Everyday at the office, I and my co-workers sit and have
lunch together. Everyone’s food is
shared, which has proved to be a strong incentive for me to improve my Indian
cooking skills. (Happily, I have
recently reached a point where I can tell that my colleagues eat my food – at
least some of it – because they think it tastes good, and not because they want
to be polite even though they think whatever I’ve brought in needs more salt
and chili peppers). If someone doesn’t
bring in any food to eat and share, that’s fine – we all bring extra food so
that this is never a problem. During
these lunches I try to pick up on what’s being said in Kannada and get my
co-workers to translate for me (and to speak more English, when possible). This is the time of day, more than any other
part, when we get to know each other better.
Last week, for example, my co-worker’s asked me what kind of person I
want to marry. Other times they ask me
questions about my family, what I think of Haveri, what life is like in the
U.S., and so on.
Personal-professional boundaries here are not what they are
in the U.S., which is something I am grateful for in my current context. I appreciate how often I am invited to my
co-workers’ homes for meals and functions, and that if I need help with
anything unrelated to the work I do for Navachetana (ranging from transporting
a gas canister to my house for cooking to being taken to a hospital when I’m
sick) I know my colleagues will be happy to help me. And I appreciate how, when I thank them for
helping me with something, or for feeding me, they say, “Don’t say thank
you! We’re friends!”
On the professional side, work culture here is frequently
challenging. Thus far in my experience I
have found that people often readily commit to work tasks or deadlines, but
just as readily go back on their word, forget what they committed to, or
postpone what they committed to. I have
found this characteristic difficult to wrap my head around, particularly when
working in a team setting. Of course,
there are other challenges as well: it is common to show up to meetings hours
late, it is accepted to pick up your cell phone every time it rings when you’re
in a meeting, even when you showed up hours late, and it’s probable that by the
time everyone has showed up to a meeting and most people aren’t on cell phone
calls anymore the electricity will go out, preventing you from using the
projector to make your presentation.
Which is fine, because after all that it’s probably time for a tea
break, and perhaps after that the current will be up and running once more.
Other aspects of work culture here that took some getting
used to: if you e-mail someone, you should text them, call them, or inform them
in person to improve your chances that they’ll check their e-mail and open what
you’ve sent them. And even if they do
open the e-mail, you shouldn’t think that they’ll read the majority of what
you’ve written, because it’s assumed that you’ll have a meeting to discuss it
(see above paragraph). Advance planning
is not common here; frantically working on something at the last minute definitely
is. Working LONG hours is also common
here – 6 days a week.
At the end of the end of the day (10 tea breaks later), it
has to be said that despite inefficiencies, too much to do and not enough
people to do it, less than excellent time management skills and so forth,
Navachetana is alive and buzzing, and accomplishing work that I feel lucky to
be associated with. Furthermore,
although there are some aspects of work style here that I have no intention of
assimilating to, certain respects I feel like I have a lot to learn from work
culture here. For example, people at my
office are much better at balancing their work obligations with family time
than most people back in the U.S. seem to be, something I very much respect. Many people go home for lunch and eat with
their families, and leaving work for a few hours to see your child in a school
performance, or something of a similar nature, is completely acceptable. Yes, this sort of thing slows down work
productivity, but to me these are worthwhile reasons. So it goes both ways – some aspects of work
culture here require me to exercise a lot of patience, while others allow me to
learn and change for the better.
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