The Customer is always RIGHT!!

I never thought I would start off with 2 blogs a day but I came across one more interesting instance in my professional life that I could not help but express myself.  Well as I said, I work for a renowned software firm and of course it has many foreign customers one of them being a British customer (let’s call this customer BC for our representation sake). I heard a lot about BC from my fellow peers and one thing that I constantly came across was about its “snobbish” nature. I had not experienced this before and I thought that my peers were over-exaggerating until I actually came across one such customer.

Now let me take you back to the history when Britishers came to India in 17th century (1613 to be precise) and after winning the battle of Plassey in 1757, the real rule of British East India Company started. Since then till 1947 they ruled us until they finally had to give up and we got Independence and freedom from the British clutches. That’s what a child is taught in school and that’s what a common man knows. What people don’t know is that many of us are still slave to the Britishers.

Now you may think that I am being a little too critical about it and may say that if all the customers are rulers then we are slave to all as we do what they expect. I would beg to differ on this as even I understand that in any form of business there is a customer and a developer (or manufacturer / supplier etc). And there is no master-slave relationship in every form of business. But what happens in my world is somewhat different. The BC always ignores the mails sent by my lead, does not respond to calls, does not pay attention to what my team has done so far and after 2 weeks are over,  appears suddenly and asks for the progress which is not possible unless he co-operates too. Then as usual the blame goes onto us, the poor people. Out top management who seldom know how and what to manage, say that we should be more proactive, we should come up with more ideas, we should be responsible to make our progress heard etc etc. The level of sycophancy that our managers show towards the BC is something our freedom fighters would be ashamed of too. But what to do, the time of freedom fighters is gone, now the world is more money-centric. We beg and lick their ass like we did earlier coz they always rule. They will always rule until we give up on this attitude.

I also earn my bread from these customers and I respect them for that. But that does not mean I have lost the right to correct them in case they are wrong. I find it disgusting to take the blame for no fault of mine. But our dear managers who can think nothing but money and business can go to any levels to keep the customers satisfied and treat them as GOD. Who cares whose fault it is, who cares who is right or wrong? After all, Customer is always RIGHT…isn’t it?

Are we moving forward or backwards?

I am a software engineer at a renowned company and I travel to Mumbai-Pune every weekend. My weekends are busy as I go for GD PI classes to convert my MBA calls (very few) left in my hand. In between my classes I find time and I get to meet my dearest girlfriend Sonu (its been 2 years ). I usually go to the malls to hang out with her.

Last week as usual I had been to a mall in Mulund and was having lunch with Sonu. Behind our table were a gang of college going students having a gala time. I remember one girl among them having the most irritating voice and it was too harsh for my or anyone else’s ears. After some time that girl said something that infuriated the hell out of me. She said loudly and clearly, in a public place like a mall, that she hates a certain section of the society. Well, I belonged to the same section.  But even if I had not, I am sure it would have disturbed me equally. They were college students, students educated in a place like Mumbai and yet they spoke the language of politicians who promote this cheap idea for their benefit.  Certainly, the parental care and teaching standards in our country are plummeting. I may be wrong, may be I am generalizing, and I wish I am always wrong but this thing worries me.

Two days later after this incident, I came across one more religion based conflict. I was travelling in a crowded train and it accidentally happened that one guy pushed the other. There is so much of commotion at peak hour that seldom does anyone care about the other person. The only idea is to get into the train somehow. So pushing and dragging someone along is very common thing in Mumbai local trains. But that day something un-common happened. The two people who got into conflict belonged to different states. They started quarrling and the language they spoke against each other was horrible to say the least. Then they started insulting each others caste, state etc. Then they got even furious and started having a fist fight, when finally our public intervened. Till then, everybody kept mum except me and one old fellow who tried to pacify both the parties.

Today as I see India, I see people getting divided on petty issues. Humanity and humility seem to be an abstract concept and caste system again a fashion. The inflation, price-rise, cost of living has added to the frustration of the common man. Education is no longer about ethics but about marks and career. People have started living only for themselves and its only the “survival-of-the-fittest” that prevails. This bitter truth saddens me and I will try to do my bit to keep humanity and humility alive as well as “survival-for-all” to come back into fashion. If anyone is reading this, please help me to change our India. God bless us all.