NAMASTE

Since it wouldnt be proper to name the company that hired me and my boss, would just go by initials!
Well so here it goes... From a media company, i moved to an FMCG company thinking of the great experience i will get working in the famed FMCG industry. The first great experience was my own boss.
He loved the idea of getting others to work and then telling his boss how difficult it was for him to get his team of people to work and not only that, how he had to ensure that the other departments worked properly as well!
And on top of that he had this great knack of picking his nose, taking stuff out of his nose, making small balls of it and then pasting it here and there, under the table, on the sides of the chair he would sit on or wherever else he fancied at that particular moment. This activity was an interesting pastime for him so any time you go to his cabin, he would usually be doing this since at other times he was busy making sure every other person worked in the company.
The icing on the cake, post picking his nose, which was just about all the time, he loved shaking hands with people. It is thanks to the Indian way of salutation, NAMASTE (folded hands and no handshake required) that i managed to get away with this for more than a year that i worked there!
God bless the ancestors who devised this noble way of salutations. I am sure they too must have experienced a king or a boss of this kind which led to this novel way of salutations since just about every where else in the world while wishing one another, we do end up touching each other someway or the other.
Once he actually picked his nose, rolled the balls and with a flick of his finger let them off in the conference room to immediately thereafter proceed to shake hands with our ad agency guys who had come over for a meeting. They of course had no choice but to shake hands as any thing else would have been quite rude but wonder how many times they would have washed their hands thereafter!
God bless every one who comes in touch with bosses like this one.

Life begins, officially!

Well, well.
My first day in office! Having been shortlisted to work for a PR firm in India, i was quite excited since while passing through the MBA phase i had always wanted to get into advertising / PR and here i was working for a highly rated PR firm in India!
Here i come and the first thing i am told is to get into newspapers and magazines. I am thrilled. Imagine being paid to go through magazines and newspapers the whole day! Before 11 a.m., however, i realize that it is not about reading the stuff...its simply about noting down any and everything relating to any and every client of the firm. So the whole day spent reading, or rather, going through 24 newspapers and 11 maagzines! At the end of it, if you were to ask me, what was the news, probably i wouldnt remember a thing since the only thing i was tracking was aerated beverages, shoes, liquor, telecom, heavy machinery, television, computers, u name it!
Before, i realized, the day was over and my boss, a lady, no less, asked me to cut all those articles that mentioned anything remotely related to any of the above and many more. Once the articles were all cut, they were to be pasted on white sheets of paper, photocopied in sets of three and one copy faxed to the respective clients. I came to the office at 9a.m. and left at 9p.m. on my very first day at work! And all that i got was gummed fingers!