So there I was, grinning stupidly at anything and everything, whiling away my time in the customer’s office with nothing to do, but day-dream about my return - functions that I will attend (Perippa’s sadabhishekam !!) and of course the music festival in December (must attend at least 2 concerts of Sanjay and TMK!!), visits to the dentist (need to get these teeth set right !!) and drive a relatively new car (only 3 years old instead of 11 years old) for a change in that chaos that is Chennai traffic !! I had developed a thick skin in the past few days, ever since I got my itinerary from the travel desk (woohoo.. it is Air Emirates), nothing the customer or anybody said affected me whatsoever !! I had done my purchases, and planned for more in the Dubai airport (perfumes are dead cheap !!), had picked superb seats in the flight online ! Three more days to go !! My mom had made plans for me (need to visit A,B,C relatives and friends !!) and I was happily chatting away with her and my dad, getting updates on family gossip, when the phone rang !! And life changed… again !!
I have now developed a sense of respect for people we call gypsies ! After all, the important difference between us and them is the financial status and the extent of our travel. They travel locally and we travel internationally and we get paid for our travel !! It is a new life everytime - a new place, the same boring ritual of hunting for apartments and buying a cheap but good car (sounds oxymoronic, doesn’t it?).
I am suffering from a serious identity crisis, every morning !! I wake up and find my surroundings strange ! Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here? Is this whole thing a big nightmare? Why should I always reconcile myself to the maxim - Whatever happens, happens for good! Why can’t I get exactly what I want, instead of what is good for me - just once? (I know, I know, I am cribbing ! I know I have no right to, when thousands are losing their jobs and many people complain about lack of visibility at work !! But when logic and my cribbing come face to face, sometimes cribbing wins !!
For some reason, only spouse and children are considered ‘family’. So most of my conversations go like this :
‘Do you have a family in India?’
‘Yes, my parents and my brother and his wife are in India’
‘Oh, ok. But what about your family ?’
…
‘So you are single, then you should have no issues with traveling?’ (What has that got to do with wanting to travel? I mean single and married people can want/not want to travel equally, right?)
Sulking apart, I think the most painful part of traveling is the initial expenses and hassle of setting up the house. Every visit, I have to shell out a couple of hundred dollars on basic stuff like a rice cooker, a blender, a vacuum cleaner, a mattress, a used car, apartment advance etc. Add to it the fact that I always have to give it away for free, because no one will buy it and usually there isn’t any time left to try to sell, at the end of the visit. This becomes all the more irksome, when I dispose all my temporary possessions here assuming I am going back to India, only to realize in the last minute that the return trip is canceled and that I have to spend all over again !! (Remember, at this point, my mind has already started converting dollars to rupees, so every single dollar is Rs 48 (or something close) to me !
If organizations must ask people to travel, how about some innovative ways of reducing the stress on employees. For example :
a. A travel kit - including basic appliances and things like a sleeping bag etc. This can be provided during the first time the person travels on-site. When the person returns, some storage space where the kit can be stored can be arranged. The next time the person visits, the company can ship it to the person to his new location.
b. Short-term car leases - Some arrangement with car-leasing companies, to provide car leases on a month-to-month basis. Usual car hires from Hertz or Enterprise runs to about a thousand dollars a month.
c. A ready-reckoner for the location that includes information on location of good hotels to stay (with/without kitchenettes), Indian restaurants, Indian grocers, DMV office, SSN office, availability of public transportation, apartment communities, local attractions, cab services etc. This can be sent along with the deployment letter.
d. Make the policies a little more employee friendly and the staff a little more considerate. For instance, this time I was asked to travel from Dublin to Phoenix in the next 2 days. Now to raise a travel request, I was supposed to raise a transfer memo request for my visa and provide the request number to the travel team. Tedweb/MyWipro had an issue with the site, where I was able to select the project name, but could not submit it because there was no ‘Submit’ button. I put in a ServiceConnect request and waited for more than 2 days with nothing happening. There was only one more day to go and I requested the travel co-ordinator (non-Wipro) to book my travel, and that I would raise the request once the issue was resolved. She asked me to get the approval of the OOC person here and this person asked me to raise a ServiceConnect issue reporting the issue. It was a deadlock situation and finally my manager and his manager had to make desperate calls to the OOC person to get the issue resolved. The technical issue was later resolved about a week after I lodged the complaint. This kind of beauracracy added to the already existing stress that I was going through !
I am told time and again that this is a higher responsibility and once again I am supposedly the ‘Chosen One’ !! The job description is kept deliberately vague with words like ‘opportunities’, ‘business’, ‘techno-functional role’ etc. It is a double edged sword, doing well will extend my stay and going wrong may jeopardize my career !
Meanwhile I am trying to get adjusted to the time difference and remind myself daily that I am Rathi, that this is a hotel room in Phoenix and yes this is not a dream !!
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