A classic and familiar office tale: Meet VP (Vice President) Mojnu. Mojnu bhai, known for his “strict leadership,” has one peculiar habit: never making eye contact.
Let’s begin this serious discussion with two extremely serious incidents, both tragic in their own way. A Sardarjee, celebrating his 25th wedding anniversary, took his highly educated and poetic wife to a posh candlelight dinner.
Eid-ul-Azha was meant to be a lesson in sacrifice, empathy, generosity, and humility. But in our version, it often turns into a festival of flexing, where the size of your cow somehow reflects your spirituality, and the price tag gets more attention than the prayer.
One reason we remain stuck in the slow lane of progress is painfully simple: in Bangladesh, the individual trumps the institution, and the institution trumps the nation.
Meet Imran Bhai. His last vacation was during the 2018 hartal. He thinks “OOO” means “Only On Outlook,” not “Out of Office.” His hobbies include forwarding work emails to himself at 2:00 AM and replying to “Happy Birthday” messages with a Gantt chart. Imran Bhai isn’t alone; he is the unofficial president of Bangladesh’s ever-growing workaholic club.
There is a special breed of professionals in every Bangladeshi office, those who seem to know everything from quantum physics to kebab recipes. They speak with such confidence that even Google starts to doubt itself. But here is the twist: a new study by Stav Atir, Emily Rosenzweig, and David Dunning reveals that the more of an expert you are, the more likely you are to claim knowledge of things that don’t actually exist. Welcome to the glamorous world of overclaiming with “I know it all syndrome” or as we like to call it in Dhaka boardrooms, “Bhai, I already have the idea!”
If you place a frog in cold water and gradually heat it, the frog won’t react; it just adjusts, thinking “I can handle this”. But as the temperature keeps rising, it reaches a point where the frog realises it must escape. Sadly, by then, it’s too weak to jump. It didn’t die from the heat; it died from not acting in time. That’s the “Boiling Frog Syndrome”.
Over a sundowner near the Sundarbans, “Nabila Apa” mocked her nephew’s AI-equipped drone for wildlife surveying, insisting her binoculars and field notes were unbeatable. By dusk, the drone had mapped three islands; Nabila Apa was still zooming in on a single kingfisher. Moral of the story: whether tracking tigers or deer, embracing AI beats binoculars every time.
In our days, one landline served the entire moholla – and half the neighbourhood aunties answered your calls before your parents did. If you misbehaved, Amma’s flying chappal had GPS-guided accuracy – one silent glare, one clean hit. Eid was pure magic: a new panjabi, some Tk 10 Eidi, and rooftop laughter with cousins till midnight. Fast forward to today, where kids have personal phones, fear screen-time limits more than chappals, and won’t call it Eid unless there’s a new outfit, a viral reel, and at least 500 likes before lunch.
In a small Bangladeshi town, a politician sought advice from his lawyer friend after making a questionable move.
Molla Nasiruddin took his donkey to the roof, but it refused to come down. Despite his efforts, the stubborn donkey resisted, kicking relentlessly.
Consumers worldwide notice that companies often use sneaky tricks to boost profits at the customers’ expense.
How common is it in our daily life when a teacher or boss sets a deadline, and we all think, “Oh, I’ll start in ten days!” Suddenly, time shrinks, and it’s panic mode: emergency declared, day-and-night sprints commence, and the assignment emerges from chaos.
Is procrastination just a well-choreographed dance with time?
Move over nine-to-five office hours! In Bangladesh, where traffic jams are our unofficial “overtime”, the idea of a 90-hour workweek sounds like a plot twist in a Dhallywood movie.
Thinking about building your dream home in a prominent real estate compound? Brace yourself for a mountain of rules that, surprise, primarily benefit the authority.
During a job interview, Hassan, an MBA graduate, confidently highlighted his unique strengths as being his versatile skills and strategic thinking. However, when asked about specific skills like coding, data analytics, or AI, he conceded that he had not mastered any.
In Bangladesh, human resources (HR) often feel like driving a car without an engine—lots of noise, no progress. By 2030, 39 percent of core job skills will be obsolete, yet we’re stuck debating Excel training. Heads of HR, treated as attendance monitors, lack the tools to tackle this shift. Automation looms, poised to replace jobs faster than Dhaka traffic consumes patience. Without urgent reskilling, our demographic dividend risks becoming a liability. With machines learning faster than humans, the future won’t wait for us to catch up over endless cups of cha. It’s time to act before it’s too late.
