A comparison of workplaces

Its been six months since i moved back to India from US. I work in IT sector for a well reputed MNC (name withheld). From outside, there is little difference between the workplaces of US and India; after all, what does it take to have an IT setup - floor divided into cubes, each cube having a four-legged desk with one or two big monitors, a  keyboard, mouse and a nice ergonomic chair. Walls decorated with bright colors with inspiring quotes, conference rooms with big wooden tables and voip facility, a pantry area with coffee, soda cans and unhealthy snacks and lastly a table tennis table for employees to flex their muscles.

But its the processes surrounding the workplace that brings out contrast between the two nations. Consider the process of cleaning in a workplace. In US, floors and the common areas were cleaned by the facilities team, the cube is like its owner's private property and hence it was up to the owner to maintain it. Also, most of the cleaning work happened after normal working office hours (typically after 9 pm) so that there is no inconvenience to employees. In comparison, here nothing is private. The desk is wiped clean every day and any stuff on it is organized as they think appropriate. Cleaning is done in morning every day around 8 am, so if you are an early to work kind of person (chiefly to avoid traffic), you are surely to get disturbed.

The cultural differences can be best seen at the pantry area. In US, due to is highly individualistic orientation, all snacks are available in small packs. There are no 1Ltr juice tetra packs, no 500ml soda bottles. There is no concept of sharing outside of bread, milk and cereals. In contrast here, snacks like Haldiram mixtures are purchased in big bags, emptied into a transparent plastic jars with spoon and is shared by everybody. We even buy chips/biscuits in large packs and there are empty plastic boxes to  keep the half eaten packs. In contrast, in US, it was almost like a crime to leave a  half eaten pack; we used to get threat mails that our snacks supply will be cut off if half eaten packs were found. Eat what you can and throw the rest is the mantra there. There was a time when even water was available in 250 ml plastic bottles which was later removed when a few of us complained that it causes too much plastic waste. There is a sort of apathy towards waste generated.

There is a forever paranoia of theft here. With every facility here, there are "security" strings attached. For example, bats and balls needed to play table tennis are kept with a security guard. One needs to sign his/her name before they can be issued, just like in a library. Office stationery follows similar pattern, even getting a pen requires a signature. Every night, all the snack boxes are locked in, refrigerator too is locked. Fundamentally, there is forever a feeling of mistrust between administrative team and cleaning staff. While in US, nothing was ever locked.

The worst of all comparison is seen at the toilet.  Here, there is one men and one women loo rest room for a floor which has a capacity of about 250 people. One cleaning person is posted for each restroom; he is always present inside the already suffocating room trying to act invisible for the rest of us. I am not sure why he is asked to be present inside all the time. In contrast, in US, not only there were more number of restrooms, they were more airy and cleaned twice every day at fixed times; no one was required to be present inside.

Parking is again a very interesting case study. Everybody owns and driver a car in US. Hence number of parking spots is roughly the same as number of cubes. But in India,  as per the Bangalore Building-Bye laws, 2003, a company needs to have one parking space for every 50 sq mts of office floor space. It is independent of how many cubes there can be in 50sq mts. The writer acknowledges that if everyone drives to work on his own car, Bangalore would choke and die.  But, having one parking space for every 30 people also does not make sense. 

It is not my intention to establish superiority of one over another. There is always a reason of why things exist as they are. The security paranoia may be due to past incidents of theft which may exist because of the disproportionate income levels between the cleaning staff and employees. My intention is for us to acknowledge, learn and then evolve to make things better.  What i do want is for all of us (including myself) to take more responsibility, acknowledge the humanity of cleaning staff and lastly, design processes that rather than creating barriers, makes us more efficient.