nothing to do but stare at the emptiness and the princess has nothing to do but indulge in vanities. Her best friend happens to be the daughter of the chef at the royal palace. The best friend, because she is a commoner has easier access to the sentry. The princess falls in love with the concept of a lover. And then like all other love stories, there is deciet, lust, emotions, harmones, anger, betrayl etc. Still a concept under development. What do you think of it?
A farmer. A poor farmer who toils the entire day in the field by himself. All he has for company is his crop, the sun and some hopes. The man works so hard that he doesnt even have time to think of things that perplex people like me all the time!

I think thats about it for the time being. I am sure there are more such professions that I am missing. Do you know of some?

That flunky in white shirt

Before I get into more details, lets get a few things straight.

I love wearing white shirts. Especially if they are made of linen. And if they are from Cotton World Corp. Or UCB. So much so that I wear them that often that if I was famous, it could have been my trademark. Much like Steve’s black turtlenecks and Jeff’s pale blue shirts.
Of course when you live in Delhi and you work requires you to be inches away from dust and grime and other things, these white shirts would get dirty. And crumpled. And after a while, despite how well you wash them, they would look pale and old. Even if they are new. Even CWC and UCB shirts look old after you have worn them three or four times.
The way I dress is none of anybody’s concern. I like the way I dress and I want to be comfortable. If given a choice between dressing up for a party in a three piece suit where I may get an opportunity to meet a really hot woman vs dressing up in a white shirt and shorts (or a faded jeans hanging low), despite it being unacceptable in any respectable event, I would chose the later. I like being comfortable with my clothes and I dont give two hoots about what others think of it. Well I did change a lot, thanks a lot to constant feedback from sgMS, Rr and Neo’s wife. I was like a 100 times worse than what I am right now.
I love my beard. I know it looks bad and is scrawny at best. But I love it. Probably more for the convenience of not shaving every day. I love it so much that I dont mind keeping one.

Now that we have established a few ground rules, let me come to the reason why I was prompted to write this post. No wait, not prompted, but FORCED to write this. I mean no one held my hands and made me type this thing up but I was so furious that I had to write this.

Today at work, why have I been talking about work lately on this blog? I have never been the kinds to actually talk about work! Anyways debate for a different day. So today, at work, I was standing with my boss and there were some 100 more men behind me in a huge hall working on something. The client, who I may add, is probably half my age and yet probably one-tenth senile than I am, ambles across the hall, points a finger at me and tells my boss, how can that flunky in white shirt dress up like that and come to work.

The flunky in question here is, me! The white shirt in question is what Rr bought for me. Her fashion sense, IMHO, is better than anyone I have met (including sgMS). Dress up like that means a white shirt, a blue jeans and a pair of white shoes. Work means construction of a huge hall where we had some 100 other men who are lot less fortunate than I and have very limited means to spend on their clothing. If someone asked me, I would have said that I was looking great in what I was wearing. Ofcourse the belt and the socks did not match but thats ok. I am not really fashion conscious and like I said in point 4 above, I dont give too hoots!

It dint piss me off that he commented on the way I dress. I have more enemies that Obama, Osama, Anna Hazare combined for the way I dress. What fucked my head was the reference to me as “that flunky in white shirt”. What the fuck! A flunky! I mean I know that I am a nobody and tomorrow if I was to disappear from mother Earth, no one would miss me but I hated being called a flunky. Google defines flunky as

A person who performs relatively menial tasks for someone else, esp. obsequiously.

Am I a flunky to my boss? May be. Did I like being called a flunky? Hell no. Will I do something about it? Ofcourse Yes!!

And thats about it. Really.

P.S.: Fiction! No, really. I mean it. I cooked this up because I dint have no shit to work on today.