When you are a Cost To Company

Maybe it is not as bad as it sounds, or maybe it is. Depends on how you look at it I guess. I once had this awesome colleague Mike, who has an uber-sense of humor. He wasn’t really crazy about the work culture in that company then (and he was not alone). And of course everything that transpired in there was mocked to no end. To quote M, he had termed all of us employees as “paycheck stealers”, because that’s how we were made to feel for a while, under a certain management team. Things worked out for the better there, so we were no longer paycheck stealers and transformed to ummm…well, valuable employees!

Anyway, in the Indian corporate world lingo, you are a cost to company, or CTC when you join them. That’s the esoteric term for your compensation if you hadn’t guessed already. When you join a company here, your compensation is quoted in total CTC. That includes your base comp plus various other whatevers.

Just sounds so weird, no? Just to make it even, maybe we should introduce a CTPL, Cost To Personal Life, to be estimated and put in black and white for every employee. Values could range from angry spouse, stressed out spouse, in some cases not being able to find a spouse (!), kids turning weirdos, estranged family, premature health issues, divorce, to all of the above plus some more. This world is supposedly a two way street, ain’t it?

Now, let’s take a stab at drawing the connection between CTC and CTPL. I think they should be directly proportional to each other; the higher you Cost To Company, higher is the Cost To your Personal Life as well. Fair deal in a mad, mad, mad world!

What’s your take on the term CTC?

New found jazzy jargon

This is going to be a little hard to explain, methinks. Let’s see how I do it. I picked up something from a Kannada movie I accidentally landed upon, while super-fastly channel browsing a couple of days ago. I think, the name of the movie was “Road Romeo” and it had a couple of feckless looking guys (and girls) toiling about on the streets making sundry annoying jokes and conversations.

The next scene I saw (okay, I wasn’t really watching the movie, so just humor me here) was a puny looking funny haired girl slapping a punier looking boy with even funnier hair and a ridiculous beard (and I remember thinking he was dressed like Donald duck), much to the hoo-ha’s of curious onlookers, men and women, who exchanged funny looks and kept shaking their heads and making funny gestures at the slap action. Okay, now that I have set the stage, let me move on to the dialogs. “Laav Sacess”, the girl was saying over and over again while the boy continued to cry like a little school girl (and the onlookers continued their act like a bunch of robots). I tried to grasp the dialog and the context while still wondering about “Laav Sacess” and this phrase continued onto the next couple of scenes. I then realized, Love Success meant that a dating couple landing up tying the knot. The dialog in Kannada goes “namma laav sacess aaaageee agathe”, which means “we will land up marrying”.

Then what does “Laav Unsacess” mean? Well, no marriage happens in the end. Duh!

Are you licensed?

It’s been a while, no? Whatsup? Things have been super hectic around here, but that’s nothing new.

I have been wanting to blog about a varied set of topics, but being so hard pressed for time, just didn’t get to it. But, a phone conversation I had a few minutes ago was so interesting that I had, had, had to write about it.

So a certain broadband provider who gives us access to the holy internet had something “urgent” to do apparently, so they have been calling home when I have been at work. Finally, I called this guy back and he said that they had to install anti-virus software on my home laptop. Go on, I said, because I have a good reliable one already and I didn’t see the point of installing something else. Initially, I wasn’t all that into this conversation because I thought it was some free mandatory thing they had to do. But, no! This dude tells me that I have to pay for it and he has been calling because they have a discount on the software. I tell him that I already have Norton installed and I am quite happy with it and didn’t want to go with something else. His next statement: “but, this will be licensed and yours is pirated.” And I go “WHAT? Why do you think I have a pirated copy of Norton?” and he asks me, “You actually paid for it? What about your OS? Did you pay for it too?”

I’m having so much fun!

Working out in high heels

Well, it is not really that much of a workout, this climbing stairs to the fourth floor to get to work. But it is some. It is better than doing nothing. And it all started, not because I resolved to begin working out or be super active even when I am at work or get in shape and all that good stuff. I always have that on the plan, and mind you, we are still in February. So, if at all I had made such a New Year’s resolution, maybe I ain’t doing that bad. Not yet. Because, I climb stairs and donned in high heels at that!

So, the reason it went that way was because I routinely got stamped on and elbowed quite a few times taking the elevator up the stairs to work. We have these three exquisite elevators that run up and down some fifteen floors and a couple of basement parking floors. Each of them is as roomy a as rat hole and on an average a dozen people get in to traverse themselves up and down. So the stamping and elbowing and sweaty smell and the sounds of breathing and your face getting coughed on are all quite common. Oh, and I should mention that of the dozen or so people in there, one of them is the “Lift Operator.” Why can’t we operate the lifts ourselves? Apparently, you need a PhD in elevator science to do that. But the real reason I take the stairs is because these elevators operate both ways at the same time which is atmostly inefficient! Allow me to explain. If the elevator just chugged in from the basement to the first floor (or ground floor), and you got in and requested the operator to take you to floor 4, and someone else who freshly came into the parking lot summoned this exquisite vehicle at the same time, you thump down to fetch them. Yes, you don’t go up, you go down. And this pattern repeats until the basement is clear of fresh summons or the other two rat-hole-chariots go down to get them. So, you will be quick to notice that this trip takes nearly ten minutes or more to go up to floor 4. Painful! And climbing up the stairs takes me a flat one-and-a-half minutes!

But all is well that ends well. I get to burn a couple of calories this way! Now that I do it, I hardly even look at the elevators. Better yet, the time I take to climb up is slowly coming down! Now, that is a gooood feeling!