Bring Your Own Wine

India is such a diverse country with a rich culture that changes from North to South. If yesterday, I had the pleasure to enjoy the intriguing towel meeting culture of the State of Bihar, today I have discovered the Bring Your Own tradition of Delhi meetings.

By Bring your Own, I am not referring to that odd Australian tradition of Bring Your Own Wine to restaurants, which basically consist on being rude to restaurant owner by telling them: your wine list sucks. 

By the way, I am surprised that Australians haven’t adopted also the “bring your own expresso” thing at restaurants, considering how snobby Aussies are with coffee in recent years. I guess adopting coffee as their drink has a lot do do with their rebellious attitude towards the former British rule. 

Indians on the contrary, have been, as expected, more true to their gentle nature and stick to tea . And since they are stuck with it, they have made another lovely Indian meeting tradition out of it. 

This is a very motherly one, meaning that it doesn’t matter what you order you will get whatever they want. Today I order black coffee no sugar,  and got a lovely sugary tea instead. Always Tea, God save the Queen. Must be for my own good as my Mum always says.

But lets go back to the subject of these post. In the surprising "Bring Your Own" Meetings, you are supposed to bring your own chair. 

It is a kind of a twisted version of the musical chairs kids game. When you arrive to the meeting room, only the table is there, so you need to rush to steal whatever can be used as a chair in the building. The last person who cant find an available chair looses the game and therefore the contract. 

You may wonder, what does the people in the office you have stolen your chair from,  do meanwhile. That, Nobody has been able to  clarify to me yet. If there are constant meetings it will be hard for them to have a productive day. 

Please don’t get me wrong, it is actually fun that they are so thoughtful to prepare those games to help you pass the time, while you are waiting for the meeting to start. Another popular game is hide and seek, where your host magically disappears just when you arrive, and people tells you that he is in another meeting to trick you and make it more fun, but you actually know there is no other meetings as people are seating in their own chairs.

A business tip, please allow sufficient time between meetings to play this games. Today, hide and seek lasted for 45 mins

Meeting time shifting is also very popular game in my own county, Spain. But again Spanish people have made an art on confusing people’s timetables. 

Some say bullfighting is torture but making our visitors starve and get jet lagged by arranging dinner after 10 pm doesn’t fall behind. I still remember my years in Madrid when desperate tourists used to approach me begging me to recommended a restaurant opened at 8 pm. They were hilarious. At 8 pm Spanish people are still in the office entertaining the 4 pm meeting guest while waiting for your manager that is still in the after lunch drinks. The algorithm says that the meeting delay is directly proportional to the number of bottles of wine the Manager has had for lunch.

So lessons learnt if you go for a meeting in India bring your coffee ( and a foldable chair just in case) and if you summoned for an afternoon meeting in Spain do like the Aussies, and bring my own wine. At least you will be in the same good mood as the Manager when he decides to show up.