Dânesh Zaki

I was travelling by a call taxi today and was hearing an exchange between the call coordinator sitting in the taxi office and a cab driver on location (not the the one that I was on). It went like this (original conversation was in Tamil):

Call coordinator (female): Number 14, go to 67/3 Burkit Road, Venkat Narayana Rd
Call coordinator (female) repeats the address again
Call coordinator (female): Number 14, please confirm that you have got the address

Cab driver (Number 14) in an irritated tone: Is it Burkit road or Venkat Narayana Rd? Please mention correctly
Call coordinator (male) steps in.
Call coordinator (male): Looks like the customer told near Venkat Narayana Road but the address should be Burkit Road
Cab driver (Number 14): I am standing just outside 66/6 Burkit Road but I am unable to find 67/3

At this point I tuned off and started drawing parallels with the famed Onsite-Offshore model of Indian software companies. I imagined the call coordinator to be the onsite coordinator sending the requirements to the cab driver whom I thought was akin to an offshore team member. Having worked at both ends of the model in the software industry, I was able to understand the confusion that prevailed. Both sides had their reasons for not being able to move on with the task. But I was glad that I was not part of the confusion as is the case usually :)