Wednesday, June 25, 2008

BUSINESS EXERCISE 26 JUNE 2008






















My dream job……ahem ahem…….a plush office with all modern luxuries and about a 1000 people working under me. But dreams apart today’s business exercise was an exhilarating experience not only because it was a first hand experience at work but also because of the hard that went into finding a job that met our expectations.

So beginning from the beginning I started from the college at 9.30 am sharp and my immediate concern was to find somebody who could give me a lift till Aundh, which was the area assigned to my team for the exercise. I fortunately got a lift within five minutes and a lady in the blue van dropped me at the Aundh road. After some enquiry from there I again took a lift till Parihar chowk to look for work. The moment I got down I started going to all possible shops, restaurants and small offices in need of a job for a day. And then started a series of rejections as most people found the idea of working for a day totally weird and funny. I tried my best to convince them that I had come from a company and this was a part of our project. They, on the other hand, also gave me every possible excuse for not employing me for just a day without any verification. So from IDEA cellular to Vodafone essar, a saree shop to an appliances store and a bakery to computers showroom I just got one answer which was a polite ‘NO’ which was based on some undisclosed parameters.

Within this entire confusion, dejection, rejection and subjection I spotted a small Archie’s franchisee owned by Mr. Ashok Malhotra and registered under the name Kamal & Co. I and my buddy Mohit approached him for a job and to my surprise he agreed immediately. Though he did question us but despite all that he was quite welcoming. The other surprise was that he knew that we were SIMS students, so he knew what he wanted us to do. Within five minutes at about 10.30 am I started working. I started with the dusting of all the shelves for half an hour and then moved on to arranging the greeting cards on the racks. There were two sales girls, Uma & Sangeeta, who helped me, get acquainted with the place and within an hour I was raring to go. After I was done with the cleaning bit I moved on to handling the customers. I took them to different sections like the gifts customers who were irritating at times, which really made me empathize with all the sales people who undergo this ordeal day in and day out.

The shops owner shared his experiences and memories with us like his migration from Pakistan to India, his other business ventures and also about his son who sacrificed his life for the Indian army. He started this gallery in 1999 after his son’s death in 1994 and shut down his other businesses. His anecdotes enthralled me and kept me going. After three and a half hours of work I took a break for lunch at 2 pm. I got a break for 2 hours which was certainly more than my expectation and I did a bit of hitchhiking in and around Aundh.

The gallery reopened at 4 pm and the rush hour of customers began then. From 4 pm to 5.30 pm I attended maximum customers, predominantly women. After that I left the place at about 5.45 pm to go to Senapati Bapat road. Our boss for the day really appreciated my team’s work. I thanked him profusely for his patience and kindness that he showed to the team. My journey back to the college was one of the most memorable commutes of my life. I took a lift in a Qualis car of an mba executive after getting wet in the light drizzle.

After about two such more lifts and a little walk on the road I managed to get to the meeting point on time. Finally after the formalities were done and a few more free trips I got back to the college with extremely fond memories & a lot of stories to tell.

In totality it has was one of the most enriching experiences of my life and as Mr. Kamath may agree= that it had almost all ingredients of a Hindi blockbuster (drama, action. Emotion etc, only a song & dance sequence was missing). It would be an understatement to call it an enjoyable exercise because it was much more than that.

As of now I am really groggy so please excuse my mistakes……..or shall I say ‘ reprimand me for my shortcomings’ ‘coz as they say CEO’s don’t give excuses…….

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