25th June’08: I woke up at 7 in the morning and thought that it was just the usual day wake up and get in the race of getting ready, then quickly reach the mess to have your breakfast & reach the college for lectures in time. Everything up to now was according to the daily schedule except for the fact that we didn’t have any lectures today; instead we had a “business exercise” with Mr. Manohar Kamat. A lot of the people except for the SIMSITES might not be knowing what a business exercise is all about so to make things easier for them I will explain them the rules of the game that we had in the exercise. Our class was divided into two groups & one was sent to Deccan & the other to Aund & Baner which are two different locations in Pune. There we had to go & find ourselves a job for one full day. It sounded simple to us but then we were told the hard part of it, we were not supposed to use even a single penny of our own for reaching the specified locations and were also not supposed to reveal our true identity. Also a guy and a girl were made as partners and preferably both of them had to get the job together in one place itself.
My partner Miss Priyamvada Singh and me along with another group of my classmates got a lift in Maruti Van till Aund Road and from there we got another lift in an Indica to Aund. There we searched for a job for quite sometime going from one place to other asking everybody if they had a job to offer us in fact any job whatsoever, but as expected the answer used to be a very quick NO. After doing the job search for half an hour we finally got the breakthrough in Hotel ShivSagar at around 10:30 a.m. Hotel ShivSagar is almost at the boundary of Aund but is a very popular restaurant of that area and almost every person in the area knew about it. The owner of the hotel asked us whether we were students of some college? but we gave a prompt NO. Then we were explained by the hotel staff how the things worked in the hotel and what was the system to take the order from the customers and then communicate the same to the kitchen staff. The whole staff including the owner of the hotel was South Indian and so as one would guess the hotel was more famous for its South Indian dishes. The hotel had two sections one with a/c adding and one without. The menu that the hotel offered was also different depending on what time of the day you wanted to have a meal. If one came before 12 noon you would dosa, idli, wada, sandwiches and the usual snacks, but after 12 you would get a full fledged meal of dal, roti, pav bhaji etc. Our job there was to take the orders from the customers and then communicate the same further and the rest would be taken care.
We worked for the full day till 5:00 P.m in the evening and in between we had our meals and snacks which were sponsored by our employees. All the staff was very nice to us and we also got the chance to serve our own batch mates who had come to have a meal in our hotel. We worked very efficiently throughout the whole day and except for two or three bloopers overall it was job well done. Majority of the customers were very nice to us but except for some who were not as generous as others were but overall it was one hell of an experience. At the end of the day we were given a total sum of Rs 600. After that we were supposed to reach India bulls mall at Senapati Bapat Road by 6:00 p.m so we quickened our steps and tried to get a lift till our destination, but the moment we came out of the hotel it started raining which didn’t help our cause at all. Finally we got a lift in a Scorpio which dropped us till university. From university we sent the girls in an Indica and all the guys decided to take lift from motorcyclists. After a lot waiting and pleading all of us finally reached our destination where we had our other batch mates waiting for us. Then we all exchanged our notes & enquired as to who earned who earned how much? Then all of us had a small interaction with Mr. Kamat. After that we were told to go back to our colleges and still we couldn’t use our own money, but coming back was fun since we got a lift in a Honda Accord, till the end of Senapati Bapat Road and from there we got another lift in a van till E-Square, from E-Square we got a lift from our college in a Maruti Car. We all touched down at our college by 7:00 p.m and of us tired but at the same time had a sense of achievement since today we did something by moving out of our comfort zone and trying to become CEO’s, for today was the day when we had no money no resources but only our self belief & skills (whether negotiation or convincing) to fall back on & we achieved the target which was set to us and we also enjoyed it at the same time. 25th June ’08 will always stay alive in my memory for at least the next ten years.
