30 year olds in the 3rd grade

I learned something today about Bangladeshi culture. It does not matter how old you are, apparently you can still receive lectures that make you feel like you are in the 3rd grade. Today, I witnessed my potential ‘hires’ for the survey seriously dressed down for 20 minutes about the virtues of timeliness. Only 5 of them were late. So why did the rest have to suffer? And why did the late ones have to stand up and be publicly shamed? Apparently, this is the way to start off a training program, build morale and other good management techniques. Mind you, most of these guys have masters’ degrees, and we are all about the same age.

It was, needless to say, a little awkward to stand up and introduce myself after that ‘introduction’ to the project. I was certainly amused to hear that my introduction was: “This is Nurali Sha-ha. She looks like us, but she is not Bangladeshi. She is from America, but her mother and father are from India. But she was born in America. She does not speak Bangla, but she can understand it. She is here for her PhD research.” Clearly, the order of operations is important.

Several more times during the day, being on time was emphasized. The first tea break was 30 minutes. Anyone who was late was noted down. After the tea, we talked about how you can’t treat people from the villages like hicks and talk down to them. You must address them as apna, not tumi.

Is this something that has to be taught? Amazing. The things that did not get a lot of space in my training protocol. But when in Dhaka, …

Oh. But the best moment occurred when we started to talk about the consent form. The trainer asked these men, randomly, to stand up and start reading out loud. When we got to the third sentence, a man was called on who had worked for them before, so he was pretty confident he was going to be hired as a supervisor. But, he was not paying attention, so he started reading in the wrong place. Not good. I mean – I was scared. No one was allowed to help him find his place. He had to stand there and sweat for a while…(and 30 Bangladeshi, no deodorant wearing men in 1 room…sweat…ugh!) I’m not sure what happened to him after that, but he did not show up for the final session of the day.

It is no wonder that we have to worry that instead of actually conducting interviews, people may sit under a tree or in a tea shop and fill out the surveys. They are too scared of getting actual data, which might contain uncertainties!

Perhaps you already know all of this. But to my new @$$, it was a lesson. All I can say is – it is a good thing that in this country, one is not worried about such things as equal opportunity hiring, wrongful dismissal and unemployment compensation. 