together for the prevention of office violence

tell me if you have ever experienced this kind of situation. I have experienced it at every single place I worked...


It's the last day of the week, afternoon (3pm) and you are sitting at your desk, still recovering from that heavy lunch. Your brain suddenly gives you a big slap on the face and you remember that you need to submit something by 5pm, something that was requested 3 days ago and you procrastinated and kept postponing. You get yourself some coffee, open up word, excel and powerpoint and get cracking. You are working so fast that sweat starts dripping from your fingertips and you can feel the blisters building up.

Now I generally find that every time I am in this kind of situation, there comes a point in time where I need to focus completely on a continuous train of thought otherwise I need to start all over again or it takes me 5 minutes to get back in the groove of things.

Damn you Murphy, damn you to your grave...

Now for some reason, you were left alone all day long and left undisturbed but were not really that busy. But when you really need to be left alone, people tend to show up. Now after working for a few years we all know how to usually get people to leave us alone. We do one of the following things:

1. We focus on the screen and kind of not be interested in what the person is saying
2. We pick up the phone and make a call or pretend to make a call
   
3. We work on typing emails or proposal or whatever and not give any attention
   
4. We flat out ignore them (I generally prefer this but I swear it is never done intentionally, I just zone out)

Now most people will leave you alone and will take absolutely no offense. In the rare occasion some does take offense you apologize later and they get over it and everything is cool again, it is understandable. But once in a while, depending on how important the thing you need to finish up is, THAT guy/girl shows up. Do you know who I am talking about?

Usually this person is a nice person and you get along with them just fine and have a pure friendly in-office relationship with them. But they have one flaw, a flaw that could end up getting them murdered or beaten really badly one day. These I believe are usually the first people to get shot when some employee goes "postal" and shoots up the office. THAT person does not get points 1, 2, 3 and 4. You can literally ignore them for 15 minutes, your face stuck to your screen, a mobile in one ear and land line in the other and typing with your hands and feet, and they will stand there talking still.

I my dear readers have been dumbfounded to finding a solution to dealing with these people other than the possibility of using or threatinging to use a sawed-off double barrel shotgun to the face.

My question to you and I pray for your assistance, do you have any suggestions on how we can work together for the prevention of office violence?

rama rama ding dong

Every year children and adults alike get extremely excited at the distant sound of Ramadan approaching. Two weeks prior to Ramadan, without fail, supermarkets start getting extremely crowded and practically every kitchen in every house is busy preparing an amount of sambosas that in reality can feed a small country over a year, not just a household over a month.

Now before you go off thinking that you know where this is headed and feeling all smart, let me make it clear that this post is not here to go on about the amount of food that is wasted or criticize the fact that people tend to overindulge (although both are valid points). I am here to share with you my personal belief of what most people go through.

During the first few days of the month people tend to have a strong sense of piety, humbleness and kind of feel like that they are on a different spiritual level. For some reason there is this strong smell of excitement over a month that is supposed to test our will and in reality make life difficult. We wake up early before work to pray, get ready, and come into to the office just on time (2 hours later than normal days, great! right? hmmm...). We try hard stay focused and tend to stay very level headed and if something bothers us with all simplicity we pray for patience and feel good about not losing our temper. By the time 4pm rolls around we get a little exhausted and go home driving patiently and trying to keep our cool with the traffic and occasional insane driver on the road. By the time Maghreb prayers rolls around we feel that sense of excitement and continue our patience in waiting for Iftar. What keeps us going at the begging is this sick idea  that its supposed to get easier as time goes by.

Now as I mentioned, that is just in the beginning. In reality (and I hope this doesn't come across as blasphemous) each day just gets more difficult and by the end of the month you just feel like you have an extremely bad hangover.

As the end of the month arrives many people can barely peel themselves out of bed at 10:30am to get to work (staying up till 4am doesn't help either). Everyone is pissed off at the world and spirituality has gone beyond zero and become negative because many peoples minds have become engulfed by extreme cynicism and selfishness (not that there is a lack of selfishness throughout the year). Making it to the office before 11:30 becomes practically impossible, in fact coming to the office at all tends to become useless when you have the productivity of a rock. I genuinely believe the body starts to partially decompose because our brain feels that we are too stupid to allow to survive and are basically nothing more than a waste of space. Practically everyone drives like a lunatic, uses every possible swear word they know despite fasting(sometimes in a wide range languages from various exotic countries). The going out in the last 15 minutes before maghreb prayers is basically suicide.

Sigh...

All that aside, I think it truly serves its purpose and makes us be grateful for what we have instead of complain about what we don't. Once in a while we need to stop looking up, and be grateful. The trick though is not to lose sight of the purpose of Ramadan and the importance of practicing self-control and hanging on to that spirituality throughout the month and not just for the first few days.

Wish you all a blessed Ramadan :-)

A COMMUTERS CRY FOR HELP

This morning, like any morning, I woke up and went through the usual stress filled routine of getting to work. After the 5 minute shower marathon that involves shaving and brushing my teeth, I got dressed, got into my car and hit the road. Getting on the highway was a hassle as usual in the "perfectly planned" city that provides one exit to the highway for an entire suburb. Everybody on the road was naturally in a rush and as usual, had zero respect for anyone. All pretty standard for me during a weekday morning drive to work. What triggered me to write this piece however was my reaction to the usual jackass overtaking me from the shoulder flashing his headlights as though he had somebody bleeding to death in the car. On any other day, I would ignore it and move on with my life. Today however I found myself saying, in a completely calm and serene voice, “It is way too early in the morning for this shit...”

Driving in Jeddah has been nothing short of a living nightmare for many commuters across the city. Add to that peoples attitudes while their fasting and it is nothing short of going for a hell-ride. Over the past five years, we have all seen the situation get worse and worse with very little being done to counter it. Before getting into how to fix this problem and what can be done, let’s step back for a second and think about the reasons behind the excessive aggressiveness projected in this lovely, calm ocean front city.

Let us start with the obvious. The public know and respect traffic law as much as the police force enforces it. When the law is absent, human instinct reverts back to what the economist Herbert Spencer referred to as “Survival of the Fittest”. The shoulder on the highway has become a legitimate lane with cars overtaking police cars using this approach. The right of way for the roundabout is for whoever has the balls to keep going and ignoring the other cars. The situation is so bad, that we have police officers spending the night in jail for speeding and cutting red lights. When there is so little concern with enforcing the law, the desire to follow it and respect other motorists on the road fades away as it has today. Disrespect if left untreated, is contagious like a disease.

Secondly. Over these past five years, the rural population of Saudi Arabia has seen a major decline in its population. According to the ministry of economics and planning, the rural population of the country saw a sharp decline from representing 30% of the population to 13%; all of which was injected mainly into Jeddah and Riyadh with some spillage into Mecca and the Eastern Province. This was mainly due to the neglect that was experienced by these rural areas in terms of government services, urban development and the creation of economical opportunities.

Saudi Arabia has always had a small number of major cities. With time one would expect that this number would grow in relevance with the population and government spending would broaden into other towns in order to avoid the situation that is present today. The government has identified this issue and began to build economic cities that are to have good city planning, zoning laws and regulations. Additionally, major road work in the form of bridges (although questionable in quality and completion time) is being undertaken to address some of these issues.

Despite all this planning and grand ideas we hear about everyday in the paper and on tv, commuters will continue to cry for help as long as a lack of strict traffic law enforcement continues to be a part of the problem.