The Water Cooler & Vending Machine Dialogues

Grape vine : A person to person method of spreading information, rumors & gossips by unofficial or informal means mainly through conversations. 


Nearly 6 years into corporate life has made me realize that this is not an urban legend and grapevines do exist and its seeds are in fact sown and then cultivated by the organisation itself. Grape vines are the best and lowest cost means of creating a speculation. These are unofficial snap polls usually sponsored by the management to get raw unedited opinions of its employees. They work two ways, release and retrieve. 

This has been the oldest means of internal espionage and brings about a great deal of 'earnest' opinions about senior managers and the big man and the organisation as a whole. The grapevines are of course members of the management's carefully chosen inner circle and they are most active at the time of periodic performance appraisal systems or when there has been a major departmental reshuffle. 


It is plainly impossible for the untrained eye to identify the grapevine, since the conversations are very cunningly camouflaged in harmless banter. 


Now since we have warmed up to the idea of this novel management concept, let us now move on to our personal experiences with the 'Grapevine'!! The 10 minute breaks that we get in the pre and post lunch sessions are those periods of the day when we all go out in quite large groups depending on your age in the organisation, towards that corner space where 'they' have installed the water cooler and the coffee vending machine. It is a time to relax and to let your hair and your guard down. It is the time to provide your peers a descriptive feedback and an honest opinion about your meeting with the boss in the morning. 

Well, it is one's birth given right to ridicule one's boss. No matter how well or bad the meeting would have gone in the morning, the poor chap is in for a royal spanking. What is a good banter without getting your friends to laugh about your boss jokes? Call it peer pressure or a conformist attitude, but your wicked creativity goes into overdrive and you start describing your boss and paint a picture of him with a pointed tail, a pitchfork and goat horns growing from either sides of the head. Maybe the caffeine in the cappuccino cup you are holding eggs you to go on further and take deep digs at the boss. You are the 'It' guy and you are easily welcomed into the 'gang'. Imagine you are the grapevine and this is the most easiest way in. You unload a lot of crap on the boss and you are a cool guy. Your peers slowly start opening up about things that even the boss did not know about himself. This is true 360 degree feedback - 100% raw and uncut. 


One also talks about the management policies and how uncomfortable they make it for the employees to work. Some of the feedback are to be taken and improved upon and some are just to be thrown in the can. Generally the majority are unsatisfied and have a lot of complaints about almost everything. Some people do not like the taste of the coffee, some do not like the faucet in the restrooms, some do not like the acute absence of pretty ladies in the office and some do not like the attitudes of their seniors. Very rarely do we come across group discussions near the water cooler where the majority have very good words for the organisation or the boss. It is the 'Grass is greener on the other side of the fence' syndrome that is very clearly visible during water cooler conversations. 


Water cooler conversations are not restricted to complaints about the management and the boss, they extend to complaints about the traffic situation, the national cricket team's present form, the state of affairs of the country's politics, incredible tax structures and a bad plot of a much anticipated Bollywood film. During such conversations, you observe that your colleagues who are usually stressed out and deeply engrossed in their work, have a life out of the office. You are enlightened about the ongoing infrastructure projects across the city, the statistics on the last 6 matches of the Indian cricket team and a very neat expert analysis on the top batsmen and bowlers' current form and what they must be doing to improve and put the team on a winning track again. It is just amazing to find out that the national selectors know very little about cricket when compared to your next - cubicle - neighbor. 


I wouldn't name him, but I had this colleague of mine who, as far as I go, is the greatest staunchest follower of the common wealth game of cricket. This guy is a near fanatic and his interest in the gentleman's game is so intense that he had the audacity to follow even the much ignored first class cricket played at the domestic circuit. This knowledge trove of his came to light during many of our water cooler conversations and I still fondly recall the twinkle in his eyes whenever there was a victory for the Indian side. 


Water cooler conversations are equivalent to the best shrinks where you can offload your frustration and stress. Sometimes you even get useful advises and suggestions to come out of your situation. Discussing the problems with a close group of friends who understand your work and your environment is a great deal to beat stress and come out trumps. 


How often have we not come across a situation when we are going through a particularly rough patch at work and have felt victimized. Our vending machine interactions with colleagues reveal that we are not alone in feeling so low and many have already passed and are passing through the same patch. This sense of belonging to a group gives you great peace of mind. I sincerely hope I am being able to put across this point to you all. 


Coffee vending machines are a great place to socialize with seniors too as they also need a place to unwind & to recharge. 'Inside' information such as the probable date of starting the much awaited performance appraisal process along with additional info on the list of probable promotees are extracted from routine friendly conversations with senior members who are necessarily part of the grapevine. 


It is a great misnomer that only ladies gossip. Men are known to gossip as much and sometimes even more. The term curious George has a broad perspective. Water cooler conversations are all about men - grown up men gossiping about the most innocuous of issues. A colleague's new car or the new wife, the boss's daughter and even sharing a joke you received over SMS which you cannot discuss anywhere else. 


Work is an extension of our college days and these precious 2 x 10 minute breaks provide valuable time to get nostalgic and reconstruct the great fun we had with our friends. Human Resource Development is a function in most of the organisations that focus on holistic growth of the employees and team building is one of the responsibilities of HR. Organisations spend hundreds of thousands on team building exercises at out of office locations, usually in the wilderness and river side camps. However, water cooler & vending machine corners provide a low cost team building opportunity. 


Friendships are fostered and pent up stresses are released at these pristine places of uninhibited conversation. A buzzing water cooler corner makes any office, truly a great place to work in. 

Television Tantrums

Marconi's invention of radio waves heralded a great new mode of mass communication and entertainment. Speech & music could then be spread across the world literally through thin air. Receptors in a nearly portable device would capture these waves and decode them into legible audio which the patrons could sit around and enjoy. It was a revolution. 

But, man is credited with evolution more than revolution. Visual communication and entertainment had far reaching impacts and had a far greater demand compared to mere audio. People would visit the cinema houses in droves to watch their favorite artists display their histrionics and exercise their vocal chords. Hundreds would pack the opera houses to watch the tenors and sopranos tear the roof with their high octaves. People just loved to experience the visual enticement where drama unfolded and tales of romance & adventure were acted out. It left very little to their imagination unlike the stale radio which made them exert additional pressure on the right sides of their brains for a creative reconstruction of the stories being narrated on the radio. 

Scottish engineer John Logie Baird invented the television in the mid 20s and he changed the perception of the entire modern world about entertainment and communication. The idea of the common man having his / her own personal entertainment system where acts of Hollywood artistes and news of the world would be streamed right to their living rooms was simply path breaking. The modern world took an instant liking to this invention and the television was an overnight phenomenon. Film makers who made movies for the big screen now turned producers of shows tailored to suit television audiences. Organisations that would usually advertise their products through news print, cinema houses and of course radio, invested significantly for the growth of this industry by sponsoring advertisements shown in between shows. 

If the television can be likened to a human trait or phase of life, then I would liken it to a child and an old man. Lets take it from the television being likened to a child or an infant. The child is an attention seeker. It always craves for the immediate attention of its mother and then of the others living in the house. The child needs pampering and constant caring and feeding. It also needs a lot of protection and a nice cozy cradle to sleep in. 

Just like that modern day television demands the attention of the house audience. Television of today has more than a couple of hundred channels to surf and offers literally all imaginable genres of content for the viewers to select from the comfort of their couches. If one listens carefully, the television lets out, first a whimper and then a loud shrill cry demanding your full attention. If you don't believe this, just turn of your TV when you are at home in the day and try avoiding it for more than 2 - 3 hours. Just like you pamper your kid with toys and chocolate, you pamper your television with expensive cabinets & attractive show pieces to give it company. The child's cradle provides it a nice sleep and recharges it's juices while the voltage stabilizers protect your TV and a nice warm cloth covers it from dust. 

The child throws around a lot of tantrums if you devoid it of the attention it deserves. It holds its breath till it turns blue and it shouts and cries and throws things here and there. The TV in turn makes you throw tantrums if you are pulled away from it. If you are interrupted between your favorite show or movie or a game then it is you who hold your breath till it turns blue and on rare occasions people are known to re-enact their childish days. 

The TV could be likened to a grumpy old man who resorts to constant grumbling when devoid of attention. One would have underwent the grumpy old man syndrome when the wife, completely ignorant of the importance of the cricket league match that you are so staunchly following waltzes into the living room demanding to switch over to some sob story on prime time TV. You have no option but to meekly hand over the 'remote' or change the channel yourself silently grumbling about the lost opportunity to follow a pulsating thriller of a game which obviously your bachelor friends are enjoying with beer and a bucket of chicken. 

The TV in itself does not take up different personalities, they have the effect of bringing out such interesting personalities from within us, consciously or otherwise. 

We have all come across a lot of stories in the new print and of course on certain 'commercial' news channels about couples sparring over what channel to watch during dinner time and who controls the remote. 

I recall my boyhood days when a certain entertainment - sports genre had taken the Indian teenage generation by storm. It was the WWF now called the WWE. We used to watch these athletic men with bodies of greek gods pummeling each other to pulp in front of a huge live audience. Our under developed brains could not identify that all this was for mere entertainment and the acts on TV were orchestrated and those blows and kicks were all fake. Nevertheless, oblivious to all this, children of our generation including me, became worshipers of these martial artists. Watching these shows sub consciously created such a rage in our minds that we would stupidly enact those sequences at home and would often end with broken teeth and bruised knees and elbows. Such was the craze that even the dumbest kid in school with a memory span of a goldfish would rattle out facts and figures of these wrestling superstars without twitching an eyelid! 

There were several other 'kid shows' on TV that would necessarily bring out the hidden Mars  (Roman God of War) in us. He - Man and the Masters of the Universe, GI Joe, The Jungle Book and later the Swat Cats would engage the kids in animated battles with their imaginary foes. Television was the new corporate weapon and these superhero shows on TV would be accompanied with a suitably timed launch of action figurines, comic books, collectibles, apparels etc in the market. Kids would literally bring the house down holding the poor parents to ransom to buy them the latest action He man & GI Joe action figures. Mattel and Funskool were the biggest beneficiaries of this corporate blitzkrieg on TV. I recall how I had pestered my parents to buy me these stuff which I hold on to very dearly even to this day.Strategically placed inside large showcases, these entice the passing kids to act like stubborn mules until the parents yield to their juvenile demands. 

Commercial advertisements on newsprint and radios do not garner much attention as the TV does. Kids are the biggest targets of many many brands and sometimes they target naive adults as well who succumb to their well camouflaged preaching about products and services they endorse. The earlier day ads were not regulated by any regulatory body and exaggerating facts were the order of the day. Short kids who were regularly bullied at school were enticed by an ad by a major dietary supplement brand that guaranteed a rapid increase in height if taken twice a day, one disclosed their product was the secret behind a sporting legend's energy and one declared that it would make the kids stronger, sharper and taller. Innocent & gullible, the kids would pester their parents to include such 'dietary supplements' to the monthly grocery list. If the company roped in a popular sporting or acting face then the sales were assured to double and treble within no time. These companies banked heavily on the convincing power of kids and more on the convincing power of television and they have been right so far in thinking so. 

I have been a willing partner to their business strategies since I had started personally endorsing without a fee these 'health drinks' and had pressed hard for their inclusion in the monthly purchases. I had literally tried all the brands in the hope of getting at least a fraction of the miraculous effects that the brands endorsed about their products. Television has been successful in creating a mass hysteria and it has a long hypnotic effect on buyers. The advent of internet and the free flow of information has somewhat diluted its powers of entrapment, but the TV ruled our minds just a decade or so before. 

The tantrums are not restricted to kids and grumpy old men alone. Television has not spared even the most demure of housewives. America's one of the most popular television show 'Who wants to be a millionaire' was remade to suit Indian audiences at the turn of the new millennium. The channel producers managed to rope in a hugely popular Bollywood artiste to endorse and host the show during prime time TV. The chance of becoming an overnight millionaire led to an exodus from the state controlled national network to the Rupert Murdoch owned STAR (Satellite TV Asia Region) network. TV history was being made. A history of sorts was brewing in my own house also. My usually silent mom who would hardly ever watch TV, was also hooked on to the idea of making a million bucks. This TV show was a nexus between the program producers, the show sponsors and the mobile phone service providers. A chance to participate was through an SMS sent at a nominal charge of INR 3 per SMS and the more you sent the more were your chances of qualifying. You could also call through the national telephone service provider at a charge. Our very first cell phone was purchased after a quick trip to the nearest showroom and we soon started spending quality time as a family sending out messages and calling from the fixed line to increase our chances of qualifying for the show. 

Rapid advancements in technology was instrumental in the de-addiction of television in the young generation who have now moved on to get addicted to even more enticing means of entertainment and social networking and gaming. 

No matter what, the television has become an indispensable part of our lives and it is really hard to maintain our entertainment quotient in the absence of it. A sparing use and a cognitive introspection of our genuine needs and wants have to be exercised to unburden the idiot box of its tainted image of zombifying healthy minds. 

Television could perform a great service in mass education, but there's no indication its sponsors have anything like this on their minds.

 - Tallulah Bankhead, American Actress (1902 - 1968)