Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Saturday, September 8, 2012
All in a day's work
It's something quite interesting, the work of a public servant.
Not the ones found working at Government offices sitting at desks piled up with files and an old computer. But those who we chance to see doing their work everyday as we head for our workplaces. In our mode of commute. The public transport buses. The bus conductors and drivers too fall into the category of public servants and are those who add real meaning to the label they are associated with.
I take a bus route that has a standard set of bus numbers and sometimes I end up in the same bus that I have taken before. The bus conductor looks familiar in such a case and I even get a smile of recognition, which is nice. This gesture made by some of them caught my attention and I started observing them more.
There is a lot more than meets the eye in the work a bus conductor does.
From a third person's perspective the job profile of the bus conductor will be just to collects bus tickets at every stop. This is probably a task that is insignificant if taken all by itself.
The conductor will have to ensure that everyone gets their tickets. But this is no easy job as people try to blend into the to get a free ride, the conductor's job is to ensure this doesn't happen.
Also he has to very fast with his arithmetic! Collecting and neatly arranging notes in his brown satchel and tendering exact change to whoever hands out a hundred for a meagre 12-13 rupees ticket.
His set of tasks also involves noting down some figures of tickets sold by each stage of the bus route in this small sheet of paper folded in his pocket.
The conductor will have to monitor and reprimand people who bring luggage into the bus. Vendors bring their aluminium vessels which occupy quite a bit of space. He has to ensure that they are kept where it does trip somebody or cause any inconvenience to the other commuters
He has to ensure that everyone gets their tickets, this involves constantly and loudly reminding the people who got in at the previous stop to get their tickets or atleast pass the money and say where they need to go.
To add to this once the bus starts getting crowded he has to regulate the standing crowd asking them to move in to give way to the ones who will get in at the next stop.
He has to keep shouting out the stop names to ensure that people atleast make an attempt to get near the exits so that the bus doesn't have to stop for too long.
Alerting the driver about someone who wants to get off and to whistle and shout out an 'ok right' when it is safe enough for on-boarding passengers to get the bus moving.
Just a job of issuing bus tickets?
I'd like to think otherwise.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
The Work Phase of life- the beginings
My first day in the company, the induction day and seminars on corporate functioning was a flood of information and followed by some advice as to how to approach work life in my company. I should admit that as much as it was exciting it was also in a way intimidating. The latter emotion more out of the fact that little had I realized the magnanimity of what is going to follow.
I took the fact of getting a job in campus very lightly at first but eventually due to the long waiting time I went and I tried other companies for more job offers as back ups and it was only then I realized how lucky I was to have a job in hand through placements in college and how much value the job holds. After that initial struggle and long wait now I finally am in the company. I took it as a good start and I saw it as some training followed by a job where I can prove myself to be quite good at what I do.
There's more to it than just work, If I can define every phase of life with a major activity then it is only in school that it was academics college it was a mix of academics and friend circles and contacts. But work place attitude seem to be drastically different. Good grades in academics can only go as far as getting you a job, how you manage your job is completely based on the skills one has acquired interacting with people.
My uncle called me up before my joining and we had this chat about this new era of work life I am going to start off and all he emphasized on was- yes learning during the training was important but that's not all, because eventually its all just going to be tests that determine how much we comprehend and more or less all of us in the batch would be at the same level or at least only considered so owing to our lack of industry experience in what we know.
What matters most according to him was how I project myself, in the way I dress to work, how I interact with my peers how good my communication skills are. This way I would be able to interact with people better and more effectively. How this works, according to him is that it's more pleasing to listen to a man dressed in a suit than one in ragged clothes and well dressed people are the ones who are more likely to be taken seriously. I realized how true his statement was during the induction they did mention there are opportunities during work where we can brush up our skills as even the company agrees with the fact that a one time training is not going to effectively educate us in a comprehensive way, so they have a system which we can use and re-evaluate ourselves and work on our technical weaknesses.
What they expected out of us is to decide how we portray ourselves as company employee and of the moral responsibility we carry along with that ID card. One of the personnel did exemplify with a story that if one was arguing over the meter charge with an auto driver on your way to work, even if you mention your name to him, he will remember you by associating you with the brand you are wearing around your neck and that people from your company are more likely to be a bothersome lot. Hence the way the way you speak, the way dress are a little more important than what you know when it comes to the workplace.
Anyway all this work philosophy can make one go bonkers if delved into too deep, so as of now I am just very eager to know what's at stake for me during this period, and the important thing is to get the most out of what is offered to us, and that's what is the best thing to do with life in general as well. And to the end result is happiness and peace of mind.
I took the fact of getting a job in campus very lightly at first but eventually due to the long waiting time I went and I tried other companies for more job offers as back ups and it was only then I realized how lucky I was to have a job in hand through placements in college and how much value the job holds. After that initial struggle and long wait now I finally am in the company. I took it as a good start and I saw it as some training followed by a job where I can prove myself to be quite good at what I do.
There's more to it than just work, If I can define every phase of life with a major activity then it is only in school that it was academics college it was a mix of academics and friend circles and contacts. But work place attitude seem to be drastically different. Good grades in academics can only go as far as getting you a job, how you manage your job is completely based on the skills one has acquired interacting with people.
My uncle called me up before my joining and we had this chat about this new era of work life I am going to start off and all he emphasized on was- yes learning during the training was important but that's not all, because eventually its all just going to be tests that determine how much we comprehend and more or less all of us in the batch would be at the same level or at least only considered so owing to our lack of industry experience in what we know.
What matters most according to him was how I project myself, in the way I dress to work, how I interact with my peers how good my communication skills are. This way I would be able to interact with people better and more effectively. How this works, according to him is that it's more pleasing to listen to a man dressed in a suit than one in ragged clothes and well dressed people are the ones who are more likely to be taken seriously. I realized how true his statement was during the induction they did mention there are opportunities during work where we can brush up our skills as even the company agrees with the fact that a one time training is not going to effectively educate us in a comprehensive way, so they have a system which we can use and re-evaluate ourselves and work on our technical weaknesses.
What they expected out of us is to decide how we portray ourselves as company employee and of the moral responsibility we carry along with that ID card. One of the personnel did exemplify with a story that if one was arguing over the meter charge with an auto driver on your way to work, even if you mention your name to him, he will remember you by associating you with the brand you are wearing around your neck and that people from your company are more likely to be a bothersome lot. Hence the way the way you speak, the way dress are a little more important than what you know when it comes to the workplace.
Anyway all this work philosophy can make one go bonkers if delved into too deep, so as of now I am just very eager to know what's at stake for me during this period, and the important thing is to get the most out of what is offered to us, and that's what is the best thing to do with life in general as well. And to the end result is happiness and peace of mind.
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