Happy New Ear

The doctor’s office called me last Friday about scheduling my annual medical check up. I don’t like it when they do that. I must be on some kind of telemarketeer’s list. They seem to know everything. When you need a new magazine that could change your life. Or when it is your “last chance” to donate twenty bucks to some obscure charity. But asking someone to call me and remind me to go for my annual medical check up was scary.

Last year I got it done because my colleagues told me that it was too good a Benefit to give up.

Only after I had gone through a thorough intrusion of my privacy did I realize that my friends were referring to the ‘day off from work’ as the benefit and not the medical exam.

As an ex-HR person I know how much the companies spend on this shit. And how many of them will be discreetly tracking the hit rate with bated breath. I mean every little HR policy has a hit rate. They (in HR) need to know how many employees are “utilizing the gesture of magnanimity” shown by the company. That’s what they get their annual increments on.

That my visit to the company’s doctor will impact somebody’s list of achievements is indeed a heart warming gesture. It also puts me under pressure to help out my friend. He needs an increment desperately. HR people are always under pressure to produce “an innovative Benefits program”. Getting a medical check up done may not be one of them but putting the fear of God in the employee through the program is certainly innovative.

I was told by my friend in no uncertain terms that I HAVE to go in for my annual check up by Tuesday at 9am. Today is Monday night. I do not want to get humiliated again. But heck, who wants to have enemies in HR? You can’t have friends there either – if that’s of any consolation. I opted for an easy way out. I will opt for a part check up.

The first stop last year was at the weighing scale. Any efforts at looking slim by pulling in my paunch were futile. I had been asked to wear what appeared to be a guy’s version of a bikini and asked to lump my entire mass of flab on the scale. “Bahut lard pyar se banaya hai mujhe” I tried to explain. The nurse just looked at the reading and stared at me in disbelief. I secretly prayed that no one from my department would see me in this vulnerable state.

Next stop – the vision thing. Now listen, I do a whole lot of those workshops on that stuff. But this is different. A stern looking gent took me off in to a dark room to … check my vison… in a dark room? Doesn’t take genius to tell you that no one can see in the dark. And now they will crib if I can’t read all the stuff in that poorly illuminated room. I could hear someone reading off that eye-chart. E L T H … X S C… no thats V Q P… He repeated it with the same painstaking effort presumably with the other eye shut this time. That helped. I knew the chart by heart and recited it. My vision was certified to be good enough “for a pilot’s license”. That should explain why some of them crash the planes. An alternative career?

The final visit was to the Ear Department. I was put inside a soundproof booth – yeah and now you want to check my hearing, right… in a soundproof booth??? He gave me a set of headphones and spoke into a microphone attached to his white lab coat. There was a glass window in my suffocatingly small booth. I watched him take a position of authority behind a desk at the far end of the room. He explained the rules of the game in an accent that was from Star Trek.

“I am going to sit here and press this lever. The moment you hear a sound, tap on the glass.”

“Question! What happens if you have hearing problem and can’t hear the tap? Is this a test of my hearing or yours?”

He ignored my query. A minute later it struck me that I was in a sound proof booth. The guy was already tapping the lever and making strange sounds. Some of these were particularly high pitched. I kept tapping the window obediently. The look on that guy’s face kept getting quizzical and he kept turning up a dial and tapping the lever of his contraption. I was getting tired of imagining listening to the shrill beeps. I wanted to be let out. I tapped on the window to attract attention but the guy was looking at some reading on the dial and fiddling with the tapping thing. I had to attract his attention. I was banging on the glass window. Finally the jerk heard me. He came to open the door of the booth to let me out.

“How did I do?”
“The last 3 beeps were at frequencies only heard by canines. You were able to hear them. Amazing!”

I need a different Benefits programme.

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