(Written on 23 Aug 2008 to unwind the mind because just watched the movie "SAW" - don't want to get involved too much... though I just posted my other blog 'Life is Beautiful' - it was written a long time back though --> To understand the relation between the movie "SAW" and the phrase "Life is Beautiful" you have to watch the movie SAW)
2 years ago, I came onsite to work at a client location for my company. There were some funny incidents that took place during the first few days and I thought I should make a note of these, but most of them slipped my mind and owing to the fact that 2 years is a lot of time to remember things (especially for me!), I forgive myself. Here are the ones I remember.
Id - Name Tags:
We used to make sure that we read the Id to get the names of people (especially girls - not to mention good looking!!!) on our way to FC (Food Court) from our desk; once we know the names, it was easy to find the details (for example: where does (s)he stay, what department (s)he works in, what department (s)he sits etc.) about that person from our employee database. Being a regular to use the company transport, I used to have a little more information on where (s)he would get down or which route (s)he goes; we used to do a lot of linking for the information each of us had. Let me mention that the discussion/ interest used to be more for girls than guys for obvious reasons; it would also be appropriate to mention here that there were no bad intentions in collecting this information. It used to stay within the group and I assure that it has caused nobody any harm!!
Now for gotcha: When traveling by flight, I was looking for the air-hostess' ids :) - not that they did not have ids... just that it was awkward trying to do that.
Restroom Confusion: It is a bit embarrassing to talk about restroom for a long time, but I love this because it took me 2-3 minutes to figure out how to get water out from the wash basin to wash my hands!!
The Washroom/ Bathroom/ Toilet of our office was a place where I had seen the technology that not only appalled me, but sometimes confused me!
There were some features like automatic hand-drying, automatic paper machine which had hand sensor to bring the paper out so that you could dry your hands! Now, this was in 2006 and I had seen these things for the first time though my company in India was had all the facilities; it was more manual.
This client location, had different features in different restrooms. I was seeing new equipments to wash and dry hands every time I go to a different restroom over the first 15 days.
Gotcha: One of those days, I went to a restroom and wanted to wash my hands stood near a wash basin expecting to activate the sensor to get the water "automatically". The water did not flow and my hands were now wet with soap and I had to wash my hands. There was no tap on the basin so there had to be a sensor otherwise water cannot flow (at least that's what I thought!)
A person came by to the next basin near me; water started flowing - he washed his hands and left. I thought maybe the one I was trying to use wasn't working. I waited for the person to leave and moved to the other basin. Even that wouldn't work!! Another man came in - he washed his hands and left and here I was trying to wash my hands for so much time on that very basin and I could not!!
I, then, moved to the wash basin that had a tap (built for physically challenged people), washed my hands and then left. I realized how to get water out of that other basin only during my second visit to that restroom. I had observed that there were levers below the basin so one had to walk to the basin step on the lever and water starts flowing!! Looks simple, but if you do not know.. you are doomed!
I am sure there were many others instances where I thought it was a Gotcha! situation, but looks like this itself has grown big and is kinds boring.. so that's it for now.
Enjoy!
~R-Square
