From riches to rags ;-)

My first real job was a "business venture" with my neighbour PS when we were in school. We painstakingly made colourful and creative bookmarks sitting on our neighbours' car and sold them around our apartment for prices ranging from Rs. 2 - Rs. 15. We warned our parents that they might be the scape-goats lucky folks in case no one bought our priceless merchandise. We lived in a huge housing colony so no dearth of potential customers. Our bookmarks were sold out the same evening! Talk about demand. We celebrated by treating ourselves to the new Kwality Walls` Choc-o-Rock ice-cream and divided the remaining amount between us ;-) We shut shop as we had lofty ambitions after this success story!

My next near-perfect-job was many years later and this one was part-time. My friend A got to know about this job from her friend. We were having semester break. It was a call-centre job or something like it in a commercial complex called 'House of Lords' !!! :-D We had to call and bore rich people about Mutual Funds. A was well-versed about mutual funds and the terminology but yours truly had no clue. I was just glad A was around for entertainment. Well, we got KT about the firm's plans and offerings from a chap one rainy evening. In between dozes, I got the hang of what we had to do. A was pumped up and she had chalked out a plan complete with how much money we would make and a humungous shopping list of must-haves :-) Alas. That chap never called us back (sob) & all our grandiose shopping plans went down the drain (rather A's, since I had decided to go with her plan). Many weeks later, one evening I got a call enquiring whether I'd be available to give the session (on mutual funds of course) to another person they had newly hired for the same call centre stuff. Since I had college, I declined. That's what I told him. Really, how could I confess I didn't remember anything :-D

The rest of the jobs as they say is all a blur. Campus placements, off-campus offers etc. Nothing out of the ordinary here. My first placement happened all because my T-shirt played a huge role in conveying a distorted impression of me. I was an IEEE Volunteer (Just clarifying) !!! All the questions revolved around IEEE. Another Technical interview for a different workplace was outright embarrassing. My cellphone ring tone in those days was a comical Chicken dance. I had conveniently forgotten to set the profile to Silent. Bang in the middle of the interview, the chicken dance tune echoed loudly in the room and I turned completely red. The Interviewer was supremely amused , couldn't control his broad smiles and told me to go ahead and attend to the chicken. Sheeesh !!! In case you're wondering whether I got hired, as cliched as it may sound, that's for me to know and you to guess ;-)

More stories about the corporate world and my bitter sweet experiences is for a later day when I am someplace far away !! Adios amigos.