Surviving Taliban

No, I don’t live in Afghanistan or anywhere close to a nation run by religious fanatics. In fact I live in Mumbai, a city that’s as cosmopolitan as they come. But even in this crowded city, in one small corner of a bustling suburb, there is a place whose policies are inspired directly by Taliban. That place is my workplace!

I work in an IT company, that too in one of the most technologically challenging and fast growing domains. And like almost all of us in the IT industry, I cannot survive without trolling various technology forums to keep myself updated with the latest developments.

You must be wondering by now that how does this in anyway relate to Taliban?

Well, I like challenges and my company does its best to keep throwing new challenges at me. Here’s how they do it:

1. You cannot send/receive mails to/from yahoo, hotmail, gmail and a gazillion such mail programs from/to my work email. Brilliant I must say! It doesn’t sound that bad right now, but remember this point for later reference.
2. Came to work last week and saw my colleagues discussing something. I thought it must be some client issue. But what do you know? The USB ports on their work machines had been disabled! What the fuck? The hardware team had raided our machines overnight and blocked the ports. Great! So I can’t transfer the documents I had laid my hands on while surfing at home.
3. I don’t have any internet access from work! Holy shit! I pinched myself enough to bruise both my forearms. The last time I checked, I was working in IT and I DON’T HAVE INTERNET ACCESS? Oh wait! I’m sorry, I have limited internet access. I can open Google and Yahoo and any search engine you can think of. Cool! I enter a search term…and wait. FUCK! I can’t open any of the result links. So what do I do with Google and Yahoo? Stare at the screen and wonder what theme Google will have on the next major holiday?
4. Now let’s combine points 1, 2 & 3. I cannot mail any interesting thing I found while trolling the tech forums from home to my work email. I cannot copy it onto my pen-drive and transfer it to my work PC since the USB is disabled. I cannot access those forums from work as we don’t have internet access.

And then I’ll have my seniors telling me during my appraisals that I do not contribute towards knowledge sharing!

Apart from this, we also have a dress code. Employees are supposed to dress in appropriate business attire. No jeans or t-shirts. Now who the hell decides “appropriate”? Is a bright orange or flourescent green shirt acceptable over my dark blue polo t-shirt from Gap just because it’s a shirt? Is a black belt worn with brown formal shoes acceptable? Since when did corduroy become formal wear?

I won’t be surprized if in due they time block guys and girls from emailing each other! Forget that…they might just shutdown emailing altogether. You have to write letters, then take a dozen permissions before you can affix a stamp and mail the letter to the client to report bugs or status. They will have a team to open and read all communication travelling back and forth from the employee to the client. For all you know, the employees will be given huge books and pens or blackboards and chalks to do their daily work. No PCs! Naa rahegi baans, naa bajegi baansuri!

Phew! Are those American troops that I see caught in the traffic jam headed towards my workplace?