Analogikal

Dave Grohl is screaming away on my headphones. The volume is high up there, as usual. I can see the judgmental looks from my coworkers. As Grohl screams away “don’t wanna be your monkey wrench”, i hummed along with him. But the thing about humming along with the headphones on is that you are not doing justice to the song. You are highlighting the bits and piece of lyrics you can understand. And in this case i was just repeatedly going “hmmmm hmmm hmmmm monkey wrench”. It was an embarrassing realization. There is something about the word monkey that really strikes a chord with our species. It was just re-emphasized with the heightened levels of stares i was drawing.

I have never heard anyone be proud of being called a monkey! I guess it has a lot to do with our sense of progress and evolution which gets setback a few million years when we get called monkeys! That brings me to Papa smurf (name changed to maintain anonymity. duh!). Now let’s assume Papa smurf is a fictional character. In a parallel universe he is Darth Vader and I am a storm trooper. I’m sure you get the drift. coming back to reality, working in human resources has it’s good days. But most days are flak days. Working in HR is a lot like being in the Pakistan cricket team. Everybody hates you and you hate each other. Candidly put, the hate is warranted. It is hard to quantify or qualify the work that we do. We are the alchemists of abstract, the gastronomic geniuses of verbal diarrhea, the entrepreneurs of empathy. This job is a treasure trove of insecurities, ridicule and bigotry. And people like Papa smurf don’t make it easy. Dealing with this job is quite hard as you can see, much like any other. But like any other job, it does have its moments. And those are worth the wait. But this one is not about THOSE moments. This is about hitting rock-bottom.

Review meetings are as fun as my conversations with my three year old nephew. If you take it seriously, it can be frustrating. It’s in a language you don’t understand. All parties keep repeating the same thing without listening to the other, after a while it becomes boring and tiring. Unlike my time with the nephew, fart noises in a meeting is not acceptable. Such is corporate life. You can cover yourself in bullshit and you will get applauded. You make one innocent fart noise and you are the black sheep. Hippocratic behavior much! In the industry where i work, it is hard to rely on conventional HR wisdom and theories. Most HR theories have a sound basis which assumes that the employees are taken care off and their physiological needs are met. Unfortunately, the industry i represent barely pays enough to make ends meet. Keeping employees motivated and ensuring that things keep spinning is hard enough, attending taxing review meetings is just a double whammy! In one such review meeting, chaired by Darth Vader… err… Papa Smurf, the conversations took a very usual course. Set context as if we all are meeting for the first time. Talk at 10,000 ft ignoring facts and common knowledge. Outcast common sense and overlook sound business understanding. Deliver a continuous monologue at an average of 12 jargon per sentence. Replicate a radio show where there is only one way communication. The usual course of the river led us to the source of all human woe. MONEY!

The team of storm troopers pleaded to look at the quality of our manpower and to evaluate our compensation strategy. The response came. It was crisp, candid and forthright. “If you pay peanuts, you will get monkeys”. While there are hundreds of other analogies he could have chosen, Papa chose this one. He could have said, “If you throw bouquets, you will get bridesmaids” or “If you sell rum, you will get Mallus” or my personal favorite “If you are sarcastic, you will get beaten up”. He didn’t choose any of these. He chose monkeys and peanuts. I can understand where he comes from. He comes from a time when HR was recording attendance in hard bound registers and ensuring dress codes. He is from a time when casual gender discrimination was an in thing. He is from a place where, closet racism is acceptable. World has moved forward. Yet, such monstrous, ancestral antiques remain in the system. Like a giant Kim Jong Un statue dressed in pink and blowing soap bubbles from it’s hind, sitting on your horizon.

What irked me was not the analogy of peanuts and monkeys. It was the complete lack of respect for the human capital and the sheer disregard for common sense. We would rather accept the atrocity than address it with common sense and logic. Oh wait! that is a foreign language in the smurf kingdom. There are days when you question your existence in a corporate setup, during such days, you remind yourself that you exist to ensure chaos. It is an orderly world run by “The Man”. Where they wish to throw peanuts and find monkeys. You exist to see the hopes, aspirations and dreams beyond a 6 digit employee number. You exist so that people like Papa smurf don’t get to treat people like objects. At the end of the day, HR should not only stand for human resources, but also for human relations. In an age where everything is measurable and processed, a little bit of abstract and empathy may go a long way. Till such time skynet takes over and we are all enslaved, the world will be driven by humans. Living breathing, highly evolved primates! At times all they seek is a little more than peanuts. Cheers!