Death of a Software Engineer - Life on the bench

Day 0

2:30 PM
Got the dreaded mail from HR.
“Please send your updated resume. And could you come and meet me ASAP?” (Damn!)
I thought what’s the hurry? Let’s delay the meeting as much as possible. Heck, I’ll not go today at all. Just going enjoy my last few hours with my super-fast machine.

3:30 PM
Got another mail from HR. No point in delaying the inevitable. Must go now. Take the blow head-on.

3:45 PM
(HR’s office)
NOTE: These HR people are really ‘different’ from us developers. You should see their offices. The over-decorated, stuffed-with-soft toys, post-it’s every where kinda cubicles. What’s the deal with that? Are we developers allowed to do that??

Conversation with Resource Manager:

RM: Hey ! How are you?
ME: (I’ve changed 2 projects in less than a month, I don’t have a place to sit, and your cubicle is so much better than mine… I hate you!!) Great! I’m good.
RM: So, you’re in the pool now.
ME: (Really!! You don’t say. I thought this meeting was to discuss our company's plans to go for a hostile takeover bid on Microsoft). Yes.
RM: So where are you from?
ME: (Why? Is our company planning to open a 20000 capacity Development center in my hometown and make me the manager? ) Well actually I’m from an army background, so I’ve never really stayed at one place for too long.
RM: Oh really? Which core?
ME: (What the …?). Signals
RM: My father was in the army too. He was in the core of Engineers.
ME: (Aaah! This is getting interesting. Army background. Same religious background. Not bad looking. Hello!!! Quick, look at her finger. Is she married?? Would she be having a boyfriend??) Oh really!
RM: So you were in Investec before.
ME: (Coffee? Movie? Dinner? Quick. Think!!!) Yes.
RM: Okay. So where are you sitting right now?
ME: (What was the name of that stupid movie, the one with the Himesh Reshamiya song. Deewana kar gaye humko or something….) I am sitting at my workstation in the Fujitsu ODC.
RM: Okay. You can’t sit there anymore. I’ll allocate you a new cubicle.
ME: (Adlabs? Inox? E-Square?.... WHAT ?? (Explosion. Fire Alarm. Mirror breaking.) NEW CUBICLE ??? NOOOOO. Be cool man. Be cool. It’s just for a couple of days.) Okay.
RM: Go to Alps Building, First floor and take either of workstation number 59,60 or 61.
ME: (Gulp. Jeez. Thanks a lot. You’ve made my day. You can forget the movie now) Okay.
RM: Okay then. That’ll be all. Call me when you get there to tell me your extension number.
ME: (Hmmm. Asking me to call back. And asking for my number. Forget it girl. You’ve blown your chance now) Okay. Thanks.

Well that was that. But life goes on. Must keep going. All that philosophical crap was going through my head as I walked back to my office to clear up my cubicle.

Problem: I have almost 1 GB of data in my personal folder on my workstation. I just can’t leave it behind. What to do?
Solution: The iPod !!
Catch: All my songs have to go. Songs that I took over 3 months to select and put on my iPod. Damn you. Is there any justice in this world? Damn you twice. And she had the nerve to ask me to call her back. Dream on baby. Dream on.

40 Minutes later

Machine 59, machine 59, where art thou? Machine 59. Ah! There it is. In the corner. Not a bad place. Wait a second. What do we have here? A girl. Sitting on machine 59. Heh heh. This might turn out to be a good experience after all. I’ll take number 60 and we’ll be happy ever after.
From this point of time, every thing is happening in a weird matrix style, bullet-time, slow motion kind of speed. I am walking towards machine 60. From the corner of my eye, I can see another guy (much older than me, and a lot less handsome, thank you very much) walking towards the general direction of machines 59,60 and 61. My male killer survival instinct kicks in (yes, we do have it. It’s called Libido). My feet start moving faster. Of course this distance of just a couple of feet is taking a lot of time to cover (slow motion, remember). My brain is already analyzing the relative speeds of ‘another guy’ and me and I am pretty sure I am going to beat him to machine 60. Heh Heh. Sucker.
I’d like to take a moment now to tell you about this bag I have. This small black executive bag that you hang on your side, you know, to go with the corporate look. I generally carry my Airtel bills for the last 7 months in it. Plus some stationary that I keep taking from the stationary store every now and then. You know, pencils, markers, pens, erasers, post-its etcetera, etcetera. Things that are absolutely essential for any software engineer to work efficiently. So this bag is very handy indeed.
Now I have been carrying this bag for almost 8 months. Never before has it given my any trouble. Trouble like getting caught in a sharp corner of a desk for instance. But at that very instant - just when I was but few steps away from machine 60, my Utopia, just when I could just start imagining the look on ‘another guy’s’ face when I’d take up machine 60, just when I’d started thinking about Movies and dinners and coffee again - my bag decided to get caught in a sharp corner of a desk. Stupid… stupid bag.
Of course you can imagine the rest of the story very well from this point of time. I lost my balance. My shoulder made a weird clicking noise (which hurt a lot, but what’s pain compared to the loss of machine 60). People nearby turned to look at me. I apologized profusely. And meanwhile, lost machine 60. Forever.
I picked up my bag. Walked over to machine 61. ‘Another guy’ and the girl had already stuck up a conversation. Lucky SOB. I booted machine 61, tried to log in, and got a big stupid windows error message. Tried to determine the cause of the problem (engineering instincts. Yes, we have that too) and lo’ behold. What do I find out? The network cable is missing. You’ve got to be kidding me. This day just keeps getting better and better.
This left me no option but to call the Resource Manager. Overpowering all my male ego (yes, we definitely have that), I called her up. No response. At this point of time, all I was wishing for was a desert eagle so that I could blow my brains out. But since that wasn’t about to happen, I thought I’d go and get a cup of coffee. Of course, since my access card for this floor is not working, I had to take the back door and walk about thrice the distance I normally would have walked to get the vending machine, which incidentally was out of coffee. But of course. What else did I expect? Drank a glass of lukewarm water and came back.
Tried calling the Resource manager again and this time got through. Was instructed to call up the admin guys. Ah. The dreaded admin guys. I could feel the knot tightening in my stomach. Called them up. No response. Called again after a while. The person responsible for replacing missing network cables was in a meeting. They actually have a person for that!! Jeez. Anyways, it was about 5:15 by this time and my patience was running out. So decided to call it a day.