This OB is making me stink!!!

For those who are thinking that there is a typo in the title and I meant BO, I assure you that this post is going to be a revelation. Let me start by sharing with you my growing realization that even OB (Organizational Behavior) can stink you up real bad. And the risk is even higher in my case when I combine my organizational misbehavior with non-existent case knowledge, all due to my ‘busi’ness to even skim through the reading material. Here are some of my recent PGPPX escapades which, if nothing else, have definitely enhanced the humor quotient of my classmates.

Our marketing professor, who also hails from Kerala, was the first to sling mud at brand ‘Biju’. He started out pretty peacefully by praising Kerala as ‘God’s Own Country’ and all that. But sadly, he refused to stop there and went further on to praise Malayalees as Devil’s own people and completed his brand positioning exercise by putting the spotlight on Kerala as a geriatric state. For my new found PGPX friends, all this news couldn’t have come any sooner. Finally they could put two and two together to discover the big TWO amongst them. (For the uninitiated, let me clarify that ‘Biju’ in Gujarathi seems to have a meaning of TWO. To all those locals who educated me on this little Gujarathi, Mein Angrezi mein Kahthi hoon Ki ‘I love you’. Because finally I can stop trying to be No. 1 and enjoy just being ‘Biju’)

By the way, being Biju is just getting tougher by the day over here. Like our ‘Firms and Markets’, professor who wants to explain every little economics concept by positioning me as an Orange farmer. I fail to see any connection here but that could also be because of my cluelessness when it comes to all those marginal and elastic concepts that he keeps discussing in the class. Like the other day when he was asking me for an example of a perfectly elastic product that I buy. I had innerwear in my mind and an embarrassed look on my face and lo and behold an Orange farmer was born. The prof went on to humor me by informing that the Orange market is perfectly elastic and asked me how much Orange I would produce so as to maximize my profits. I tried to minimize my losses by generating some random numbers but soon he pronounced the obvious verdict that I am exploiting my labor and my competition is eating into my oranges. I wish I could exclaim, ‘Now, you are telling me…’ and squeeze some orange peels into my eyes to hide all the tears of joy, but life ain’t that easy these days. In fact the situation is getting so bad that our professor doesn’t even start his classes anymore unless I firmly assume the sitting duck position in my chair to play the role of a perfectly elastic Orange farmer.

To top it all off, brand ‘Biju’ was taken to the cleaners after one of our OB role-plays which had me negotiating for melons, the juice of which I was supposed to use in some medical research to cure the world off some mysterious disease. But instead, I ended up getting the juice of my brain sucked dry by my friendly neighbor and tough negotiator, Sumantra Naik. Very early into the negotiation itself, I learnt to my unpleasant surprise that like the Nairs, Mr. Naik also packs in a mean negotiator within his puny frame. I think ‘Nai’ seems to be the key word here, which in Malayalam means DOG and true to name, the Nai R and the Nai K ended up fighting like true dogs of the highest pedigree. And the fact that we were looking for different portions of the melon, he the peel and me the juice, were also conveniently ignored by us, in our focused attempt to punch the living day lights out of each other. Being the true negotiator that he is, he also kept all his cards close to his chest. But I am proud to come clean and say that even though I was desperately looking for melons, being the true gentleman that I am, I refused to let my eyes stray. As they say, nice guys finish last and all I have now is the pride of not having caved in under extreme temptation; when there were melons to be had and lives to be saved.

On a side note, some of my classmates also think that I am behaving very much like a baby in the class; dozing off now and then and clamoring for attention when I am awake; by asking inane questions and dishing out half baked analyses.

Where is that lifebuoy plus when I desperately need it????