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Business News/ Opinion / Cubiclenama | Stormy weather
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Cubiclenama | Stormy weather

We are all cursed with lives of professional discontent, watching on longingly as our colleagues move on

Office culture seems to be something you just can’t help but hate. You may be bowled over when you first join a new firm. Or you may be one of those grizzled veterans who try and ignore things like culture. Photo: ThinkStockPremium
Office culture seems to be something you just can’t help but hate. You may be bowled over when you first join a new firm. Or you may be one of those grizzled veterans who try and ignore things like culture. Photo: ThinkStock

One of the most important rules of column-writing drilled into my head when I was a young, impressionable journalist was that no piece should ever start with the word “I".

I don’t want to sound all pompous or immodest. In fact, you will struggle to find a more modest columnist. But in my brief cubicle life I’ve had the opportunity to work in a variety of workplaces. Namely: automotive parts factory, B2B (business-to-business) supply chain dotcom, management consultancy, TOEFL coaching centre, ceiling fan manufacturer, youth magazine, sitting at home and typing, and, finally, the exciting newsroom of India’s finest financial publication.

(Ah yes. The heady of days of applying B2B/B2C, or business-to-consumer, to any bloody business and instantly tripling its stock price. Good times. Great times. Times with proper paid lunches, unlimited colour printing, enterprise-level piracy, no dress code and very little shaving before going to work.)

Each of those industries, of course, are very different with tremendously dissimilar workplaces, office cultures, cubicle equipment and job descriptions.

Yet, each time I moved to a new job I’d have the exact same parting conversations with colleagues at my old one.

First of all, without fail, they’d say how fortunate I was. “Boss, you are lucky yaar. You are escaping from this horrible place."

Every. Single. Time. Not once has anyone asked me to stay back because the new job sounded inferior in comparison. It was as if the only thing on people’s minds as soon as they got into company…was to figure how to get out.

Sure there was the odd boss or HR manager who’d try to cut some supremely amorphous “deal" to get me to reconsider:

“We are prepared to increase your group performance variable bonus payout scheme cap to 17% of your basic salary if you stay…"

“Can you please repeat that offer?"

“Your variable bonus group payout insurance allocation…damn you. More Sodexo?"

But in general, my colleagues sent me off like prisoners sending off a freed inmate. There was jubilant chanting in unison and clanging of mugs.

They wished me many things at my new workplace. Better pay of course. Better hours no doubt. Many times they wished me better work and a better boss.

Also, they always wished me better “office culture". The factory guys envied the debauchery of “dotcom culture". The ceiling fan guys longed for the long-hair, substance-abusing gay abandon of “youth magazine culture" And so on.

And what did I see on day one at the new place? A whole bunch of guys hating their own “office culture".

“You used to have high-speed Internet?! Why would you leave such a ottoman harem of digital delights and join this North Korean gulag of firewalls and Lotus Notes?"

The truth is obvious. Suckiness seems to be the immutable nature of “office cultures". In all my life, I’ve perhaps met one person who has spent five years or more in a single company at a “middle management or above" level, is exposed to its workings at a very high level, and continues to love it madly, deeply, etc.

This chap works for one of India’s largest IT companies and utterly adores the place. At every level: the company as a whole, his team in isolation, and his own profile. He likes everything from the board of governors down to the way they handled his expense reports and reimbursements. Mind you, this is a massive company. One of those firms that go to engineering colleges and hire Seemandhra/Telangana fellows by the postgraduate hostelfuls.

I’d never seen this kind of top-down admiration in a manager before.

But he is an aberration.

Otherwise “office culture" seems to be something you just can’t help but hate. You may be bowled over when you first join a new firm. Or you may be one of those grizzled veterans who try and ignore things like culture. But a time will come, it seems, when the culture will drive you up the wall and you’re soon dissing it like everybody else.

Recently I came across further proof of this immutable nature of cubicles.

Imagine, if you will, the one job in the world, with the least possible impact of office politics and culture. Go on. Imagine.

How about TV weatherperson? Surely no job can have a more benign work culture? What possible politics can a TV weatherperson indulge in? What possible highs and lows can that job involve?

Nothing right? Cúmulo-wrongus.

Earlier this week the UK’s Guardian paper had a story online titled Revealed: the backstabbing office politics of the BBC weathermen. It said: “Former BBC weatherman Bill Giles is writing a book, You Have Wives?, with former editor of BBC Weather John Teather, which reveals the hitherto unseen rivalries that went on behind the map. Backstabbing, betrayal and intrigue feature heavily, and it sometimes reads like a Jackie Collins novel."

If meteorologists can’t point at things in peace what hope is there for the rest of us. None at all. We are all cursed with lives of professional discontent, watching on longingly as our colleagues move on to greener pastures.

Except that IT fellow mentioned above. Rascal. Hope he gets laid off soon.

Cubiclenama takes a weekly look at pleasures and perils of corporate life. Your comments are welcome at cubiclenama@livemint.com. To read Sidin Vadukut’s previous columns, go to www.livemint.com/cubiclenama

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Published: 09 Aug 2013, 02:56 PM IST
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