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May 19, 2008
Indians as businessmen
I guess this is a very biased opinion of India that I found so far with dealing with India. So bear with me and I do hope this is not the best part of India.
I think there is a fundamental problem with the way people deal with their work here. I think many Indians lack the mind of the straight forward cliché “business is business”. I found that many people cannot take care of their work the way they should be; many lack professionalism. The mindset is, let’s just let it be; it’s not my work and I don’t want to take care of everything. My equipments through UPS are not coming this way in Patna so I had to figure out what went wrong. The UPS from Kolkata contacted me through phone and told me I had to get the package cleared for customs.
Consequently, I just couldn’t work throughout the day in the fascilities; the equipments are imperative for the research. I came home to Dr. Ghosh’s place and started contacting the Kolkata office of UPS. A guy called Mario Alexander picks up the phone and tells me I need to tell him a fax number in order for me to get the necessary documents, and send them over. First, I told them the fax number. I wanted to make everything extra sure. So, I asked and reconfirmed the fax number I was supposed to receive the documents. He told me the right thing, but I had no incoming documents for the next three hours. I called him again and asked about the situation. After re-checking the numbers Mario replies:
“I think I sent it to a wrong number.”
OK…. Things happen right? Although I really watned to get over with this, he said he will send it over. Now, he calls me and asks for my email address, to which he can send the documents. This was the most amazing experience I had with calling a email address.
“The email address is my name spelled out at gmail!”
And I called him out every single letter. We cross-checked two times. He told me to wait on the phone. Now there was no response on my email account.
I called him again and now he just tells me a wrong email address. So I did the exact same thing over again and told him I will text him my email address. And he replied with the infamous
“No problem”
You see. I think ‘No problem’ means ‘Nine problems’, as ‘no’ stands for nine in Hindi. He basically makes the thing all wrong again! I asked him for his email address and tell him:
“I will give you an email … all you need to do is reply to that address with the documents.”
He says ok.
Now after waiting another hour, I have no reply. So I called him again. He says “the system is down”. I have no idea what that means but he cares less to explain. I think his brain system is down to do this kind of work.
I talked to Gaurav and Shanu, the nieces of Dr. Ghosh, about this matter and they say “Everything in India needs to be said and confirmed three times in order for you to secure something”.
Well I sure experienced that again when I went to get my SIM card of the cell phone recharged. The number they tell me after payment is a wrong one and they care less to give me a right one. They say they have no responsibility in making that number right. Basically, they have no idea what the right number for recharging the SIM is and do not care about what the customer is receiving. Its in their interest to just get them sold. The shocking part was that this was not a xenophobic incident, because I waited outside while the students helped me out get it recharged. Many told me this regularly happens throughout India.
Maybe it is because I’m in the infamous Bihari state or because I had bad luck throughout the day….But it was not a pleasant experience. I hope I get my equipments fast so that I can actually work and not stare at the ceiling all day.
Posted by coyojon at May 19, 2008 12:10 PM