A few days after the branch manager informed me about the visit of the Deputy Managing Director and the
Circulation Manager to the branch office, they came to the dispatch section one day along with the branch
manager. I had already met the Circulation Manger a few times, and after the
formal greetings, they went into the press to have a look at the working of the new printing press and then
came into the dispatch section and observed the work in the dispatch section.
After observing the smooth and efficient work of the new printing machine, if one
comes to the dispatch section, it would be a picture of perfect contrast with
papers strewn all over near the conveyor.
Of course, they
could not scold me for the mess that they were witnessing as they knew the
reasons very well. In fact, I was very skeptical of the visit if they thought that they could make a decision about the increase in the strength of dispatch workers only
after observing the work.
Even though the
speed of the machine was around 40,000 copies per hour, so far, they had been
running it at around 25,000 to 30,000 copies per hour. Still, this was nearly
two times the speed of the previous machine. But on that day, they were running
the machine at the maximum possible speed to display their department’s skill
and expertise to the Deputy Managing
Director, and it had been almost two months since the commissioning of the
machine and they had full control of its function, which advantage they had used
to the maximum extent possible.
In the presence of
top management of the company, people in one department would like to show off their
efficiency, and at the same time try to expose the deficiency in the work of
other departments if possible to emphasize the importance of their department
in the overall functioning of the company. This is natural for men in every
profession. Based on that idea, the press people ran the press at the maximum
speed, and the dispatch workers could not handle such work, and there was a
heap of around 1000 copies strewn around the conveyor haphazardly when the printing
of the Kerala edition was over. These
copies must be stacked, counted in 25s, and sent to labeling and then packing
and dispatch. Out of total six transports
for Kerala, only two had left at this time, while normally four transports would
have left after loading the parcels at the end of printing of Kerala edition.
After the printing
of the Kerala edition was over, the press people came out and asked me (much
more loudly than usual) whether the copies were enough for me and whether they
can start the printing of the Tamil Nadu edition. This was to show to the top
management that their department was doing their part of work fine and that the
other department was lacking in their work.
The Circulation Manger asked me, “Nandagopal,
what is happening?” I informed him about the present strength of 17 (or 19)
workers in the dispatch section was not enough to handle such a huge increase
in the work and that I needed at least six workers more to manage the increased
work due to the installation of the new machine.
As if offering as a solution to the problem, he
asked me just to count the copies and stack them in 25s first and clear the
table for stacking the Tamil Nadu edition copies and give okay to the press. He
then asked me how long it will take to finish this work, and I informed him
that 10 minutes would be enough for this. He told the press people to start
printing the Tamil Nadu edition after 10 minutes, and he asked me to finish the
packing and dispatch work of Kerala edition while the printing of the Tamil
Nadu goes on. After this, he went to the Managing Director, and they talked for
a while, and they left the press as if they had come here and solved a problem
in one of their department! Nothing more was said about the increase in the
strength of the dispatch workers.
What he told me was
what we had been doing since commissioning of the new machine. Only this time,
as the press people ran the press at a higher speed than they usually do, there
was a delay of more than 10 to 15 minutes in finishing the work of Kerala
edition packing and dispatch as we had been doing since the commissioning of
the new press. I expected him to make a
decision then and there to increase the strength of the dispatch workers, but
he did not do that.
After a few days,
the increase in the strength of the dispatch workers was sanctioned and I was
very disappointed about the way in which the management of the company handled
this issue.
After this incident, the admiration and respect I had for The Hindu had fallen to a
very low level. I had been a reader of The Hindu since my college days from
1973 because I have always considered The Hindu as the best newspaper in India.
It has set up a very high standard in Journalism in its more than 100 years of
its history. But I did not expect such an objectionable level of management
practices from this company. Of course, one cannot expect everyone working in a
company living up to its high standards, but I did not expect the top
management of the company passively accepting such attitudes from its mangers
and encouraging them in such management activities.
In this context, I had also made a suggestion to the branch manager for improving the efficiency of the working of the dispatch section.
If the press is run at its maximum capacity, as it was done
during the visit of the top management of the company, and if the company
wanted to use the new machine to its maximum potential, even increasing the
workers to more than 23 (or at a maximum 25) would not make a sound business
sense because more space would be needed for the dispatch work and there was
not much space in the premises in which the press was situated then. In this
context, I suggested the idea of machine packing of parcels of 100 copies and
the rest by manual packing.
The complete packing by machine was not that much
easier because there were a large number of parcels of copies of 3, 4, 5 and
also parcels between 10 and 20 were also large in number. This would make complete automation an
arduous or almost an impossible task. But if packing a few parcels of 100
copies for Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and city editions was done by machine, it
would reduce to a great extent the work of collecting and stacking the copies from
the conveyor and packing those parcels. It would also help me to run the
dispatch work with just 21 workers and also help me to send the transports much
more quickly than with 23 people working in the dispatch section.
When I suggested
this to the branch manager, he immediately rejected the proposal saying that
the head office would not accept it. He even did not take the trouble of
suggesting the proposal to the head office and take a chance of finding whether
the head office would accept this. I realized at that time suggesting any idea
for improving the work in the dispatch section to him would be useless.
In my future posts,
I will write more about the manager and his handling of the dispatch work and
my struggle for a news agency for The Hindu.
