confessions of a guilty consultant

i feel guilty...

i am a consultant like most post mba people and am working onsite at a client location... but before you start feeling jealous that i am in the bustling neighbourhoods of london or the orderly locales of germany and some exotic location of the swiss alps holidaying in the weekends, let me tell u i have not left the locales of india, in fact i am very much within the locales of the city i am in... ok i won't bitch about this city now... i reserve it for dinner discussions with friends...

but the fact remains that i am wallowing in a low cost center in india itself... actually it makes sense for them to cut costs because they are not the world leaders in their industry... they are only second with revenues of less than $10 billion... poor people... that is why they have their office in one of the low cost neighborhoods of bangalore which is actually a neighbour to the city itself just some 20km out of it... it is an adventure in itself going there waking up as early as 6am to begin the journey which is a nice long one with fellow workers and consultants to give you company... and with all that excited honking in that packed roads keeps you awake for the entire 2 hour journey... well simple math will tell u that we are doing just 10km/h but then slow and steady wins the race and speed thrills but kills - our bus drivers are strict followers of that even though they are eternally playing musical chair variations like catch-that-gap-before-the-honking-stops etc...

then of course after that nice journey when we reach the office location we are greeted by strict security officers who make you feel at home with their concentrated scowls when they check all the guys for the id cards. yeah they know that only the guys have the brains enough to blow up the IT offices in that tech park with bombs... girls don't... don’t think that we are male chauvinists, it is a scientifically proven fact; and it boosts your self confidence every day when you hear "sir id card id card... ok sir, thank you sir"... and the attendance register that we have to sign is a clear method of cutting costs... no elaborate silly access control systems...

even the software that the employees use makes me feel guilty... when i get the latest windows Vista and XP professional edition for all my home computers and laptops, all for free, we use some of the outdated operating systems that are no longer even supported even by die hard open source fanatics... and yes the hardware that supports it is outdated too so that there are no compatibility issues - think of all the problems we would have if we put faster hardware with slow OSes... while we consultants are given laptops with the latest hardware configurations so what if they are handed down through the generations of consultants and are prone to crash for each hand they pass into, they are still sleek laptops weighing only 5 kgs as sompareed to the 15kg monitor + 10 kg cpu that we get at onsite...

their employees seem to be a bunch of people who seem to be paid very less that they cannot even afford their basic roti-kapda-makan... while we consultants strut around in business casuals and formals complete with expensive italian leather shoes (heven't you heard of the michaelanjelo brand - these shoes are available only in exclusive stores along the back alleys near andheri railway station in mumbai) with each set of our clothings costing at least a 500 bucks we see people moving around in dirty and tattered jeans and sandals... even though they say that the jeans (we can clearly see that it is some chinese brand named after bruce lee) are new and the sandals are for comfort and cost about 2500 bucks... how can brands like reebok and nike compare against michaelanjelo? and the other day i saw this girl in a very short skirt and a sleeveless t-shirt that looked like it was something that was bought when she was in primary school... i was even planning to start a small collection fund from our consulting team where each of us contributed some money so that she could buy some clothes... but she seemed happy - isn't there a saying that money can't buy happiness and I envy her for finding happiness despite her poverty...

we also get some good perks like that wonderful mirror in the restroom... it shows people distorted into longer and fatter shapes like those funny mirrors in amusement parks - only this mirror has all the mirrors clubbed into one and at different points you can see yourself in different shapes... and it even has a spot in the middle where the person in front of it just disappears... it is an amazing stress buster... but there is always a big queue in that rest room - the employees are all extremely stressed out;(don't misunderstand that the restroom is under-equipped) while we are pretty chilled out working only for some 12 hours a day, their employees are so stressed out that they have to come late to the office and leave early as well...

and what a pathetic recreation system they have for employees (apart from that funny mirror) - just one small cafeteria with a coffee machine and a fridge with some soft drinks, and carrom board and a partitioned room for a tt table... and they don't even have a tv with a good DTH connection... how long can we keep pressing F5 every 5 minutes on cricinfo... don't we have other mails and scrapbooks to check... it is too bad that we had to leave work half a day early cramming our whole team into a small car and go home just to watch a cricket match... and those expensive restaurants we go to when we feel like having a better lunch than the cafeteria food, they normally take at least 2-3 times the normal duration of our lunch hours... and this despite the fact that we go to these places only 3 or 4 times a week while all the poor employees of the client eat at the cheaper cafeteria - though the quality of the food is the same...

that is what makes me feel guilty... when the client is so poor we consultants seem to be leeching out the money from them... even though we are not as good as rajnikanth who in sivaji could make some 250 crores at the young age of 25 just writing some software code, we do make a few thousands; and if we cut down on some of our daily meals, we can even save some money every month in those plastic piggy banks... provided our government does not levy piggy-bank-taxes, these little savings will be useful during the rainy days or maybe we can even donate a part of it to that poor girl...