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Kripa Raman

Mumbai , Sept. 19

PLENTIFUL are the stories of mobile phone services making working lives easier for fishermen, carpenters, taxi-drivers and travelling salesmen across the country; but for several corporate executives the ghost of their offices chases them right into their homes and intrudes into their holidays making them feel, as one of them put it "like 24-hour bonded slaves, at the beck and command of our seniors."

He says his boss calls him up every day at around 7.30 a.m. when he has just about woken up to the day, pointing out what a rival company has managed that he has not.

In the early years of the mobile, it was a matter or pride for a young executive to whip out his whining mobile and talk grave corporate matters into it in front of his family and friends. It would make him feel very busy and very important.

"Now, it has become a downright nuisance," says the business development and marketing head of a medium-sized but aggressive telecom networking services provider. "My Managing Director feels he can call me up any time anywhere for the pettiest of clarifications. And my clients too call me up even at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. if something goes wrong. We have our service people who are onsite, taking care of the situation, but since I am the person whom the client had negotiated with; he feels satisfied only if he is able to talk to me."

Earlier the client would have waited till the office opening hours to talk, he says. "But now that he can get me, he must."

Till May this year, this scourge affected only senior executives. Junior executives whose mobile bills were not reimbursed by their companies would often not part with their mobile telephone numbers.

But after May, the incoming-calls-free dispensation destroyed their peace as well. "Now, promoters can harass their directors who harass their senior executives who in turn harass their junior executives. Everyone is working for the company round the clock."

The liberty to move about since one would be accessible anyway on the mobile is far outweighed by the disadvantage of not being able to refuse a call.

"Increasingly, it is becoming a crime not to answer calls from your office to your mobile. If you keep doing it, many offices tell you that you can just leave the company;" says a middle-level executive with one of the Tata group telecom companies citing his observations of mobile usage behaviour.

Earlier, office calls to the home could be kept at bay by family members; if the message left was of an urgent nature the executive could always return the call; if it was not urgent then, well, "he is not at home till a long time later."

With the mobile, firstly, the instrument follows the target person everywhere. It is answered by the target person who can clearly see that his boss is calling and cannot ignore the call. "Even if I choose not to answer the phone, I would have to return the call soon. And, even if the boss has left a non-urgent message, there is no way I cannot return the call since my phone is with me. Once I return the call, my head is in the lion's mouth again," says the head of corporate affairs with a well-known company.

The only manoeuvring possible to the executive is that he can lie about where he is since, with the mobile, he could be anywhere, "even in Africa in the middle of the Savannahs." But again, this cannot be done too often.

This aspect of mobile usage is partly due to the corporate culture in Asia, said a Gartner executive on the sidelines of the Garter Summit here this year.

"Pardon me for saying so, but juniors are still a little servile and supplicating towards their seniors in Asia; they continue to feel this way even outside the office situation."

In the West he says, it is much less so, it being considered a terrible social impropriety to bother a person during his personal time.

The other reason, he says, is to do with the injudicious and immature use of the mobile.

"A mobile is for use when you are mobile, when you are in the car, in transit and when you are at a place where people have no other numbers to locate you. It is actually meant to be switched off once you are at home or in office. You collect the missed calls later and return them."

He says he is frequently surprised to see Asians have lengthy conversations on their mobiles, sitting right in their offices or homes, very next to their landlines.

Mobile service providers here are, however, happy with this immature use of their services, and say that many executives are increasingly using two mobiles, one for office purposes which they switch off while at home or on holidays, and the other for personal purposes so that people whom they choose can still be in touch with them.

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