Rolling the dice

My office on this Monday was a lot like in a casino in Las Vegas. My ERP trainee batch was to be divided into 10 specific practices spread over 4 development centers. Some dreams came true, some were shattered.

Practices: ORACLE, SAP, EAI, CRM, SCM, BI …and so on. Over 200 boys and girls waited patiently as the HR people decided what to do.

9:30 am: The HR people needed to resolve the matter in such a way that in the evening they would be able to go back to their homes without being mobbed by dissatisfied trainees. Roll a dice, lottery, first come first serve…..they fought over the issue.

“Allocate randomly using a computer program, no human intervention”, somebody suggested.

10 am: I was called in to write a C program to allocate practice and locations at random according to the business requirements.

Now I badly needed the latest Visual Studio 2005 release, so I hoodwinked the cute HR girls into agreeing for a VC++ client and dotNET server application with funky skins, sliding dialog boxes and a great simple user interface that even a miss world could easily use. The company just had to buy the latest Visual Studio Enterprise Edition and leave the rest to me.

We prepared a draft for the knowledge transfer agreement- I was to keep the VS 2005 DVD and no assignments and tests for me for a period of 1 year.

11 am: The department head (a bald, middle aged, high tempered, overweight guy) shot down my proposal with a Stinger missile. They decided to do it the old fashioned way- with a dice.

12 pm:

1 pm:

2 pm:

Java: Nooo !! No java for me ..Anything else.

ORACLE: definitely no!

SAP: maybe… I hope I won’t have to work a lot.

SCM: supply chain management…boring

dotNET: definitely yes!

CRM: Customer Relationship management ??? Am not really good at that.

BI: business intelligence ??? when was the last time I checked my IQ ?

2:55 pm: The HR department was ready with the list.

3:00 pm: The HR department office was empty save for one last guy who stayed back to post the list to the trainees.

3:02 pm: The HR guy attached the list to a mail addressed to all trainees, grabbed his helmet and bag, clicked the SEND button and made a mad dash for the parking lot.

3:07 pm: Somebody checked his/her mail and found the mail about the postings. The news spreads like bushfire.

10-15 seconds past 3:07 pm: Everybody had read the mail. I was going to India’s Silicon City after the training would be complete. I was worried about landing myself into either of ORACLE, SAP, java, dotNET…. Somebody up there in the sky above decides to play a small game with my future.

I was going into EAI – Enterprise Application Integration. I would have to learn a bit about every single ERP package out there in the market!!!

3:08 pm: Civil unrest followed. With a large percentage of the 200 trainees being from 2 major Indian cities and the ERP division requiring people to be spread over 4 locations; it was no surprise that there were a lot of heart breaks and tears.

“Swapping of posting is allowed as long as the number of people in a department at a location remains constant.”-the mail said.

3:10 pm: Mailboxes were clogged with requests for swapping. Some people were reluctant to leave the shelter of their homes and move to another corner of the country. Guys who had never seen either ORACLE or SAP packages….we better not talk about what previous work experience they had , were hunting for department swaps- “I will swap for SAP/ORACLE anywhere on this planet” somebody claimed in his mail.

3:15 pm: The mail server crashed, tensions were high. The people who were happy with their postings maintained a low profile and refrained from celebrations for fear of a backlash from the dissatisfied lot.

3:16 pm: I settled down, my posting was fine. I was happy with it. The office had turned into a marketplace; trainees were bartering departments and locations.

So that was Monday, just another day at office. Some dreams came true, some were shattered.