All-nighters & elevator etiquette (correction)

If you know me well, you know that I love my job; what's not to love? I work with great people, serving great clients and I have the privilege of traveling to amazing places.  I'm "all in" here at Deloitte and proud of it.  Could you pass some more green kool-aid? (some more Deloitte humour for you).

I suspect no one would believe me if I said I love my job always; in fact, I wouldn't believe myself. There are sometimes that I'd call, less blissful moments; tonight is going to be one of those moments. As boring as you may perceive the Chartered Accountant profession to be (a misguided perception I can assure you), it requires it's members to continuously stay on top of changes in accounting frameworks and reporting standards through continuous learning.  Ok, okay...that does sound boring ...but let me remind you of the blog that you're reading...I'm doing this seemingly "boring" job from India...so really, how boring can it really be? Okay, back to my point; continuous learning.  Some people seem to love learning, they view required e-learnings and facilitator led sessions as opportunities to grow, develop and further their expertise.  One of my friends at work, Ange, is one of these people.  She absorbs learning like a sponge in a bathtub of water and seems to view it as a game of sort (in my opinion, a game that she reigns supreme in). Ange is one of the smartest people I know and logic would suggest that she is so smart because of the effort she puts into continuous learning.  While I certainly agree with the benefits  and that it's a necessary part of my job, it will continue to sit in the "less blissful" column when I assess my job at Deloitte.

You may be wondering what all this rambling has to do with all-nighters and/or elevator etiquette.  It certainly has nothing to do with elevator etiquette, but unfortunately it is related to all-nighters.  You see, when I was on maternity leave last year with Judsen I missed two days of required training.  We have various levels of training at Deloitte; required, highly recommended, recommended and optional.  This training fell into the required bucket which, in the end, is unfortunate news for me, especially because the make-up session is scheduled for January 8th and 9th from 9am-6pm EST.  I'll do the math for you, that's 8:30pm to 3:30am IST; and that folks, means two all-nighters for Diana Khosla, employee number 121440.  Well, I guess they're not quite all-nighters as I will go to sleep for a couple hours before my darling, chipper, and well-rested children wake me up.  Oh, and did I mention, it's training via video conference...yes...lovely.  Not many people know what I look like at 3:30am and that's how it should stay.

What this does mean is I will be awake during your days on Thursday and Friday so text or email me - I will inconspicuously reply to you as I can:)  I suspect we'll be breaking for "lunch" around midnight...

Elevator etiquette (correction)

You may recall in my posting, Hop on for the ride, that I shared with you some elevator etiquette that I recently learned observed.  I need to make a slight revision to my conclusions.  It turns out, getting on an elevator that is not heading in the direction of your desired destination is only general practice when the elevators are very full.  If, you get on an empty elevator heading in the wrong direction as you intend to go, I believe you are considered confused and likely a visitor.  I can, again, conclude this from experience.  The last couple of times I took the elevator intending to go down, a near empty elevator opened that was going up, so I hopped on very confidently but I noticed that no one else who was waiting to go down followed me.  Strange, I thought and then I experienced that moment of embarrassment that I described experiencing in Canada, when the people on the elevator say, "actually we're going down".  Okay, okay, back up the train, I thought.  This is not something I do except this is what I'm supposed to do while in India; wrong Diana.  There's a minor distinction that I hadn't noticed earlier; hop on for the ride when the elevators are so busy that you'll be waiting forever if you wait for one heading in your direction of choice and with space for you to get on.  On the other hand, if the elevators are not busy, then wait for the elevator you called that is going in the direction of your desired destination.  I will remember this distinction going forward.