Officially unofficial !!!!!!!!!

Last night, a discussion about "Ways to converse" in Corporate circles popped up as I was chatting with My roomies and believe me, It was such an intense argument that each of us shared our frustration about the Medium of communication in corporate circles. I didn't have much to say on this because I was totally alien to the the kind of experiences that My roomies were sharing last night.

The discussion kicked off when We discussing about the prospects of one other Guy joining us in our house. That he was a malyali, made one of my roomies feel that he might feel alienated in a house where all of us speak Tamil. I raised a counter argument suggesting that it might not be a problem as all of us were courteous enough to converse in English if at all we have someone who does not understand the language amongst us.

This immediately prompted one of roomies to go blah blah over his experiences off late with a few of his team guys who were just not sensible enough to converse in English when he was amongst them.
[None apart from me knows Hindi in my House]
He was so emotionally conveying how much he had come to detest this senseless approach of a few guys around him. That they had conversed in Hindi even in team meetings was the height of ignorance. It was then that my other roomies also started echoing their views on this. I for some reason had never had a problem while conversing with my team guys. I feel Hindi has allowed me to get more close with the guys around, but it's fine until it's inside those demarcations that make a cube, provided every1 in the cube understands the language. I was shocked to hear from one other roomie that he was time and again being spoken to in Hindi, by people onsite in his team, irrespective of his conveying that he did not follow the language.
I was prompted to think that Hindi was being used as a cover up by people, who had started finding solace in Hindi, to hide their shortcomings in conversing in English. For all the emphasis and trumpet blowing that software companies do about the significance of English speaking skills, they were not managing to achieve that at all. These incidents are standing examples for this.
There have also been incidents where people get so used to conversing just in Hindi that they end up using one too many Hindi words while talking to the Client. That indeed sends a bad signal about the individual, the company and the future of that project's continuation in the company is at stake . It might seem a silly issue, but I guess it is of extreme significance in a world where one slip can cause a huge pit fall.
So much fuss is made about Interpersonal skills, cross cultural skills and wat not during the entire course of one's stint in a software company. All for nothing?? I guess not many have learnt their lessons !!!!!!!!!! It's high time that companies had a serious rethink over this issue and bring about certain measures that will curb people from being unofficial in official circles :-)