Skip to main content

Chalta hai !


Recently, commissioned by the Director of a company, P executed a professional assignment for this company. When he raised his invoice, it included his professional fees, reimbursement of some expenses he had made on their behalf and conveyance expenses. The concerned people in Accounts Department called and told him that they would be rounding off conveyance to a higher amount. P protested and said that he wanted the exact amount and not more. They didn’t listen. Then, as the payment cheque came, P discovered that they had deducted tax on reimbursement and conveyance. So, later, the tax deduction certificate will show the wrong amount. That is not how we choose to operate. We want everything to be transparent, above board and precise.

So P got in touch with them and pointed out the discrepancy giving exact details of how the calculation ought to be. To this, they corrected their calculations and it turns out that they have paid a couple of hundred Rupees less to P. The way the concerned person had pointed out in his mail is as if P is a miser and has hankered for such a measly amount. P and I got really angry at this. We will now point out to him that it’s not a matter of a couple of hundred Rupees. It’s a matter of transacting business with precision and transparency. Also, we discovered, they have paid a couple of hundred Rupees more to another person involved in the same assignment due to this tendency to do work carelessly. A couple of hundred Rupees may be peanuts to the company or us, but it’s the principle of the thing. The attitude is wrong. How can they be at peace knowing that they are not doing their work precisely ?

I have seen this ‘chalta hai’ attitude in so many people, in so many spheres of life. It is extremely irritating and I fight against it whenever and wherever I can. But there still remain people and even organisations who will continue doing it ! Frustrating !

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How NOT to compère a function

Recently I attended an awards ceremony. It was a grand function with a huge audience in attendance. Many awards were given and some speeches too. The compère was, unintentionally, terribly funny ! In this function, when the compère announced the first award winner, he announced, “Please welcome on stage Mr. X (pause) married to (pause) wife Mrs. X (pause) from 1977 and successfully (pause) completed 32 years of (pause) married life…” I had tears in my eyes from laughing too hard :D Later, the same compère, while telling the audiences about a certain award winner, said, “…he is married (pause) to wife Mrs. Z (pause) and enjoys playing with his (pause) children K and M. His favourite (pause) holiday destination is (pause) the beaches (pronounced as ‘bitches’) of (pause) Goa” I nearly died choking with laughter for this one ! In the 45 minutes that he was on stage he was responsible for much hilarity due to his totally inappropriate commentary. I, of course, laughed my guts out and what c

‘Geographically challenged’

I laughed my guts out while reading this . Then I had another bout of laughter thinking of all the incidents that happen with me. For a long time now I have known that I am, what I like to call, ‘geographically challenged’ :) Situation 1 - If I go inside a building (happens mostly with residential buildings), then after I exit the lift (elevator) or come down the stairs, I cannot quickly locate the gate ! Situation 2 - If I am inside a building, I will routinely point in wrong directions to indicate places outside the building. Situation 3 - I am presently at office. I have come here from home. Now I have to go to some place where I have always gone from home and never from office. What do I do ? I go home first and from there I go to that place. It doesn’t matter if it is a longer distance or takes more time. I have to do this, because simply have no mechanism to re-align my mental map to my present location ! Situation 4 - Another thing is that if I have come to your place in

Love in the rains :)

Heart shaped ditch on a construction site next to our office building ! Closer view of the 'heart' ! You can find love in the most unusual places ! :)