Cubicle Manners

You come back to your desk from a quick break and you find that someone has just rolled your chair away. Or worse, someone comes to meet your cubicle mate, occupies your chair and doesn't even care to get up and offer it back to you, appearing completely oblivious to the fact that you have returned back to your desk. Does this bother you? Is that putting it mildly?

Our workstation is quickly emerging as our home away from home, as many of us end up spending more time in office than ever before. Just like stealing your chair, people talking loudly on speaker phones, talkative co-workers, wafts of strange smells coming from your neighboring cubicle, and many other such things can all contribute to distract you, leading to lower productivity. We spend most of our productive time in our cubicle; we are bound to become territorial about it. And such conflicts bound to happen with our co-workers at work places. Situations like these are quite common and there is nothing alarming about it. All it takes is a little consideration by employees towards others at their work place to resolve such issues.

The ability to work without distraction is the most important factor for individuals to be effective and stress free, and yet it is quite scarce a lot of the time in our work places. Our offices are extremely noisy – cramped work stations, people chatting away with each other, talking loudly on telephones, crunching away without guilt, borrowing things from each other’s desk without the colleague’s knowledge, cell phones ringing incessantly with Bollywood ringtones – the list is endless. Noise is the leading cause of reduced concentration levels; this inadvertently reduced individual’s productivity, and often, this leads to increased stress for the individual, and conflict with managers or supervisors as an extension to reduced productivity.

Since we don’t have the liberty to change the setup and design of workplace, could there not be ways to make our office environment more productive, comfortable and harmonious in some ways? How to enlighten that bad-mannered work-mate without offending? Here are few of the things to opt with a little grace and lot of good sense to help you.

Rules of Work-space Decorum

1.      No Frisbees in office

Standing up and tossing something to someone a few desks or cubes over like Frisbees is a capital ‘NO’. And so is poking head out of cubicles to survey the peers; managers and supervisors are often guilty of this. Such behaviour is quiet distracting. Even if the walls of your cubicles are low enough to gaze over, go around to the co-worker’s desk to give or take what you wanted. Do use office messengers to check if it’s the right time to go to your co-workers desk instead of barging straight to him.

2.      Have silent zones in offices

You aren’t expected to whisper, but just speak in low voice so that you don’t disturb others working around. Understand that everyone needs to pay attention to the task in front of them; their work is just as important as yours. They too need to perform at their full capacity to finish things before their deadline. Noise is not just talking loud, sending spam emails and continuously sending personal messages over office messengers is also a form of noise. Use office emails and communicators for business communication only.

3.      Handle your phone with care

When on long telephone calls, most put there phones on speakers and that’s understandable. But be considerate, go to a secluded corner of your office before turning the speaker ON; keep the volume as low as possible. The best thing you could do is use headphones. Playing games on smartphones to unwind may not seem like a bad idea, but go someplace private to disengage yourself. Also, you may be a music lover, but that doesn’t give you any rights to sing along or turn the volume up on your smartphone to listen to your favourite tunes. Once again, use headphones. Moreover, keep your phones on ‘silent’ or ‘vibrate’ mode; you certainly don’t want to be nuisance to your co-workers.

4.      In office, not all is public property

Walking into a momentarily vacant cubicle and picking up whatever you want (especially chairs) as if it’s your personal property is strict no-no. Just because the item is lying unattended doesn’t mean you can walk away with it. Even if the stapler, pen or notepad is owned by the company, you need to ask for it each time you require it. Also, return things promptly or let them know when they can expect to get it back. Your colleague will be happier to lend you whatever you may need in future.

5.      Wafts can be displeasing

You are busy and want to devote every minute at work to work; but remember, eating at your desk doesn’t make you super dedicated. Plus, eating involves crackling of wrappers, food aromas, smacking, chewing, crunching, gulping and lots of other sounds which might make your co-worker uncomfortable. Most offices have gyms now days. Using gyms for good health is a good idea but leaving behind sweaty gym shoes at your desk is not so good idea. Think about the foul smell of your sweat clad shoes. It would be revolting for you and others.

There could be many such rules of civility in office that you could follow to make your office environment pleasant for yourself and others. The list could be never exhaustive. But this is the least you could do to be civil towards your co-workers in office. Consider the above rules as a start line, the bare minimum, and add on more such rules as you go along to ensure a productive, comfortable and harmonious workplace for all.

Project 9: Versions of Truth

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon. I had absolutely nothing to do. Only seldom does one get a change to say I had nothing to do and not be procrastinating something important. I thought of spending some time on Facebook. While scrolling through the page I saw this game "Which Mahabharata character are you?". The game was simple, you are asked a few questions. Based on your answers the algorithm computes similarities between you and the characters in Mahabharata. While I waited for my result, I expected the result to be Arjuna or Karna, or considering my stout built, I would have even accepted Bheem. But what turned out really shocked me. I got SHAKUNI..... I am not a cunning, deceiving and deceitful person like Shakuni. I was not just disappointed but at some level, even felt offended. I wanted to protest, but where and to whom. This was just a stupid game on internet. Not wanting to waste the rest of my afternoon. I tried to remember all the stories from Mahabharata that my grandmother told me as a kid. I went off to sleep.

When I woke up, I felt as though I had new insight on Mahabharata and found a whole new perspective on Shakuni. May be the saying "Sleep over it!" does work after all.

Here is Shakuni's story. Shakuni is no ordinary man. He was a prince from the land of Gandhar, son of King Subala and brother of Gandhari. According to folklore, rulers of Hastinapur attacked and conquered Gandhar. They imprisoned all the male members of the royal family. The prisoners were given only one grain of rice per person per day to eat. 'Surrender or perish' was the message from the invaders. One grain of rice was not enough to feed them all, but all the grains put together could be enough to feed one person. They decided that the individual they choose to donate their share of rice to must be strong, wise and most importantly capable to avenge the misery brought upon Gandhar. Unanimously they voted "Shakuni!!!" They gathered around Shakuni and hit him hard near his knee, this made Shakuni slightly limp for the rest of his life. But this was done as a permanent reminder to the sacrifice his fellow countrymen made for him and the revenge which he had to accomplish. To add to Shakuni's misery, his beautiful sister Gandhari was married to blind prince of Histinapur Dhrutarashtra. This infuriated Shakuni. He vowed to erase the entire lineage of rulers of Hastinapur. We only remember Shakuni for his treacherous deeds in Mahabharata. Considering the injustice Shakuni was subjected to, his actions seem justified and at the end he was successful the bloodline of Hastinapur royals perished.

The quiet nap that I took brought back a few more stories to mind.

When the great war at Kurukshetra seemed inevitable, Lord Krishna visited Duryodhana to persuade him to not go ahead with the war. Lives of countless men and destiny of two mighty dynasties were at stake. But Duryodhana wouldn't relent. Having exhausted all his faculties. Krishna said "Duryodhana, I shall share with you knowledge that no one other than me has ever known. I shall share with you the secrets of 'Bhagwat Geeta'. In the divine light of Geeta you will forget your lust for war." Duryodhana smiled slightly and replied "I beg you Krishna not to endow me with the knowledge of Bhagwat Geeta, for I know that it would make me a better person. But to be bad is my  Dharma. Let me have the privilege to live by it."

Time and again in this epic, the supposedly bad characters have behaved good and the good characters have deviated to do bad things. Take the example of Yudhisthir, also known as Dharmaraj, and yet this is the same person who looses his kingdom, his wealth, his brothers and his wife at a game of dice. Now you would say they game was rigged and he would have lost the game of dice no matter what. But the fact is that the one who is glorified for self control, restraint and patience, is the one who is tempted and does not show restraint and bets over and over again in a game when clearly the luck just wasn't on his side.

When the world shunned Karna, believing he was inferior because of his inferior class he was born in; It was Shakuni who recognized the strengths of Karna. Shakuni always advised Duryodhana to befriend Karna and others for the strengths they possess, regardless of their social class.

If you look at other stories from this epic, you see that no character can be clearly defined as good or bad. All the characters constitute a grey mix between black and white. So which version of story do you believe in. The version that your grandmother told you when you were kids. Where moralities of characters from the epic were confined to a binary system of heroes and villains. Stories in which heroes are good because you have been told that they are good regardless of there misdemeanor. Or the kind of version that I had realization of after the sound nap, where characters in the epic are not binary but complex and have multiple shades to their constitution.

You really haven't understood the moral of the epic, if you still believe in rigid classification between good and bad, right and wrong. Truth is formed by the experiences one has over his lifetime. The beliefs and value system one grows with and develops over time. Truth is relative to the perspective of each individual. So the next time you tell a story don't be disappointed if your assertions are refuted or challenged. Your story is your version of truth, yet not necessarily of your listeners.