Childhood games, if you had to play them now....

If you were born and brought up in a middle class  or lower middle class locality, then you must have played the following games and it is most likely that you will never play them again. However, if you had to play them with your office colleagues now, let's imagine the scenario.

• Maram Peeti (Take a ball and hit anyone near you or whoever you want to. All shots excused and nothing serious) - This is the game you would have played in school in the lunch break after lunch or before the assembly started in the morning. But now, if you were to play this. The admin guys would hit the management for asking them for asking them to buy a printer but not approving paper purchase. The Sales guys would hit their bosses for causing numerical pain in their ass. The top management would hit the CEO. The CEO would hit the directors and the board members. The customer care guys would hit the customers. The System Admin guys will hit everyone whose outlook is not working. All of them together will hit the Finance Guy. The Quality control guys keep monitoring if everyone is hitting well and getting hit well and they will request for documentation of the same.  And at the end of the game, the HR will announce the result and retain the ball for the the next game. 

• I Spy or Hide and Seek: If Hide and Seek were to be played today, the first to close eyes and count would be the CEO.  By the time he finishes counting 50, the Sales Guys would have gone to the field (sitting in some a client's office where the A/C works) and ignoring all calls to pretend they're busy. The Admin guys go and hide in one of their dirty store rooms because they know even they can't find anything there.  The Marketing guys climb some tree and when they are found, they will say they were looking for some ad space. The customer care will hide behind their fat call center team leader. The finance guy will hide behind those audit files which CEO doesn't want to go anywhere close to. The System Admin will just right click->properties and check on 'Hidden'. The HR team, in the meanwhile is searching for a healthy, hygienic, employee-friendly, congenial, learning environment to hide.

• Marbles: If you ask a finance guy to hit a marble, he will only  show different excel sheets about how much difference hitting that marble will make to the cash flow. The marketing guy will show a nice visual depicting how the marbles will get hit. The HR will examine all marbles before deciding not to hit any. The Operations will measure the distance to the target marble and send you a report that the current bandwidth doesn't support hitting the target. The Networking guy doesn't want to try because he thinks the marble  he is aiming at is a proxy and it won't ping. One department that must be champions at this sport are the Sales guys. All their life, they keep taking shots at targets sometimes achievable, sometimes not. When they hit, everybody lives in peace and harmony and their fruits are enjoyed by the rest of the organization. When they don't, they call it recession.

- Deepak Karamungikar