Fools’ Day ‘09 (Part 1)

It’s the morning of the first day of April 2009 and the scene is at the restaurant in Manipal Center whose North Block 9th floor constitutes of our office. I, Nitin, Shankar, Meghal and Sachin were having our breakfast. The scenario is that we are in the last days of our quarter and the year. For your information, these are the days wherein every sales guy lives a life of a fugitive – continuously on the run!! Generally the stress level of these sales guys is on the red mark. This results in many seeming to be the inmates of some famous mental asylum in Southern India where they don’t believe in doctors for the treatment and it’s always the Heavenly powers they rely on.

But among this group of sales guys, there are some seasoned ones like me (am proud) , Nitin and Shankar (now WE are proud) – who have learned to keep the smile on our faces and accept the art of sales. So it was on this day of the fools (I still can’t fathom why they, whoever they are, chose this particular day of the year – not that I blame, it’s fun after all) that we were hogging our breakfast. And our brains were on the “Mischief” mode. And our dear boss Asish was on our minds. We thought we’ll pull a trick on our boss himself. Now you must have an idea how our team works. It’s a non-hierarchical responsible one!  We were not to know that at the end it will not be one person who will fall for our small prank but THREE!! So the plan went like this…. We decided to give him a slight shock on a particularly important case.

Before I get into the actual plan, I need to talk a bit on the history of this client. This client – EMC Data Storage (am courageously mentioning the client’s name on an online medium because, there is nothing wrong written ABOUT the company and all due respects are there for the esteemed organization) is a very important client not only for me, but for the entire team. The main reason is because of the heavy billing they generally agree to which takes care of a huge chunk of our target. To be more precise they paid us INR 5 Lakhs this time and the cheque was collected just two days before this day.

It has always been the case with me that I never find myself close an important case without any problem. “No smooth sail for any big sale” has been the tag line all this while and with this client too it was no different. I am not getting into the details of that in this blog. I am just satisfied to mention that this sale also had its own considerable share of crests and troughs. And all of us were very happy when the cheque was finally received. There was a slight negligible problem in the cheque. The payment should have been in favor of “Info Edge India Limited”, but the actual favor the client gave us for “Info Edge India Private Limited”. Our accounts team had reassured us that this will not cause any problem and that the cheque would be cleared.

This was two days before the day we are now in. Nitin, Shankar and I decided this is the case which is going to give Asish the necessary shock. We went back to office after our breakfast and got into the task. I prepared a mail which, when you look at it, it will seem as if it was sent to us by the client. And I made it look in such a way that I was forwarding the same to Asish for his kind reference. The main focus is on the content of the mail.

The mail went something like this – “Hi Kiron, This is to inform that the cheque we gave you has bounced due to the mistake in the favoring of the same. I have already talked to our finance and they are ready to issue the new cheque. But I need the old cheque. Only then can I process the new cheque. Please do the needful at the earliest. Regards, The Client”

The cliché is – “But I need the old cheque.” That’s because we are closing the quarter in two days. The “old” cheque will come back to us only after THREE days. Then the process will start, and for us to finally get the new cheque, it will be too late.

Now it’s all about the timing of the mail to be sent to Asish and the follow up call to him. We came to know that Asish was about to go for a meeting. We decided to send the mail after he left office. We wanted the mail to erase any of the doubts our news would create on the minds of Asish.

After the mail, I called up Asish and informed him about the situation (created and staged by his own lieutenants ofcourse) and told him what he was supposed to hear. Asish was completely taken aback. I wouldn’t blame him cuz no Team Lead would want anything of THIS magnitude to happen at the fag end of the month, let alone the year.

We were pretty sure that Asish will have to inform Anant regarding this to Anant – “The Chief” of our team. I tried to reach Anant before Asish could so that I could warn him beforehand. But Asish beat me to it. Even before I could message Anant, I got a call from Anant himself, and guess what, he was with our Vice President – Niraj!! I had a bit of a bad feeling now. I was wondering if our small prank went haywire. Anant was frantically waving me into the VP’s room.

Now that you have started this, you will have to take the responsibility. I went in and Anant asked the question I already knew. “What’s going on with EMC?” Was he roaring at me or did I imagine it? I managed to pull Anant out of the bigger lion’s den and tried reassuring him that there was nothing with the payment of EMC and that the payment is very safe. Then it dawned to Anant that we brats were playing a prank on Asish. He just growled something like this – “Oh you guys!! Ughh!!” and went into the den to break the good news to Niraj.

Till now the count is 2 more apart from Asish!! Remember, I said there were THREE others. Now for the third person!

As the drama mentioned above was unfolding, there was another poor guy who was taking a bit of the heat. It was none other that our Joby. He was trying to understand what the hell was going on and how was it possible that a cheque which cannot bounce, ACTUALLY bounced. Actually it took some more time for poor Joby to completely realize what was happening.

I would like to mention at this point of time that the situation these three went through was completely unintended. We planted the bomb only for Asish and unfortunately you three were taking a stroll together with him that you faced the little shrapnels.

We actually wanted to keep up the game till evening. But you know, by now our game was up. I got a call from Asish. He was so sporty that he laughed away our little prank. He just said that we gave not only a little shock, but a bit of a heart attack. Again I’d like to mention that it was completely unintentional.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Asish, Anant and Niraj, and ofcourse Joby on behalf of all of us (me, nitin, shankar and our team) for being so sporty and laughing away our little game. We just hope that we were able to bring on a well deserved smile on your faces at this moment of stress and tension of closing the month!

Well, this is just the first part of my story. As I mentioned already, we had intended to play the game till the end of the day. But as our prank reached a pre-mature end, I was wondering how to make this day more memorable. Then came our dear colleague Shweta Srivastava into my field of vision….. (To be contd….)