The Bore identity

It’s quite a paradox that I am writing what I am writing but then everything or rather everyone has some anomalies about themselves.

The question to be asked or rather answered is “What is the identification factor for IT professionals?” … reduced sleep, lazy habits, no physical exercise, loss of sight, headache, chain smoking, boozehounds… the list is endless but then what about the professional appearance?

Doctors have their own identifications, so do nurses and scientists and site engineers and shop floor workers and lawyers and military and sportsmen and why even journalists. But we … either crazy t-shits and jeans or formal shirts and pants … either way we look like backyard pop stars or door-to-door sales people. The “formal clothing” is much generalized and therefore cannot be specifically attributed to any profession.

This is quite debatable in the context of what business men, shop keepers, bank employees, architects etc. have as their “identification factor” but then I think I am digressing. This is an altogether different view and I am not bringing that here. Let’s get back to IT…

But on the flip side, everyone identified with a specific dress, use it for a specific purpose. Doctors don’t wear their coats for no reason, engineers don’t wear helmets just because they like them, sportsmen don’t wear shoes just because someone is sponsoring them, and the military don’t wear bullet proofs and carry guns just to play hide-and-kill.

But the purposes of an IT professional… well for me … dark heavy Nimbostratus clouds are looming over my head. There have been numerous articles and writing on what the present-day IT outlook is esp. in India. Someone once attributed us as “Merely roadside mechanics” and not innovators or creators, which I would say is almost right (almost because there’s always something invented in everything, it need not be material).

So what do we carry about as “our identification”? Desktops are too heavy, laptops are expensive, cell phones are too common, music players are considered “un-professional” and well… everything seems to be associated with something else or considered inappropriate. Finally, what do we do … wear ID tags which are supposedly considered to be in vogue with the flourishing of the IT sector just that we fail to realize pets and farm animals used them from time immemorial and today everyone from taxi drivers to school children wear tags.

Ultimately, let me just be myself and say “Big deal!” as Jean Paul Gaultier quotes “It's always the badly dressed people who are the most interesting.”