Mental toughness..

If you have been around in Bangalore, the easiest way to get around (in theory at least) is the auto (short for auto rickshaws). And these are driven by auto-rickshaw-drivers who are an amazing set of entities by themselves. Any discussion about autos and their impact on Bangalore elicits heated discussions (both locally and abroad among folks from Bangalore), more often than not, it borders on negativity (and accusation on how they have really screwed up the Bangalore traffic).

But, instead, there are some amazing positive things which I have observed :-). To list a few :

• Customer is the king - Sometime, if the driver for some reason likes you and is nice to you, he is willing to go that extra route to make you happy. For example, the other day, my rick-driver made a turn which I quickly disputed. Since he was in a happy mood, he literally in a spur of a moment, turned his auto around 180 degrees and inspite of the traffic behind, got me back to where I wanted to turn. A'int that amazing, he was willing to break all rules for the sake of a customer.
• Asking for a raise - How often have almost all of us walked back from our regular meetings with our managers/HR-folks/recruiters and cursed ourselves that we should have asked for more money or a pay raise. If there is one thing I like about auto-drivers and want to apply this in my corporate job, it would be the willingness to be bold and ask for more :-). I have had instances when the drivers would ask for around 15-20% more, just on the whim - when you ask for a reason, they would either provide something sane/rational, sometimes they would say they are just trying, some would laugh it off.
• Team-work - They are a very closely knit breed. If you find a cluster of drivers in the same location and if you ask one of them if they are willing to take you to your destination, if the first one refuses, the chances are that the rest of the drivers in the cluster would also refuse. In you happen to get into a conflict with a rick-driver, you are actually taking on their community. They work on telepathy and they trust their mates intuition - which is something I would love to see more in workplaces. More often than not, in the normal work-space, people are trying to step on each other.
• Don't disturb me - How many times have we been nice to people we really didn't care about or wished that we could be nastier just for the heck of it. More I see these rick-drivers, the more inspired I'm. There are instances, when for example, I'm trying to communicate with a driver on where I want to go, either they don't care about what I said, or they just don't want to be disturbed. It might seem offensive at first, but what the hell, he owns the auto and he can drive where he wants to, after all I'm just putting in a request (and I should be happy if he chooses to agree with my request). This is something I really want to apply in my real life when i want to deal with people I really dont like.

"Auto-Rickshaws make my life better everyday" - Enough said :-)