What's on your plate ?

Well I'm stepping into the shoes of a blogger after almost 2 long years. I have missed the world of blogs all this time away, for reasons I don't want to declare openly; though many should be aware of that ;). Anyways I'll resume with a small post, a rough draft of which was saved in my dashboard all these days, to my surprise. Hoping for the same support and appreciation that I received for my last (infamous) blog! :)

I'm pretty sure the title would bring a definite smile on the faces of my ex-teammates if they see this post. It's been almost 2 years since I heard this phrase, but still manages to stretch my imagination to its weird comic levels ;).

Often being directed, like a fired up arrow, towards us by our ex-Manager to find out what exactly we are doing for 9 hrs in office, other than just checking mails, chatting around & taking numerous breaks in regular ( very often many unplanned & unwanted leisure breaks too ! ). Most of us usually used to have 2-3 spare answers ready with us ( unless of course we were actually doing something & not just bluffing ). My favourite one was ' I'm just checking the shipping list issue!'. Of course there might not be any 'shipping list issue'; or if at all it was there, might have been resolved days back; or who knows maybe the very 'shipping list' in question didn't even exist at all, who am I to judge all this :).

'What's on your plate now?'. Most of our days used to start with this seemingly inncoent enough but deceptively venomous question from our ex-Manager (When I drafted this he was still my manager. The 'ex' is injected in now).

Rather than promptly replying for his curious query, for me, answering to this was like firing something right back at him. If he's not sure of what I'm talking about, he'll stop the lecture in half the time (including the possible cause of the issue, potential resolution & an extra proactive step needed to avoid these issues in future). If I'm not able to divert my attention towards other things & stay awake at all during his lecture sometimes I feel like shouting at him, ' There is no issue you Jerk, I just made it up to stuff up your ears. Now stop your lecture & leave me alone !'.

I'm sure most of us should have faced this kinda situation at least once in our office lives. Often, when being confronted about the work plan for the day, we come up with different kind of innovative yet effective ideas to stay SAFE for the day.

But staying safe becomes meaningless after a while. The IT bug starts getting to your nerves soon enough. And when it does (it sure will, only 'when' is the mystery here) it gets you hard. I feel scared enough for that dreadful day. Will it be too late to crawl back up ?

Will I regret having kept my plate empty for most of those 'safe' days ? Only time will tell. So what's on your plate guys?