Scott Visits India

Work Life

May 17th, 2006 at 11:52 am

Once again, thanks for all the comments and email I have been getting from everyone. It is really amazing how many people know about this site now and are stopping by.

Well, our streak with the locals continued yesterday when on the way to work our driver asked if wanted to go see his village sometime while we were here. There is no telling where his village is, but it was nice of him to ask - although probably not the best idea (don’t worry Leigh, I’m being safe). Speaking of the driver, apparently our host company hires a driver service who assigns us a driver that is to take us wherever we want, whenever we want. It is always the same guy and when he drops us off at work, he just sits there the 9-10-11 hours we are working and waits for whenever we are ready to go home. The whole idea is just crazy to me and I feel bad for him just sitting around all day waiting for us to be ready to go home so he can go home. I can’t help but wonder if he gets paid by the day or for only the hours he is actually driving or what. It is nice knowing we have a number of a guy who can pick us up anytime we want, but our host company is keeping pretty tight tabs on us (for our own safety) and trying to make sure we don’t go anywhere without one of their representatives with us. Which of course we are not doing.

I guess that really hits on something I noticed in general. People here seem to see someone doing a job (whether it be a driver or a waiter, or the guy who walks around the floor at our host company asking people if they need anything - drinks, snacks, etc) and have no problems asking them to do whatever it is they need. I don’t know if I am making much sense here, but basically even though it may be a waiters job to serve me, I wouldn’t ask them to do something that would be a big inconvenience for them. Like if the driver had just taken me to work and I forgot something at the hotel that wasn’t a necessity, I wouldn’t ask him to take me all the way back just to get it. However, the way people here view it, that is the drivers job and of course you should ask him, no question. Even when we were at the mall shopping, Dolores was buying something but didn’t have exact change. Well the person we were with told the merchant that we were only paying x dollars because we didn’t want to break a larger bill and didn’t have exact change. She didn’t ask, she told her, and then gave her the money and pretty much walked away. Very different from how the transaction would have happened in the US.

The last couple have days have involved our getting oriented with our work environment over here and starting to do the actual work we are here to do. I was pretty worn out the first day because I hadn’t slept much the night before and I forgot to take snacks with me. Despite trying to order some pizza while there and having it delivered wrong twice (first time it was loaded with spices, and the second time it had chicken on it - which the people helping us order thought we wouldn’t want so they sent it back before we ever saw it!!), I didn’t end up eating anything for about a 9 hour stretch after lunch. Bad idea. However, the next day we went prepared with some of the protein bars I brought with me over here and some toasted bread from the hotel along with some peanut butter. Having food is essential for a happy Scott.

While I obviously won’t go into specifics on the work itself in a public forum, I did have a couple observations about the work environment in general. One is that much like the hotel room, the power frequently goes out at the office. Of course the computers and network are all on generators and battery backups, but the lights themselves will go out and you will be sitting in the dark for a couple minutes before the power comes back on. They are very use to this here and think nothing of it, but I kinda liked working in the dark, so it made me smile every time it happened. Plus it just provided some well-needed distraction. The problem is the area has grown so fast that the infrastructure isn’t able to keep up with it. In fact, I can look outside my hotel room and see hastily posted power lines, some brand new office building going up, homeless merchants in their huts basically right under the construction, steer crossing the road, and a $300 a night hotel all on the same block. There is no segregation of poverty and wealth or business, it pretty much all runs together in towns like this one.

The second observation goes back to the different way they look at personal space here. We had several meetings yesterday and they were in a tiny room that was the size of a small office (and in fact was going to be someone’s office in the future I believe) and we just gathered around the phone standing up. We had probably 10 people in one meeting that we would have used a large conference room in Raleigh for so that everyone could sit around a big table and stare at each other. Although it was a little weird at first, it could be that meetings move faster and get better results because people aren’t lounging around in big chairs trying to stay awake. Instead they are in really close quarters where they have to stay engaged, and they are standing, so they tend to get right to the point. I am sure a workplace psychologist or designer has looked at this kind of thing before, I would be interested to see what some study results of this type of thing reveal.

I am going to try and take more pictures here in India, but I haven’t really wanted to draw attention to myself. In Amsterdam blonde hair, blue eyes and pale complexion don’t stand out, but in India I already stick out like a sore thumb, so adding a camera makes it even worse. In fact, last night I a saw a commercial for something I couldn’t understand and the ad was following around a ‘tourist’ in India who was represented by a middle-age man with balding blonde hair, a permanent exaggerated smile, a sun burn and you guessed it….a camera. Plus, since the work week started, the day has gone something like this…Get up at 11am, go run for an hour, eat lunch, go to work - work until 2-3am, go to bed. So we haven’t been to see anything or really experience much here in India yet, which we are hoping to change here in the next day or two.

I have to do something other than work so I have something interesting to tell you all about!