So much love, concern and scorn

Well, placement season is upon us. And people are behaving quite oddly. With a batch of 260, let one person get short –listed, the barrage of advice …sorry…free unwarranted advice can nearly bury a man. It is amazing as to how when one gets short listed, the number of people, some whom you have never had the honour of interacting with during college, come up to you with free advice. Many folks go about trying to psych you out too, which is quite hilarious.

I got short-listed for a company, and the number of people who all of a sudden have a vested interest in my career is over-whelming. And all this was without me even asking for any. While I do appreciate the advice…thank you all, I need to ask, if you know so much about the company, why didn’t you apply, or get shortlisted. Standard reply, “ Noooooo daaaaaaa! I want big company daaaaaaa!” and something on those lines which more or less condescendingly infers that they would not touch your company with a barge pole. As always, when a list comes out, the usual conspiracy theories and Watergate scandals seem to crawl out of cupboards.” Dude…that fellow is good friends with placement committee da….”,“ full biased against me da….i got low marks no!”,“ That fellow is sleeping with (name not mentioned) so he got shortlisted” …and other very scandalous remarks with no concrete base what so ever. But that’s what makes this all fun. Same sort of conversation gets translated into office politics when someone gets a promotion, “she’s sleeping with the boss dude….”

I particularly enjoy feeble attempts at being psyched out. While I had applied for a certain FMCG company with the hopes of being shortlisted, some acquaintances presumed I was surely getting a call. However, thanks to the eclipse, I did not get short listed. (I have come down to blaming solar phenomenon too…what’s next? Gophers ate my resume?). Anyway, general procedure for any FMCG with a greenhorn is to throw them in a remote rural area and ask them to sell soap. All of a sudden people seemed worried that I would get placed in Bihar and that gundas there would kidnap me so as to marry me off to their otherwise plump daughter named gulab jamoon. While I am really happy that I have so many guardian angels, even the biharis would think twice before kidnapping me. My mum will have to give them a training course on how to silently endure the likes of Mr.Nikhilesh Murthy. Some people came up to me saying that there is no social life in an FMCG. There would be no time for the girlfriend or the missus. Since I have neither, and there seems to be no scope of either in the next few years, I don’t seem too worried. Might as well make some money.

Any one getting even short listed for a company, irrespective of size of company, is looked down upon with a certain scorn…generally varying with pay package being offered. People smiling through their teeth in the hope that should you bag a deal; they may get a free meal. Well, I like free meals too. But am not too scornful. Reason is simple. The big chunk of companies coming our way are predominantly IT…and wild horses would be needed to drag me back to that domain. I need something a little more exciting. So I have applied to very few companies and am facing minimum competition. I am also using the ‘Aaal eeez well’ technique so as not to lose my mind. I’ve been down this road before and it has ultimately turned out for the best. So in the lord I trust. But that does not stop you from offering sincere prayers. C’est La Vie…

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