Where is razor blade technology taking us?

Taking off from my last post, marketing as a function has really milked incompetence for all it's worth. Not surprising, since the talent pool that graduates with marketing M.B.A.s have wallowed around like slugs long enough to have assimilated it as a way of life.
Now here is a community that collectively decided one day - 'This is it!' They never knew about 'short term gains' and had turned suicidal enough to lose faith in the long term ones too. So here is what they did - they rose in collective incompetence. They are now so proud about it, that they lease out prime time TV slots to brag about their ware, 'marketing' it to us!

Lets take a look at Gillete. They started off literally at the cutting-edge of technology. The commercial zoomed in on the worked out face of a cheek model (yeah...cheek models make a living by chewing on 20 strips of gum at once, in the hope of turning horse faced with the broad jawline et all:) and the one ultra sharp Gilette blade snipped the hair right at the root, even for muscular ridged cheeks. So there you had it, the blade was the best in the market and was almost shaving the skin off your face.
Then sometime around next year i am guessing, incompetence must have kicked in. Gilette's next razor 'Sensor Excel' needed an additional blade for the same clean shave. This was attributed to 'latest break through in technology'. Zoom in again to the same muscular cheek, and it now takes Gilette 2 blades to do the job. A couple of years later, they came out with Mach III, which had 3 blades. Boy, with three blades that sharp, it should have been marketed as an over-the-counter homicidal best-seller!!
People aren't stupid you know, they smelled a rat...all those blades, and still the same shave. Why should they liquidate their fixed deposits to buy these blades?? Then came the marketing miracle. Gilette glorified the inefficient 'just as close' shave as being intentionally gentle on the skin because of 'aloe vera' on the edge of the blades. Take a bow people, this is clearly the work of a genius.

So, is it really the aloe-vera on the new Gilette Mach III blade thats making your shave 'softer'?? While you ponder on that, Gilette just launched a 5 blade razor called 'Fusion'...for some strategic or feng shui based reason they must have skipped the number 4 perhaps. 5 blades, ladies and gentlemen...i'm sure low-end blades from uganda should be sharper than each of these 5 blades. The day is not far when Gilette comes out with its 23 blade razor. You won't even need to move your hand while shaving...just slap the razor on your cheek and nod sideways...that should do it:)

Incompetence: the stepping stone to success

Whats the deal with success? Well, the first timers who taste it absolutely love it...its like nothing else! Universal validation.
Mind you, 'success' and 'successful' aren't remotely connected. Its like those language aberrations like 'awe' and 'aweful'. Stealing ice-cream from the home freezer qualifies you as 'successful'. If you happen to own Baskin Robbins, then we are talking 'success'.

'Reach for the stars' they say...alright, and what do i do once i get there? Hopping on to another star doesn't seems as exciting now, does it? Success is self-defeating. Its a bit like leading your life at the high-jump championships. One success just raises the bar for the next, which does so for the next and so on. Your fate is pre-destined. Disappointment at not bettering your best! Peeved as hell, you think to yourself 'How can't I be better than me?'.
Of course, it can't be rationalized this easily...its like convincing someone that smoking is harmful. Its a no brainer for the non-smoker, but when was the last time someone quit 'cos it would kill them? Success like smoking, once achieved is addictive, and hazardous to health.

Hence forth, any congratulatory note should flash the message
'Statutory warning: Success is injurious to health'

Success is like the treadmill of competence...keep running towards competence and eventually pass out, bite the rubber mat, and roll back along the conveyor belt into the welcoming arms of incompetence. Or just stand still facing incompetence, and let the treadmill take you there in style!

Yes, its possible to be incompetent and successful. But you've got to have concrete belief in your inabilities.

Step 1: Get proactive. Find fellow incompetents at the work place. Convince them to quit your current organization before they get fired.
Step 2: Offer to work for the rival organization. Your boss will give you all a raise, as you bring the rival's profitability down, and his own profitability up simply by your absence.
Step 3: Offer tips to stock brokers on the rival's share price plummeting. Then buy loads when they hit rock bottom.
Step 4: Same as Step 1
Step 5: Sell shares at bumper profit once the company recovers from your damaging presence.

Does luck keep tabs?

Whats the probability of getting a heads or a tails on a coin flip? 50% right??

Well, try flipping a coin...say you got heads the first time around. Flip it again. Now we should be twice as likely to get a tails this time around. Sadly, we still stand at a 50% chance again...so each toss is random, though somehow the probability of getting a heads is 0.5...basically, good and bad luck might be the two sides to a coin, but the coin has a mind of its own ...and it's out there to roger us...

Life's pulled the mickey on us...it really has! Test this for starters-If the professor pulls up one guy in class to answer a question, and if i don't have the faintest clue 'bout the answer...9 times out of 10, it's gotta be me. 5 days a week , i carry an umbrella, and the sixth day, it rains. Feeling a sneeze well up is almost a definite sign that i am not carrying a handkerchief.

And yeah, if you haven't figured out the loop hole yet...here goes. Like coin flips, in over a million encounters with lady luck, everything will even out quite well. Too bad, if your life could fit in just a few thousand such encounters, most of which were needless to say, unfortunately unlucky...fair probability calls for large sample sets...so if in the bleak possibility of you turning 90, you have managed to abate incontinence...there you have it...good luck's come your way!!

Then there are the slightly twisted cases of conditional and dependant probability. For eg: Statistically, women over thirty have a lesser chance of getting married than being killed in a terrorist attack. I'm not being mean here...come to think of it, im reasonably sensitive. But people in Taliban have even more sensitive ears, and the biological clocks of these women are deafening them!! So these might just happen to be mutually dependent events...surely seems the best reason of the current lot to drive terrorist agendas:)

Brake fast at Tiffany's

Its 8 a.m. and i somehow manage to drag myself to the mess for a quiet breakfast. Of course, my life, simply by virtue of being mine, never grants me the privilege of reading a virgin newspaper.
I walk up to the serving counter to fetch my morning cuppa, and then it happens...i walk into some half familiar faces...some freshers with whom i have made eye-contact before...

Romantic novels haven't explored the half about eye contacts. Accidental eye contacts, conforming with the high possibility of severe repugnance aren't very pleasant most times. The bitch is that after about 10 or so such eye-contacts, either party feels morally compelled to make conversation...obviously, since we are so acutely socially programmed, the moral compulsion invariably leads to dialogue, or in this case, an active monologue.

I won't quite call myself a morning person. And chirpy, tra la laing 20 somethings don't quite cut it for me. I sat at a table, laying out the paper, checking yesterday's headlines...and these three juniors got up from their chairs, and parked themselves alongside me.(and btw, it is common courtesy to put away the newspaper when people walk up to you during breakfast) In a mess that seats over a 100 people, the four of us were sharing one table...in celebration of human bonding.

One of them was kind enough to ask me, "Can i join you?"...quite an astute question, since he had guessed that me and my morning were coming apart. I mean, come onnn, when someone walks up to you with a cup in one hand, and 2 omlettes and wada sambaar in the other, is he really asking?? Anyways, there was this other guy, and this severely stern looking girl along with him who tagged along. The guy was carrying some class pre-reads and marking away with muti-coloured pens...the types to study for blood tests. Now, guy No.1 asks the girl as to why grades have to be so competitive...that life should be more learning centric (read: loser friendly). The girl snaps back saying that the current grading system still dosen't differentiate the ones who are the best from those who form the rest. This is someone who would probably believe that the Spanish inquisition was just tough luck for the heretics...Guy No.2 still enjoying wada sambaar seems to have his priorities clear.

All through the conversation, i wasn't even spoken to...but my presence was frequently acknowledged with passing nods suggesting that i was in tune with the intricacies of their daily lives. I tried in vain to act interested. The 'disinterested nod' is an art i have yet to master. You see, i have moved from the cutting edge of technology (read:engineering) to the buttering edge (read:branding). My reactions are still caught at the binary level...

Guess after all, breakfast was never meant as a leisurely meal...why didn't they rid us of the confusion by spelling it right in the first place...

work away or walk away??

20 days at my internship have led me to the fated conclusion that all of the human race is a gross underperformer. The difference being that some pretend to work while at it, while others like your's truly laze around in enlightenment.

Try this for an average work day.

9.30 a.m. - reporting
10.00-10.40 a.m. - breakfast
12.00- 1.00 p.m. - lunch
2.15- 2.40 p.m. - coffee
4.00- 5.oo p.m. - snacks
6.00 p.m. - day end.

This leaves a little more than 5 working hours in the day. Mind you, this is not considering day dreaming, idle chat, blogging, making colourful PPTs, digging your nose, water and loo breaks etc etc. So, as you would have figured, the most efficient employees work all of the 5 non food hours in the day.

The outsourcing and IT boom has exalted the Indian employee as cost efficient labour. We are touted as being technology super specialists. Let me explain the degree to which we specialize. Work ends at 6 p.m. The IT employee interprets this as 'vacate premises by 6 p.m.' At 5.50 p.m., works' already wrapped up. He would not dare disrespect the company by being a liability for a further minute. Teamwork is what drives success. Meetings are called upon by people who could individually accomplish zilch, just to collectively establish that nothing could be done.

And then there are our Gult brothers, most of whom consume truckloads of rice for lunch. I happened to notice a few who made atleast a couple of long visits to the washroom after lunch on a regular basis. At tea, i politely asked them about the well being of their tummy. The perplexed look I got was soon explained when i figured that they took 15 minutes siesta breaks sitting on the pots in the washroom!

The company top management must have put some thought into arranging the bus departures from office in the evenings. Buses leave every hour, starting at 6.15 p.m. They would have thought that the unfortunate souls who happen to miss a bus, will out of sheer boredom contribute with atleast 30 minutes more work. Once again, the ingenious Indian proved his mettle. At around 5 p.m., a good hour before work times end, a strange growing sluggishness can be observed all around office. Its like the 10 minute walk after a tiring jog. Our company boasts of a cooling down culture for employees where work quality and quantity steadily diminishes post the 5 p.m. mark.

No wonder, Indian IT professionals are percieved as cutting edge innovators. It's an all pervasive attitude:)

life in limbo...

Just the day before, i was tuned in to the evening news, when the new spurt to the Indian media industry - Pramod Mahajan, and his dismal state in the Hinduja hospital was being avidly regurgitated by the press.

Lets just take a peek at the air time devoted to this tragic happenstance. The day he was admitted, the nation was in shock, most of us expecting him not to make it with all those bulets pumped into his torso. Our media smelt blood...The result- 23 hours of media coverage a day! 3 days pass and the media coverage has dwindled to less than an hour a day. His current condition is 'critical yet stable', which for the media translates to 'he not gonna be dead soon'.

This scavenger approach to press coverage has baffled me since a long time. Whats even more baffling is how the hell did Pravin Mahajan manage to miss with 3 bullets!!!! I guess it was the abject shame he felt at his appalling aim that led him to surrender himself.

But everything has a bright side to it. Atleast the hospital admission got the Indian top ministers to rush there at 9 in the morning, a time most of them would have just witnessed during the republic day flag hoisting (hoping with fingers crossed). Also, some hot shot liver surgeon was flown down from London to treat Mr. Mahajan. Now coincidentally, it so happens that the ace surgeon is a Muslim. I guess with Mahajan's life on the line, Hindutva or any practical semblance of it goes for a toss!