Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Spoon Feeding vs Bureaucracy

This is another in the series of re-migration to India. 4 years of spoon-feeding in US spoils you enough to get starting problems in India.Now you must be wondering what sort of spoon feeding am I talking about here.

Scenario 1: You are a new hire in a US company. The HR greets you with a big big (of course fake) smile. She tells you about the company policies and regulations, makes you sign the 'privacy' documents, medical insurance etc etc. She even explains you the 401K plan punctuated by some jokes on which you smile hesitantly (bcos u dont know who is she trying to make fun of ).Then she takes you to the seat allocated for you.Your team manager comes to you and greets you with a stiff smile (techies havent yet learnt the art of fake big smiles). He briefs you on the projects they have in mind for you. He talks about your past experiences/education etc etc. And then takes you around to meet with the entire team.He then delegates the job of setting up your machine, account, deskphone etc etc to one of his subordinates. You start attending weekly team 'meetings' ( a big big waste of time) and then get on track with your work.

Scenario 2 (or rather my first working experience in India): The HR calls me and tells me she has a list of some 50 documents that I need to submit while joining. She has sent me the list in an email. I open the email and see a document with 4-5 paras of text. I read it carefully twice and collect all my documents and go to the office first day for induction, thinking I am all prepared. And then I come to know that there is another group in the company which requires some 20 documents 'immediately',which also includes my X and XII marksheets and engg 'all' semester marksheets!! I havent seen/used these documents in ages.Luckily hubby is at home, he runs downstairs to the stationery shop and faxes me the documents. They just assume everybody carries their marksheets for induction. And to my surprise, most of the other candidates did have their X and XII marksheets with them. In addition to the 4 passport sized photographs submitted to the Background check team, they need another 4 passport size photographs (Again, they just assume that everybody carries 4 passport size photographs with them). Luckily that day, I was carrying mine.

The point I am trying to make is in US even common knowledge is iterated so many times that sometimes you get sick of it. For example, hardly anyone is actually hearing what the HR says about company confidential policies. You are just sitting there nodding to every word that she says and actually thinking about which restaurant you would go for lunch today. But in India, there are a lot of unsaid rules and regulations which has now become common knowledge and hence there is no need felt to actually say it out aloud.But to someone like me, it translates to a lot of running around. Its been almost 2 weeks since I joined, and I submitted one document yesterday and one document is still pending !
I am hoping in some time, I would come out of US 'spoon-feeding' mode to Indian 'bureaucracy' mode.
Lessons learnt: Carry all your documents for any official purpose in India, you never know when what will be required.
PS: Did you notice my habit of putting quotes to highlight a point ? One of the many gifts from Uncle Sam.

1 comment:

a Sane man said...

lol...you will soon have enough material to start re-migration counseling...(not a bad idea after all, nahi?)

I sometimes get a feeling that I am losing my common sense and speed to finish stupid things off...