Corporate Ping Pong

Have you ever been involved or may be a witness to corporate ping pong?

Please don’t mistake this for the ping pong played on table with a ball and TT racket by two or four players.  Corporate ping pong is played using computer and laptop and mails and the best thing is there is no limit on the number of players.  Here are the requisites to play corporate ping pong:

1.        You must be computer literate
2.    You must know how to use e-mails and attachments (mostly MS Outlook).

      3.        You must know English (not necessary though) and basic mail etiquettes (again, not necessary).

      4 .      You need to have more than a couple of people to play this game, the more, the better.
             5.       You must be a master in the art of passing the buck.

      6.    You must be allergic to get the work done directly.

For a clearer understanding, let us go through the following case study:

Acronyms used:

QC:  Quality Controller.

CM:  Construction Manager.

CASE STUDY:

1.       A new site worker needs safety shoes replacement as the size he got is too big for his feet.  He informs the Civil QC about his requirement (requested directly – I mean the old fashioned way of saying directly without e-mail).

2.      The Civil QC mails the CM about this.  The “big shoes” is sent back to the procurement department.

3.   The electrical site engineer steps in and mails the Civil QC to get the correct size of the worker.

4.   The administrator also steps in and mails the procurement guy to replace the shoes with perfect size.

5.   The procurement guys mails the administrator to give him the correct size first.

6.   The administrator mails the CM to give him the correct size.The CM mails the Civil QC to send the correct size of the worker.

Note:  The Civil QC, Site engineer and Construction manager (CM) are all stationed at site and Administrator &Procurement guys are in Head office (HO).

In a nut shell, what happened was a poor chap needed replacement for his new shoes and his request for new shoes had to wade through a layer of hierarchies to get to target department.  Conversely, the reply from the target department had also to wade through the same layers to get to him.  This is a classical example of corporate ping pong.

Hope you have got an idea about how “corporate pingpong” is played and I believe now you are raring to put your new found ping pong skills to use, wishing you all good luck, lets get the ball rolling J

Image courtesy:  bigstockphoto.com