Posted on Saturday, June 06, 2009 | By Gautam | In
Scene 1: "What's with the uniform???", I asked my teacher in primary. No answer. I asked my dad the same seemingly nondescript question. "Discipline son, discipline". "How come?", to which I had no satisfactory answer till date. Ma'am, dad, I'm still waiting for my answer!!!
Scene 2: I decide to go in for an MBA (the first choice of driven unemployed people) and land in Symbi. "Guys Nat Sem!!! Turn up in your college formals.", and I find myself outside the auditorium in formals and sweating in the Pune heat.
What's all this brouhaha with formals? Will someone please explain? Do I become more disciplined? Do I become intellectually superior to people in casuals? Do I become more productive? Take the example of IBM vis-a-vis Google. IBM has always been viewed as a company with executives as cold as steel dressed in blue. Cut to the Google environment where one can come in casuals. Its attracting the best brains too. Does IBM or other such iron-clad companies get the best talent?
And yes, how can I forget the impeccably dressed in three piece suit bankers of the Wall Street who have caused the recent recession (alongwith the junk bond scam they created in the late eighties). Does one become morally upright in a uniform/casuals? Why are the police forces around the world corrupt then? Why are the representatives on Capitol Hill, Sansad (in India) all dressed in casuals corrupt?
I simply cannot understand and people simply don't have answers to this!!!
I totally agree. Why formal's? I don't get the reason too.