15 Minutes of Fame in my office


You know I said I work. Okay it is not as if there is anyone who does not work. Some people work from home, some are home makers and some others get up and go work for somebody or a group of people even if it is a corporation we can narrow it down to a group of people at the end of the day. I guess it is wrong to say “I work” or “I go to work” because everyone works even if they just beg in front of grocery shops or along the traffic. The difference is in the type of work we all do. And that reminds me of a ‘friend’ of mine who works. It is important to mention this because, this friend of mine will tell you that the reason she cannot lift a finger at home or is even able to drive a car is because she works. You will think she is the only worker alive today. She does not cook, clean, tidy or do any house work because she works. Any other mother-worker who meets her will be upset because her hubby understands and will do these other things and I am always so angry with envy when I visit them because hubby tidies the room, washes, helps iron and COOKS. Can you beat that? My ‘friend’ is a very nice and kind hearted person in addition to working. She is really fun to be with and I am always intrigued at her life being just about working.

So I was at work on this Monday morning and we are doing our quarterly review which usually in a pain in the neck as everyone will sit through all the units’ presentations and ‘enjoy’ it, look interested, ask some dumb and smart questions but boy! You have to be interested and keep focused. This review is also good because we get donuts, chocolate chip cakes, and other nice evils that increase the waistline. Not that I touch any of these things…you guys must know by now that I am a disciplined eater and I only for quality not for taste(whatever that means). This particular quarter we were sampling out the new presentation format which the Finance and Strategy unit has been slaving and sweating putting it together for a while and are very happy to show it off. This new format now has a slide for “knowledge sharing”.

Have you been in any of those sessions where everyone is giving time for 15 minutes of fame? Do something to shine kind of thing? This is what this part of the presentation turned out to be so each presenter had a 3 -6 minutes of fame but it turned out in some cases to be fifteen minutes of fame. Human beings naturally crave the opportunity to display prowess or ‘to shine’ as they say in this part of the world. So we sat in this session today listening to all sorts of lectures. Yours truly was not left out, I usually do not miss an opportunity to have an audience for my motivational speaking job so here was an already made audience and I spoke on ‘staying focused to your goal’ for five minutes. I guess this is a topic that can not be fully exploited and one that is relevant to us at every stage of our lives.

Over the past two years we have looked and tired different ways of holding this session so that it is ‘more lively’, ‘more interactive’. Every new person comes with ‘a great idea’ and we try it but none so far has solved the ‘boredom’ popularly expressed by employees at the end of the session. It used to be monthly now quarterly yet we have the same problem. There must be something fundamentally wrong with it but we are yet to find out what. Everyone who works (back to the same controversial phrase), as if we do not all work even if we only surf for 2 hours, download music and listen for two hours, have lunch for an hour, have a couple of coffee breaks of 15 minutes at the lounge and leaf through the newspapers, the fact is that we all work and we all have come to work. Anyway everyone working in such ‘corporations’ have expressed the same feeling about these quarterly business performance reviews. No matter what anyone says, this knowledge sharing slide must be scrapped because it is now the focus of the presentation and people just cannot stick to the 3 – 6 minutes of fame but must talk an infinite deal of nothing for over 10 minutes.