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CP, cafeteria and coffee..@XL

Posted on | March 17, 2008 | 3 Comments

ok..let me first give you a bit of background as to why i am stiitng here writing this post, at 5 something in the morning when i should be sleeping, as i have a class tomorrow at 10. reason is strategy..i am sick of strategy classes.

there is CP, acronym for class participation. i did not know this word before coming here, and i can’t help wishing it would be better had i not known it. a sadistic prof will put marks on CP, and we all will go and exceed ourselves in making fools of ourselves. and CP morphs, flows, divides and shines and whispers and grows on you till you can not stand it any longer..and then it goes into its subtypes..ACP and DCP ( a for arbit d for desperate)!! and then there is after and before class participation..enogh of that..we have lots of CP in strat classes..some of it, to my mind, should be given iconic status and the words that have been said be written down in diamond letters on golden plaques and be preserved in a B-School CP makers hall of fame..

sample this:

Prof (discoursing on targets of acquisitions) : you need to be careful in picking up the cherries!!

pari: sir, the problem is there are too many cherries!!!

and then…

Prof:what made dynamic pricing at WalMart stores a reality?

soni: MIS !!

i have had my share too.a long discussion about learning effect, and how it should help increase production in a firm..and some volumes of bakar where everyone goes gaga over how the learning curve goes parallel to the prouction curve, and as learning effects will cumulate, production will rise.

me(frustrated,hoping to conclude the discussion): hold on a minute..do you guys mean to say if NASA has a learning curve in building spacecraft,they will go an build ‘n’ number of spacecraft just like that?!!!

arguers:#%$###@!!!

and so the story goes on and on…redundancies abound..etology flourishes and we all get seeped in the life’s work of porter and soaked in the gyaanvarsha of prahlad and slowly inch towards being top strategists for tomorrow’s businesses..and then comes the surprise quiz..which asks about the take over strategies that dadu’s will follow when planning to takeover the cafeteria and the synergies that can be built by a merger between dadu& sons and Vishu da’s place!!

which brings me to the cafeteria…in the best tradition of identification with indian royalty (who used to ride on elephants..sadly not now) and indian beureaucracy (who moved with the speeds of elephants), the cafeteria also has its elephant..the menu (ok..elephant’s teeth..remember the khane ke aur dikhane ke aur saying.i will explain).

but first a bit about the cafeteria..which has pretensions to being a restaurant…one remembers an assignment in jesu’s class..prepare a speech to convince the director to convert the cafeteria into a bar..seeing its condition one wonders what would have been on sale there had it been actually converted to a bar..tharra and desi daru perhaps..but i get ahead of me..

the cafeteria has two menus..the first one, which you will see lying on the counter is a shiny white laminated piece of two sheets of xerox which will offer you anthing from club sandwiches to chicken drumsticks…dont fall off your seats..this is the dikhane ka daant…then there is the actual menu, which the boy behind the counter will recite to you, should you care to ask..it offers you evn more variety….plain dosa..masala dosa..and butter masala dosa….butter masala dosa without masala..butter masala doa without butter,..butter masala dosa with the masala on the plate instead of inside the dosa..and other such innovative products..

sometimes, if you are lucky and he feels like it..the boy behind the counter will accept your order for egg maggi..then you have to specify..egg maggi,anda daal ke….egg chow is always available,egg maggi is rarely..which makes me wonder about the economics of restricted access to products and profit margins..egg maggi would probably be easier to make one would guess..

and they also serve tea and coffee..which brings me to what happened last evening when me and naween went to have a coffee..

naween: bhaiya, do coffee dijiye!!

boy behind counter: thanda ya garam?

naween:$#$#@!@$

it was some seconds before we realized he was referring to cold coffee..bhery sofisticated..arent we?

it has already grown too long a post..and perhaps drab too..so i will quote with another candidate for the CP hall of fame.

Divya(to soni in strat class): our justification for your statement……….

P.S. all these hall of fame entries are from one class only.i was seriously pulling my hair out in frustration that day!!

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Category: irony/humor/wtf, life@xl

Comments

3 Responses to “CP, cafeteria and coffee..@XL”

  1. messy
    March 17th, 2008 @ 4:48 am

    this ones funny.. was laughing out loud… i pity u when i comes to attending your strat class..

    so did u guys drink thanda coffee?

    grins…

    nice one.. give us some more of this kind…

  2. utpal
    March 17th, 2008 @ 4:27 pm

    Nice post biddu…. Just makes me think how come I was able to do CP during Walmart case discussion even though being absent ;)

  3. sandeip
    March 17th, 2008 @ 4:30 pm

    boss..not necessarily walmart case..i remember the quotes because they are noted down in a notebook..might have been some other case..i remember it was ullu who asked the question and he is full of irrelevancies :)

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