On a day to day basis, I work closely with many people based in India, specifically Chennai.
I didn’t and still don’t know a great deal about Chennai other than the Super Kings in the IPL. For those that don’t even know that, it’s the Indian Premier League (cricket).
There have recently been floods and major damage caused by the worst rainfall experienced in over 100 years last week. This caused my Indian colleagues rather a lot of inconvenience.
Not only could they not get into work but some buildings and roads have been completely ruined and need to be rebuilt. Add to that the unimaginable chaos and drama of not knowing when the rain was going to stop and when you would be able to purchase food or seek approprioate shelter and you have a scene that Great Britain is in no way prepared for.
My point regarding Chennai is that they have experienced a disaster. My line of work promotes being accessible at any given time and if your office faces a problem then you can work from home or in a local cafe, perhaps. Incoming calls should be routed to a backup location or an answering service in this day and age- at the very minimum.
This is not me being unsympathetic to the terrible time my colleagues and all of the residents of the area have faced. This is my astonishment that I couldn’t get hold of anyone and that my project was virtually on hold for the week.
Again, that may sound selfish but try to look at this from a business perspective.
I work for a global giant and am working hand in hand with another global giant. Personally, I was a little peeved that some of my work is now overdue and I have more red cells on my spreadsheet than I desire. More to the point, I was in pure shock that such huge companies with such huge offices wouldn’t have implemented a disaster recovery plan that kicks in automatically.
I should have learned about the Chennai flooding on the news rather than a group email stating that there is no comms in Chennai currently.
So to Hari and co in India, please stop apologising for the flooding, it’s certainly not your fault.
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