Saturday, May 17, 2008

A Boss is second only to Hitler

I came back to my apartment early this Friday and found I was out of movies to watch. Then, I found something that looked interesting to watch on Netflix. I found Office Tigers in documentary section. Its a good watch if you have some time to kill. The film is about few American entrepreneurs setting up company in India that trains and provides professional services to clients around the world.

Half way through the film, a guy from US with the title "Associate Vice President for Training (AVPT)" training the employees and starts off with writing the word "Excellence" on the white board. He says "When you think of Excellence, write down the names of first two people that pop up into your heads...Just quickly say in one sentence, explain why you thought of Excellence when think of that person...".
At this point I had a hunch that I would hear couple of odd names like Bollywood or Cricket "stars". One guy said Micheal Jordon (fair enough!). A girl, who looks like she has ways and means to go places, said the CEO of the company. Another guy said Sigmund Freud.

Then "the" guy said "I had Hitler on my list"
AVPT : "Excuse me!!"
the guy : "Hitler!" (you hear everyone in the room cracking up at this point)
AVPT : (shocked!) "Adolf Hitler? you have Adolf Hitler?"
the guy : (nodding very assertively) "YES"
AVPT : "OK! I just wanted make sure I heard you right. Why?"
the guy : "Barring his ideology he is a wonderful leader..."
AVPT : "Alright. Well...um...may be we should talk about it after the class"
...
AVPT : (calm and collected now) My European family were all slaughtered by Hitler and the Nazis. So...when throw his name around, particularly with people from United States, you should be very sensitive about it...Sorry! I didn't want to spoil the spirit of the discussion. But you should just know that....

(OK! its all fine to be politically-correct and culturally-sensitive but wait for the punch-line!)

AVPT : ...So...Do you have second name on your list? (laughing out loud at this point expecting some other crazy name)
the guy : (looking embarrassed) well...yeah...My Boss...!(his voice gets drowned in AVPT's roaring laughter)

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