Thank you for choosing ABC Internet services. My name is Frank may I please have your DSL telephone number so I may access your account.
That was Frank. Nop, not any Frank Sinatra, but the pseudo name under which I worked in my first job. It wasn’t one night at call centre but 6 months in a call centre. The job had it pit falls, but I enjoyed it thanks to my wonderful team and once in a while hilariously moronic callers. The best buddy in my team was a guy called Ramanathan. He was more popularly known as “OK Ramanathan”. That’s because during our training sessions someone told him that Americans like and use the words OK. That was it; Ramanathan used OK as a question, adjective, verb and every other form available n English language. Illustrating that with a sample call.
“Yes you have got the installation disk ok. Now insert it in the drive ok. No no not the floppy drive the CD drive ok..now u have a dialog box appearing with 2 buttons ok button and cancel button ok. Now press the ok button ok”
By this time the whole floor of 70 odd will be rolling with laughter. Ramanathan was this small town boy..very sweet, innocent and naïve. He used to trust everything I say. Take this for example...
It was our first team meeting and the lead asked us in to introduce ourselves with our eating, drinking habits. One of our teammates stood up and introduced himself as a teetotaler. Poor Ramanathan had no idea about what the term teetotaler meant and as luck would have had it, turned around and asked me what it was. And I being the most chronic liar around kept a straight face and defined it as someone who drinks only tea. It was another story that Ramanathan found that teetotaler teammate drinking filter coffee in cafeteria and had a small argument after which both thought the other one was the biggest jerk in the team. I loved team building you see.
Most importantly - I and Ramanathan where partners in crime. We used to search for job and attend interviews together. One fine day I saw a newspaper ad calling for “young fresh graduates”, salary may reach up to 50,000. I was totally into it. Took the paper cutting and when to work the next night[err...or was it morning..I was in the 1 AM to 10 AM shift, so it was pretty confusing]. Ran to the floor n screamed out Ramanathan’s name…by mistake screamed out his pseudo name…which was harry…so there I had some 20 Harry’s standing up and asking “hey dude wassup”. Then caught hold of 'Ok' Harry and in the pantry showed him our passport to paradise…at once we went to a dream land ..what we can do with 50k, though now I realize that we cant do much with a salary of 50k+ .
The next morning sacrificing our sleep we went to the interview of this dream job…we had a tough time finding the office. Finally the office or the bungalow, which had the office, was found in a less inhabited part of annanagar. The bungalow was an eerie looking one right out of the ramsay brother movies. We hesitated for a second but then we were determined that even if its going to be the secretary of count Dracula we are gonna take it up. It’s a matter of 50 thousand. And anyway every MNC sucks our blood.
As we entered the bungalow we noticed that there were cardboard cartons lying all around the premises. In what looked like a reception with some dusty sofas there was this man in formals and tie. He gave us a suspicious look and welcomed us in. We showed him the paper cutting and said we wanted to meet the HR of the company. He made us sit on those dusty sofas and went in to call someone.
We both were thinking about the HR of this booth bungalow and also imagining what we can do with the 50k per month. I had almost slept off when out of the blue a very beautiful lady came and stood there. No...beautiful is not the word to describe her she was simply stunning and for a second looked like one of those Ravi Varma’s painting had come alive…She wore a light blue business suit with huge ear rings and I had doubts if this is some mohini from the booth bungalow… But she had legs …and what do we say sinfully beautiful,would have suited her the best.I was totally smitten and dumbstuck by her beauty and grace. She came towards us and introduced herself. She was anupama..anu..I tried my best to speak to her but didn’t know why all my attempts to talk only ended with release of air from my larynx.
Ramanathan had to elbow me very hard and bring me back to normalcy. She was the head of that place and took us to her room. The room was to say the best in that haunted house. It had good furniture and was airconditoned, she asked a few questions about us for which I stuttered, stammered and finally answered. For the next 15mins she was speaking…ot that’s what I thought she did because her lips were moving. I was lost in my world of trance looking at her and dancing to some bollywood number in swiss with her…What was that..yeah something from Jodi no:1 I was a chronic Govinda fan then.
My dream sequence was abruptly cut due to a telephone call she received. Once she went out of the room there was a barrage of thrashings from Ramanathan’s resume file. He made me realize that the lady was speaking about ‘job’ but never mentioned what it was all about. That stuck me, I stood up went out the room [BGM: Maddy..maddy..] and when I was just about to demand her the nature of job..she turned around..and gave that beautiful smile…and the dynamite which was ready to blast got drenched in a bucket of water. Spoke about the beautiful office and its antique value for 10mins without bothering the glares of my dear pal Harry.
Later on annnuuu asked us to shift the cardboard boxes into a cab, now I came back to my senses, imagined if that was the job. So collected all my guts, closed my eyes and asked her what was the nature of this job. She said me it will be explained as we go in the cab. Ramanathan and me shifted some 10 cardboard boxes and then sat into the cab. The cab journey was awesome..imagine an old battered ambassador on a rickety road and me sitting next to the girl who looks like a painting ..well... was one of those unforgettable bumpy rides.. .then she explained the job’s merits..like how it can pay us 50k and at times people make 2-3lacs out of it. Finally our halt came in a small juice shop.
She requested us to get the boxes down and open them…Lo!! There lay our job..blocks and blocks of………. books. Yes it was Britannica encyclopedia. We sell it all around Chennai city and we would get Rs.1000 for every book sold..and selling 50 books per month in Chennai you know is a very simple task. Ramanathan was almost in tears now and me well dunno how to explain.. ‘Ginger eaten monkey’ would be the best way to explain. We delivered those boxes to some representatives in ties there and started back.
On the return journey I explained my dream girl about how impossible it is for techies like us to take that ‘marketing’ job. Not a one to give up she gave an example of her cousin who dumped his BE and now earns 3 lakhs per month. Also informed about the marketing training course which they will provide us for handling the job. I was thinking about the training in middle of nungambakkam high road and then in residential flats…imagine me selling the book in one of my ex’s house…or worst case imagine my mom closing the door on my face…gosh!! Pretty scary I say. Told her I will get back and got her mobile number…made sure I added it to the filtered numbers list as soon and then bid a goodbye with heavy heart.
Well at times I wish what if I had taken that job, but then life is all about choices and my dear friend Ramanathan chose never ever to attend an interview along with me.
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