Quirky corporate characters
All the characters and events in this book have been inspired by people and interactions at real workplaces, though exaggerations have been made for humorous effect. The opinions expressed are solely the author’s and arise from her extreme bias and prejudice towards corporates quirky personality. The author’s own workplace, however, is exceptional. She has the best co-workers on the planet!" reads the disclaimer at the beginning of Disha Chhabra’s book Corporate Avatars. A self-help guide to navigating your way through any corporate workplace, the book brings the best of business and humour together.
As an IIM alumnus, Disha has worked with corporate giants like Paytm.com, Yatra.com, and is currently a senior leader with Amazon India. The book is packed with her experiences with co-workers and employers during her own decade long career. In it, she mentions over 50 unique personalities we are bound to come across in the course of our professional lives. Her witty one-liners and tongue-in-cheek humour make this book an entertaining read. She view’s everyday workplace issues through the prism of humour, to be able to deal with them in an effective way. The book is filled with instances of problems faced by workers in any organisation and smart ways to tackle them. It rids misconceptions, addresses fears, and provides practical tips to get out of almost all sticky situations at work.
Whether it is a workaholic boss or a free-rider teammate, a lazy co-worker or a micromanaging team leader, Corporate Avatars decodes all these quirky personality types. Each one of them is presented with a short story describing their workplace quirks, with tips on how to manoeuvre your way around them.
Cheekily, Disha gives these avatars names like Mr Rondu, Mr Gadhaa Prasad, and Mr Aalsi Lal, which make these characters quite relatable to the reader. Apart from this, her descriptions of these colourful personalities will help you identify your own self at the workplace. It can be quite difficult to understand one’s own negative quirks, like negative interactions, constant sulking and free riding, especially in the workplace. These seemingly insignificant traits can cause problems with colleagues.
The book is a revelation for not only seasoned professionals but also for freshers who can use Disha’s learnings and observations to understand the nuances of any professional environment. Filled with experiential advice, the book is vital to understanding the corporate structure in any organisation. The idiosyncrasies of bosses and colleagues mentioned in the book can be easily witnessed in daily life. Keeping these in mind, the book tackles serious issues like workaholism and office politics that trouble each and every one of us.
A humorous take on day-to-day professional life, Corporate Avatars is a genius attempt at spreading positivity by highlighting and solving almost all workplace-related problems. A must read for every office-goer.
-Muskaan Sharma