Zen and the art of seat-thaeching

Thaeching is a tanglish word which originated from the efficient style of workingof Tamilnadu or Indian government employees. The employees currently or in the past have a fantastic record for sitting on any official matter for days or months or years together. Since they are sitting on it for a long time, a intelligent deduction might be made that they might probably be wearing out the old wooden chair purchased by the mountbatten for all govt empl.s before he left in 1947. This in tanglish is coined seat-thaeching. A very obvious thing is the construction of the MRTS system in Chennai. It is being built for years and years accumulating to more than a decade. What for? For just 10 to 15 KM of rail. What could be the actual reason? Probably some employee who has to sign on a piece of paper providing for budget is expecting "something" from somebody. He is seat-thaeching on that file. Therefore a new law can be arrived at that the experience of an employee is directly proportional to the wear and tear of the chair. If the chair is looking more or less like a wreck, assume he is about to retire. Gentleman, Please don't think it is an easy art. I know how difficult it might be. Of my 7 years experience as a S/W engr., the maximum time I might have worked will not be > 104 weeks. ( saamy sathiyama! ). The reason for this is either I was not in a project or not in a mood to work or not feeling I was being properly compensated for the work I'm doing. The difficulty arises in tackling the guilty feeling that arises from not properly doing ones duty. Apart from this, things like peer pressure (other people who are working properly), duty-conscious manager, duty-conscious team member (if u r a lead/manager) are some deterrents in this fight. If you win this, then you have mastered the art. You can then stop working and start merrying without a single iota of guilt. For a s/w engineer these are tremendous challanges though. But take our entry-level government office clerk. He would probably be inspired by senior employees who are already champions of such things. oh! How I would love to work in such places! I think our government offices are the ultimate is workplace comfort and employee security. Things a developed nation like US is still not able to provide to its citizens. What a pity! Bush should first visit chennai RTO office and try to get a licence inorder to get a feel of happy employees. India is a really progressive nation and I'm sure compulsory seat-thaeching might probably make it as a law after office of profit law. I hope they also pass the same law to apply to private sectors also. The law might probably say thus "Every work estimate should include 20% idle time, 27% tea and coffee time and 10% gossip time". You know, they would not have time to think about how to arrive at these numbers. They already have a reservation template and who says cut-paste is propreitary of indian s/w engrs only!