Friday, December 29, 2006

Change in my Office timings

I was staying in Kamalanagar and my office is in Bannerghatta road. Office to Home is 20km distance. I was to leaving home at 7.30am, and reach office by 8.15am. And Leave office any time after 4.30pm. I was so used to this timing and most of the days I avoided traffic.
As we (my husband and myself) spent more time traveling to and forth to office, we decided to shift to HSR Layout. I am not a person who can look at the city map and find the route to the destination. I need to go with someone to know the route. Since HSR was new for me I decided to take office cab facility for one month.

We are 4 who take one cab. I am picked at HSR around 9.15am. And cab starts from office at around 7.30pm. At 7pm I closed my system and went to read the newspaper. Security personnel was astonished to see me in office at 7pm. He asked me why am I in office still. I gave him the explanation. Before he asked 90% of the team members had asked me the same question and had given them the reason. One colleague thought there was some problem with his watch J
Second day my colleague who leaves very near to my house dropped me and I went back early. Third day again I had to stay back till 7.30pm. 10% of the team members who had not seen me on other day were surprised to see me so late in office. I was taking staircase to go down to parking lot, then security at 1st floor called me. He said why madam not getting your car? Yours used to be first car. Looked like he missed my car in parking lot. I played my story again there.
Change in my schedule has raised question in so many people.
I will change my schedule again next month, no not to check how many people ask me, but was to get rid of cab.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Day 1

Company I work for announced merger with another company couple of months back.
Very frequently we got merger update mails. From one month along with merger update we were seeing about "Day 1" a new entry in the merger update mail.
Since New Year was nearing we thought (at least I thought) “Day 1” is Jan 1st.

Last week we got a mail mentioning December 1st is day 1 and stay tuned for more updates. One after the other mails floated and looked to be a big day. 29th November got a mail requesting all employees to vacate the office on 30th November by 6.30pm for them to make arrangements.
I was thinking what arrangements they will do? They also notified that higher management would welcome the employees after 8.30am on December 1st.

I am an early bird to office, but didn’t wanted to miss higher management welcoming me, so reached office at 8.45am. New logo was at the gate that gave a feeling of loosing the old identity of the company. As they say change is the only constant thing life I accepted the change in logo. I entered the gate and came to the entrance of office. Was surprised with the arrangements they made. We were welcomed with a beautiful rose, day 1 agenda and also a chocolate.

Elevator door opened and guess what even elevator was decorated with beautiful roses. Entered our floor and couldn’t believe it’s the same office were I was working. Whole look gave a festive mood, and we Indians get holidays on almost all festivals and so didn’t get mood to work in a festive mood. We few discussed about new logo, decoration, agenda for the day. Can say did everything other than work. Around 10.30am or 11am started to work. Around 12noon managers came to everyone at desk and congratulated for the new company and also welcomed to the new company.

12.45pm is our lunchtime and being in festive mood decided to go out for lunch. But one colleague asked us to have lunch in our own cafeteria as the food is good that day. We had lunch in cafeteria and really food was wonderful. After lunch again back to work. Around 3.30pm managers asked us to gather, this usually happens in our team to celebrate Birthdays and Anniversary’s in that month. But this time it was to celebrate Day 1 of the new company. We all got bouquet of roses and a seasonal greeting card. Manager mentioned that roses and card was not for employee alone but was for the family as without the support of family we probably wouldn’t be what we are now.

Then it was time for cake cutting. We all gathered in cafeteria had the nice pastry. Agenda had program till 9.30pm, due to some personal work I had to end my involvement for the Day 1 function and had to take care of personal work.
This was the first merger I was part of and we were apprehensive about the merger, but it was un-avoidable and hope it’s for better. Have to thank the management to make it a wonderful day.