Working Woman's Wonders- Part Three

                    All in a day's work. Launch of a mobile app for my office. Hon'ble MP Smt. Kirron Kher                    was the Chief Guest.

                                              At the Telecom Minister's function in Panchkula

                                                               Sports Meet 2016

To sum up my job in a nutshell: it’s management of time, resources, and people. I’m constantly looking for ways to keep my office staff busy, else they lapse into a state of desultory wakefulness interspersed with bouts of petty squabbles. We have about twenty-five new recruits- Lower Division Clerks and Junior Accountants. A number of them seem to consider this as an extension of College-life, rather than Central Government. They play truant often by reporting late for work or simply calling in sick just before or after a holiday. In view of this I’ve become quite strict about attendance and granting leave. The youngsters have become correspondingly creative in making up excuses to support their leave requests.

There are the usual, of course:

‘Mother is ill’,

‘Mother-in-law is ill’,

‘Brother/ sister getting married’,’

‘Aunt/ Uncle died’ and so on.

The hype surrounding leave has affected the more senior officials, too, particularly Jeevanji (featured in my previous posts about Working Woman’s Wonders). He’s in his mid-fifties, a Supervisory level officer. And he takes leave only too often. He came to me a few days ago, begging for two days’ leave, Thursday and Friday so it would give him four straight days off.

“But you took time off only last month,” I said, “You can’t keep doing this. I’ve warned you...”

“Madam, it’s unavoidable,” he said, “There’s been a death in the family. The cremation is tomorrow. I have to go.”

“Who is it this time?” I demanded, since he’d already accounted for his parents, father-in-law, grandparents, maternal and paternal uncles and aunts. Besides, his mother-in-law is perpetually on her death bed- a candidate for the future, no doubt.

“My uncle,” said Jeevanji and added before I could quiz him further: “If you don’t believe me, I...I can send you a video of the cremation tomorrow and I’ll share it through wattsapp!”

He had me there.

“No, thank you,” I said, “That’ll be kind-of disrespectful to the...corpse, don’t you think?”

Needless to say, I granted him leave.

As always there’ve been the usual bloopers in files, too.

-Are personnel or personals to be deputed for training? My office mixes them up frequently.

-Should the requirements of a tender be fool proof or full proof? My office favours the latter.

-And then came this gem of a request from my admin. section:

‘Approval may kindly be given for hiring ½ labourer tomorrow.’

I was tempted to ask: which half? The top or the bottom?

-Our hon’ble judges in CAT are not immune to such innovative uses of language, either. While ruling against my department and in favour of an employee, the judge wrote by way of explanation: ‘After all, a lot of water has flown into the river by now.’

Not under the bridge, mind. Er...yes, Your Honour. Where else is water supposed to flow? And, sorry, but I’ve never heard of flying water.

Here's one of my favourite scenes from As Good As It Gets: Melvin's day at the office!