Temperature check -- burnt to a crisp.

wow. it's so hard to believe, in so many ways, that's it's been 4 and a half months since i came to India. that's a LONG time, and most certainly the longest i've lived abroad by a long shot. we've endured a lot, been to a lot of places and gone through a plethora of unforgettable experiences.

but by the same token, we still have nearly 2 months to go before we go back to the States. and while the countdown calendar next to my bed [yes, I did create one back in mid-October] has been whittled down from 13 weeks to just about 6, that's still a long time to go.

temperatures here have been soaring. things were going well until it dawned on us that it's already mid-November and we have no information on where we're going in India and what we're doing after training. and all that aside from our US-based concerns. as i might have mentioned in a previous post, there's a chance that i will not actually be living in Boston proper. we have clients spread throughout the New England area, and i know people whose base location is Boston but they live and work in Portland, Maine or Hartford, Connecticut. that's NOT what i signed up for, and i refuse to have that happen to me. i have too many things set up in Boston already, and a co-worker friend and i are signing a lease on an apartment together in the next few weeks. unfortunately, i have to hold my breath until the company provides me with a solid, black-and-white confirmation that i will indeed be in Boston proper. any news about my initial client would be very helpful as well.

and all of that aside from the way we have been treated for the past 4 months - those conditions, while not physical in nature [don't worry, our living situation here is just fine], have steadily worsened, and it's gotten to the point that we refuse to be treated poorly any longer. never mind for a minute that HR is supposed to be a department we can actually trust. nope. it seems that our direct HR contact is terrified of confrontation and will thus go to rather extreme, albeit amusing, measures to avoid us at all costs. meanwhile, that person's supervisor - the one who actually could help us out, be our advocate, and make this company truly successful at the global level [and especially in the States, since my co-workers and I from the States can and will be the company's only advocates stateside] - seems to really have it out for us. seriously, it seems that every day someone has a new story of a meeting he or she had with this individual and how all s/he did was yell at and belittle them. for crying out loud, someone resigned just over a week ago because of a direct confrontation with this person, who - as if i need to remind you - is in a managerial capacity! not to go into too much detail here, but basically the person in question told my friend who resigned [who is Indian by ethnicity and was raised in the States, like me] that my friend had lost his heritage, didn't know who he was, and didn't belong in India slash wasn't really an Indian. this short tirade was followed by a direct request - practically a demand - from the HR person in question that my friend resign immediately

since i'm on the topic, i may as well go on about it for a bit. seriously, this management person is in charge of Human Resources!! if it were any other department, it would be one thing, but as head of HR for the company campus at which i currently reside [thousands and thousands of employees here], that person should be at least corporately diplomatic and neutral enough to NEVER bring up an issue like that with another employee - much less on company time and on the company campus. the only word that comes to mind is unprofessional, and i cannot understand how this individual has moved through the ranks with such blatantly discriminatory outbursts. i would like to grant this person the benefit of the doubt and say that perhaps it was an isolated incident. HOWEVER, a) similar, although less harsh, situations have taken place with my other US batchmates, and b) directly because of the HR person's words and actions, my friend resigned!! ... or perhaps he was told he was being fired and decided to retain some scrap of dignity by resigning himself after the HR person ripped into him.

this whole anecdote is just to give you an idea of how my company is lauded in India in general, but then people here act SO SURPRISED when we tell them that in the States, not many people have heard of the founder [practically a god walking amongst mere mortals here in India], much less the 90,000-person strong company itself. it's because the people in charge of running operations really aren't qualified enough, in my opinion, to do their job with competence. at least that's been my experience thus far, and i sincerely do hope that things get better in the last month and a half we're here. but the only way that would happen is if the right people take initiative. we for our part have done our best to voice our concerns, and to communicate to management [including the HR individual i've been talking about] how we envision processes and communications being improved within the company. unfortunately, in order to enact positive change there have to be two active parties - the one suggesting the change [collectively, us as speakers] and the one to enact the change [collectively, them as listeners], and as of right now our suggestions and, yes, complaints are all falling on apparently deaf ears.

sometimes, just sometimes, i wonder if this job is all it's cracked up to be. i guess we'll see if things get better when i'm back in the States, if they don't improve before then.

my nerves are shot and i'm frazzled. i'm completely at wits' end, and it's because of the people above us - the ones who are supposed to help us out, be there for us, be advocates of positive change. there's just a very large gap, and i'm hoping, really praying, that it will be bridged soon.

=(