"At the beep, please hang up and call again in half an hour"

I think if you asked any of my friends they would say I'm a fairly positive person. I think I do a better job than most at not to let the trials and tribulations of life, even in India, get me down. But I'm only human, and every human being needs to vent from time to time. Brace yourself.

I don't think I've uttered a pessimistic word against India or IndiaIT in the (almost) 12 months I've been living and working in Bangalore. Well, folks, this unbelievable streak of optimism ends today with my first (public) gripe: the absurd lack of voicemail in India.

Upon receiving my Indian cell phone, I immediately recognized this odd absence as a deficiency of the professional culture within India. And for whatever reason, that notion was dismissed just as quickly as one of the first instinctual qualities to leave my being as I was assimilated into Bangalore. The effects of a no-voicemail culture are many, but I’ll be brief.

When working in the United States, it is proper office etiquette to at least put your cell phone on silent, especially when a meeting. Not allowing your phone to ring, and thus disturb others, is done as a courtesy to those attending the meeting. Now imagine this situation sans voicemail: your phone rings and your concern is no longer on a ringing phone that would annoy your colleagues, your primary concern is now the NECESSITY to answer the phone. Without voicemail, there is almost no way someone can leave you a message when you are unavailable to talk. Some people send SMS following a missed call, but most often not. As you can imagine, it is quite often when I need to focus my undivided attention on one task, so always being available on my phone is difficult.

Scenario: So you’ve been introduced as an entry level peon into a society and work culture that lacks voicemail. Your phone rings and you are in an important meeting with the head of your department, what do you do? While turning your phone on silent does not immediately interrupt the meeting at the moment a call reaches your cell phone, what do you do if it is one that you need to answer? You will have to leave the room to take it, which clearly takes the group’s attention off the matter at hand. You exit the meeting with the understanding that if you don’t pick up immediately, the person getting in touch with you can’t leave voicemail.

This becomes a downward spiral of communication breakdown when you think about it. When you take voicemail away from an individual, that person becomes instantly more difficult to get in touch with. So when you get that call during a meeting, your immediate thought is, “If I don’t pick this up, and it’s someone I need to get in touch with, it will take me days to get back in touch with them BECAUSE THEY DO NOT HAVE VOICEMAIL!!!!”

Sorry…

You’re now left with a very difficult decision, because you will have to choose which is more important, the meeting or the call. Anyone working person understands how various tasks on your plate at any given time are not always so neatly prioritized in such a way that would easily solve your dilemma. Let’s face it, in the spirit of covering your ass, the interruption to the meeting will always come secondary to doing your job efficiently. A meeting requires everyone’s presence. As a result, the odds of those attending the meeting still being in the room when you finish your call are significantly higher than the chances of the person calling you being available when you finish your meeting. You can see how this would be frustrating.

Summary –

This is what I like to call “Nate’s No-Voicemail Cycle of Anger and Frustration”:

1. No voicemail means people are extremely difficult to get in touch with

2. Because people are difficult to get in touch with, the calls they make to you are more valuable

3. Because these calls are more valuable, you can not afford to let them go

4 (a). Because you can not let the call go, you must answer your phone in the most inopportune circumstances (this has been known to yield corrosive effects to one’s sanity)

4 (b). If you do let the call go, thinking you will call them back at YOUR convenience, there is little chance you will catch them at THEIR convenience, and without voicemail…(see #1)

(NOTE: Please, send your Pulitzer Prize nominations through the appropriate channels. Sending me an e-mail or posting a comment will not suffice.)

How does the phenomenon of voicemail fail to spread in a multinational corporation (MNC), especially one as respected as IndiaIT that has a global workforce with offices in North America as well as India? I wish I could tell you, but my hypothesis is this: it would be a huge frickin’ hassle.

A scientific survey was given to the native Indians that located near my desk, and the results are as follows: At most, 3 or 4 people out of 1,000 have voicemail. At MOST.

When you take into account that millions of people who have cell phones in India, which is easily more than the entire population of the U.S., you’d have better luck convincing the country that baseball is superior to cricket. (This is actually a fairly accurate analogy, as baseball is truly superior to cricket in almost every way, yet many in India choose the less logical path). I only hope that as more MNC’s invest money and resources in India, such as IBM which as recently committed to triple its Indian investment to $6 billion, the Western work culture will change the communication abilities of this country.

I’ve 100% convinced that if the professionals in India adopt what is an extremely efficient, not to mention global, practice, the productivity of this country could jump by 10 to 15%. See, who needs the likes of McKinsey and Bain when I’m around?

In the middle of writing this entry (right before this paragraph), I went to the gym, which gave me plenty of mull over this quandary of communication. I soon came to the realization that the absence of voicemail has a drastic ripple-effect on practically all facets of life. For instance, the majority of people who go to the gym, at least at IndiaIT, bring their phones with them! They routinely answer their phones while running, lifting and stairmastering, which requires them to stop their physical activity. So now these faithful employees are taking time out of their workout, time they’ve set aside to escape the world (especially their jobs) and are forced to answer their phones. Granted, many talk to friends while at the gym, but would they do this if they had voicemail, or would they wait to get their friend’s message following their workout? In any case, most of the phone conversations I hear have to do with server requests, software development, J2EE and many other things I know very little about. A really interesting study could be done by one of the many Fulbright scholars I meet who travel through India doing research on societal phenomena such as this. Too bad they’re too busy researching topics such as the hair of Indian people. Seriously, c’mon.

Also, while I was at the gym I received two missed calls. Now the standard procedure is to call back and say, “Hello, this is Nate. I just received a missed call from this number?” and then, assuming they recognize you, you’re all set. Unfortunately, I received a call from a Prague hotel and there’s no possible way for me to track down which guest at the hotel called me. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the receptionist. All I can hope is that it wasn’t important, and if it was they’ll e-mail me. Frustrating nonetheless.

On a more positive note, I’m going to TGIF tomorrow for 2-for-1 drinks and to watch the USA World Cup Match! Hopefully nobody calls during the game, because I can’t let it go to voicemail.