Ethics at my workplace

A fascinating thing happened at work today. We were working on a project where we were trying to demonstrate that our team was better at a certain analysis than another agency. The deliverable was the completed report. We had the other agency's report in our hands and our goal was to deliver a better analysis and a better report. This particular day I was wrapping up a sub-report that I had to do. Before putting the finishing touches I went up to my manager and asked him some follow up questions - like who else is working on this, who's doing what etc. Over the course of the discussion it came out that he would be creating a master report and then incorporate the work of a couple of us guys into that.

"That's acceptable. When do you think you'll be submitting this master report?"
"In a couple of hours of course, as soon as you two finish your work."
"What? That's impossible! Not counting the work we'll be submitting to you, there are another 200 pages or so that need to be written."
"Well yeah. I'll just be copy-pasting those segments from the other agency's report"

I was stunned at this. Not only was this supremely unethical, I was personally pissed off that to show himself off as a good manager, he was trying to deliver a report much faster than normal. I then ended up trying to explain to him why this was wrong. Basically his argument was - the other agency submitted this work to our company, and so it's the company's property now. We work for the company and we're using company property to create stuff. What's wrong with that? I tried explaining that by that logic if I worked for JK Rowling's publishers I could just rip off her cover page, call that manuscript "Harry Potter and the goblet of wine" and call it my own new book! He looked at me for a second like, "Yeah, you can do that, can't you?"

I went nuts at this and I almost started laughing and shouting at him. If this was a junior I'd have called him names by this point. Finally I told him that he could do whatever he wanted. He then agreed to have a discussion about the project with his superiors and then redefine it. But it wasn't because he was convinced, it was more like a "I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree."

In the end, I'm more than a little worried. I desperately want to talk to his superior and let him know that he's pulling this type of nonsense. But I don't know if I want to ruffle too many feathers yet.

Fingerprint me, please.

On one hand, I can understand that there are very few document a person is comfortable signing on that he didn't create himself. Even if I wanted you to sign on a piece of paper that says that it's warm, you'd hesitate to do that even if your shirt was soaked from sweating. It must be even harder if you're in the government. But I never imagined that it would be this hard to get a police officer to sign on a piece of paper that says, "Yes, I attest that the guy who claims he's so-and-so is indeed the one giving his fingerprints in front of me."

I imagine the word "fingerprints" makes anyone nervous. But still, I was willing to explain that the police didn't need to attest to my (lack of a) police record, but it took a lot of running around and a fair bit of luck to make it happen.

(Some day I'll mention why I needed the fingerprints in the first place and why this was actually an easier thing to do than the alternative.)

So the story starts in Hyderabad where after a lot of name dropping and influence peddling, I was able to meet a special officer from a crime branch. "I really don't have a problem signing that paper" he says, "It's just that we're not authorized to do this. I don't even have a rubber stamp. Try your local police station." OK, so we approach a police station. "What the hell do you mean 'it's a small job'? Would you just hire anyone off the street into your company because I say it's a 'small job'? (What???) Do you think I have nothing better to do than attest fingerprints? We don't do this type of things here." And so on went off the station officer at the other police station. I really felt like punching him, or pulling his teeth out with a pair of rusty pliers for his attitude, but turned out that basically these station officers were stripped of a lot of authority recently and this particular officer was just taking out his frustration on me. (I still do hope bad stuff happens to him, but atleast I understood why he was being a jackass.) At this point I was very frustrated and dejected and at a super low. But I also had a feeling that things would happen much faster in Panchkula.

Did I say Panchkula was the worst place I've ever lived in? Really? I don't know what possessed me to do that. Well, the people here might be barely civilized but I'll give the government officials 10/10 for their behavior, atleast compared to the ones in my home state.

Here I started off with the court house which directed me to a police station in the city. Here the station head was very polite. He pointed out that this was a very unusual request (which I agreed with) but he made a call and directed me to another police station. At this second police station, the group of well-meaning but poorly educated and not very worldly officers were again reluctant to sign on any type of paper, in spite of the other station head's directives. They asked me to get back to the court house and get it done there. "Look man, you're not listening to me. We can't just take your fingerprints on a piece of paper, this has to be done officially. (I tried telling him that it wasn't necessary to do this officially.) No, no, listen. Go to the court house, there's a guy there who's an expert on taking fingerprints. He'll do a good job for you." At that moment I was cursing the guy in every language I knew (in my head) for being such a coward about attesting something and passing the buck. As it turned out, he turned out be fantastically right in his assessment of the situation.

So I went to the court house for the second time that day and was now directed to the office of the superintendent of police (SP). OK, I am not scared of big police officers. I walked right up to his office. There I met his subordinate who talked to me for 30 mins before letting me see the SP. Nothing evil, he was just trying to ascertain if I had some mischief in my mind. He asked me my salary, about my job. Then went on to talk about jobs in general, experience etc. Finally I was ushered into meet the SP. I explained why I needed the prints (which btw, gentle reader, I haven't explained to you yet, but that'll have to wait). He also mentioned that this was an unusual request but put his signature on a piece of paper which was all I needed.

After that things moved relatively quicker. I took that paper and went to the court house for the third time that day. Here they added more signatures and rubber stamps and sent me to the so called fingerprint expert. If you're by this point imagining something like the Keymaker from the Matrix sequels, you're right. This was a kindly old gentleman who sat "under the stairs" with this small desk and small fan. (Again, very much a character out of R. K. Narayan's novels.) He took my fingerprints with the methodical efficiency of a man who has spent his life doing only one thing, but doing it so well that he made a career out of it.

He rolled some ink onto a metal plate. Then he took each of my fingers one-by-one, rolled them on the inked metal plate, and then rolled them on a form that was created just for that purpose. Then he took a set of prints without rolling my fingers. It was just so thorough. He asked me how many copies I needed and while I knew that I should get a spare copy just in case, I felt awkward asking him and said that I just wanted one. "Why don't I just make two for you?" Wow!!! This was the best guy ever! So I told him to kindly make me a spare and he repeated the process happily.

Now it was time for payment. At this point I want to remind you that while I had to make up many lies in Hyderabad in order to even talk to the officers, I hadn't lied about anything in my Panchkula dealings. I didn't even have to bribe anyone. But now I felt my honest streak was up and I would have to grease his palm a little. He said that the fee was Rs. 500 which he actually said at the court house. Even though he made no sign of giving me a receipt, I took solace in knowing that even if this was a bribe, it would be shared by his colleagues in the court house. Then he said, "Let's go have some juice." This I assumed was were the real payment would happen. Like maybe me paying Rs. 500 for a glass of orange juice, or atleast buying this guy some expensive juice or cigarettes or something. (It never occured to me even wonder if "juice" meant something else.) He ordered two flavored milk bottles and then two "sweets". I didn't even want to eat the sweet, I just wanted to pay the vendor and leave but he insisted I have a sweet. So I ate sweet, and drank the flavored milk. (I was wondering what someone who was lactose-intolerant, or just someone who hated milk would have done here.) I got a phone call right then and when I was done with the call, I found out the clerk had paid the vendor! I was just shocked. "Sorry sir, I should have paid the guy, after all you did something for me" I stammered. "No, no, this wasn't a big deal. I was just doing my duty. Bye." He left me feeling more than a little respect for the public servants in Panchkula, and after I managed to pick up my jaw from the floor, I ran as fast I could back to work.

An awesome wedding

It was a heck of a trip. I still remember on an hour-to-hour basis exactly what I did for about 10 straight days because they were so tightly scheduled. It was a nice wedding though. There are a few things that need mentioning -

1. All of my cousins showed up. It was the first meeting of all of us cousins from my mom's side. I thought we met when the youngest of the cousins was born but that wasn't quite true. Now, after about 15 years after the youngest was born, we met, eight of us. From my dad's side too almost all of my cousins showed up. Only one went missing and that was because she was 9 months pregnant. I was very thrilled to see them all, some of whom I hadn't met for about 10 years.
2. Representing all chapters. This one was even more thrilling. I had friends representing all chapters of my life show up. I had a classmate from my school (1st class - 10th class), two friends from my Inter days (2 years), one from my IIT days (four years), one from my early MS days in the US (3 years), one from the later PhD days (6 years) and one from my job in Pune. (One in particular flew all the way from the US just for the wedding!) Among relatively minor "phases", I also had a rep from my HSC days. I could say that the only chapters of my life not represented there were the pre-school days and my current Chandigarh folks.
   
3. Slept in a different bed 9 out of 10 days in a row. The sequence of beds I slept in starting from the night of the 7th is as follows - home, wedding hall, home, her uncle's place, train, different train, home, home, Delhi, Mauritius. BTW, "sleep" is loosely defined here. On none of those nights did I have a full night's sleep, with three of those nights going for less than three hours of sleep.
4. Relatively uneventful. It's not so much that things didn't go wrong, it was that a lot of mishaps were "self-goals" - like stupid things the groom's side did that affected the groom's side. So there was very little scope for complaining, which is usually worse than the mishap itself.

Overall, I was as thrilled as I could be with the end product. For better or for worse, there were other things on my mind while the wedding was going on, so I managed to keep my calm instead of yelling at people like I normally do during these types of events. Like I said, for better or for worse.

I'm waiting, in an airport

Right now, I'm standing at an internet kiosk in the Delhi airport, waiting to board a flight to Mauritius. The flight was delayed for technical reasons first by 100 mins and then by another hour, and as of now we're expected to leave about fours hours later than scheduled. We can only hope that's the right time of departure. 

Earlier, I was at a different kiosk with a super crappy keyboard that for some reason had keys mapped to odd spots. I couldn't find certain buttons and had to keep pressing all of them to figure out what key I was pressing. Then there was this creepy dude who was standing right by me and looking at my screen over my shoulder. At first I looked at him pointedly and he pretended to look away. A couple of mins later he was still looking at my screen and I asked him if he would like to move closer to read other peoples' emails. That got him away for a few mins. 

The airline offered us free breakfast, then free coffee. I think if this keeps up they'll have to arrange for free lunch. That is if the airline representative doesn't get lynched first by one of the many many irate honeymooning couples. It gladdens my heart to know that a lot of other marriages are off to a tepid start.