Friday, February 13, 2009

Say it with a Rose...

The much awaited “Say it with a Rose” day a.k.a “Rose day” is on. It was to preceed the Valentines Day as we dint wanted it to clash with the Valentines Day celebrations. And best of it all, the much awaited Valentines Day was falling on Saturday.

Some of us the creative minds if you may want to call, organised a rose day as part of fun activity. The whole idea was, all the employees were given a choice to give roses to their colleagues and friends within the Business Unit. Yellow rose for friendship, pink for admiration and white for respect. Finally the “D” day arrived and we went around distributing the roses per order.

While some received bunches and bunches of roses, some none. While one manager walks that extra mile to gift 3 roses each in his team, the other dint even remember that he has to give a rose. One great soul, who is the most admired for his cool and calm nature never realised he had an admirer in him. While he thought, he hasn’t impacted any, the roses on his desk has some other story to tell. And the best was this Manager, who conveniently deleted all the mails from the past 3 days that had the subject line “rose”. Finally, on the rose day, when the volunteers gave him the roses, which were gifted to him, he realised the whole concept of rose day. And the best part was when this manager remarked how the roses he received were all from his non-team members. He thinks, all his team members too must have deleted all the mails. J While another great soul, was supposedly preoccupied by lot of “other” things again, conveniently forgot. But did make efforts to find out who gifted him roses and thanked them. Isn’t that sweet?

Another manager, dint want any of his team members to feel left out for not getting a rose so, gave one to each even when the member was on leave. Also we have some more interesting people around. This beautiful lady got loads and loads of roses and then she realised that she too should have given. As if buying a ticket after the bus has gone will help. Some members were very happy to be onsite for the first time as they felt they dint have to go through the embarrassment of not getting any roses or save themselves by not gifting any. Interestingly, one sweet soul, did not give any because if she had to give, she would want to give it to all. So, she chose the earlier. What an idea!!!!. While some souls, did soul searching after they got some roses they got all excited and ordered for others. We knew this would happen and had some extra roses too.

What makes me wonder is, is it that difficult to appreciate somebody? Why are we so hesitating to communicate? What does it take from us to leave our comfort zones and enter a new arena and let the other person know how he or she made you feel nice? They say “enthusiasm is contagious”. Why do people hesitate to cheer somebody for just being what you are. When I went around to see, some desks dint have even a single rose. Is it that “he” or “she” that unpopular or nobody likes them or what could be the reason?

There are again some interesting people around us who said it really dint matter to them they dint get any. And some of them have these “very serious” outlooks that all this is for people in the school and college and not for me. Some walked around looking at peoples’ “jumping around” with angst the way they would look at a cockroach that’s wandering around the kitchen all excited seeing some stale food.

Some may think that its not their “type” to participate or celebrate, while some of them made it a point to make this day special. Be what may, crack open the nutshell that is built around you and break the wall that you have built around yourself and reach out.

The whole idea is about not to miss an opportunity to make a person feel nice. For all we know that is the only thing the person may have needed to smile.