Today I was just heading out the door to head for the office when I got a call from my manager. It seemed that due to some emergency we would have to start the training for a batch of new recruits today instead of Saturday as we had planned. It was 10 o’clock and he asked me to hurry to the office. I reached there as fast as I could, in 30 mins. I spoke to him and found out that our clients were upset about the fact that we were running short of agents – much less than we had planned. The salary at the call center agent level is not that much, hence we had people leaving our company to join ones that were offering bigger salaries.

So due to pressure they decided to step it up a day ahead. Thanks! No prior notice, no shit! Anyway, the new recruits had to be summoned to the office and that took time. We had to wait for a couple of guys who found it hard to come to the office so suddenly, when they were expecting to start only on Saturday. Hence I could only start the session at 1:30 pm, after lunch, and continued till 6:15 pm. I don’t like it when training is rushed as it usually leads to below-par results. But somethings are just beyond your control.

By 7 I was ready to head out of there when I got a call from Madhu & little after that one from Anil. Would I be free for drinks at a roof-top garden bar quite close to my office? Am I ever! By 7:45 we were up there (quite a nice place, they had done a lot of renovations and the restaurant & three bars in the hotel were really looking cool) on the roof and had ordered a couple of rounds of rum for Anil, brandy for Madhu & vodka for me. We had some snacks of beef & chicken & peanuts. And there was some lightning although no thunder or even the hint of rain.

Chatting about work, the weather, health etc finally lead us to a big debate on the anti-encroachment demolition done on M G Road in the past couple of days. It was quite a debate and went on for an hour atleast. By 8:45 our glasses were empty and were being refilled when we started talking about work and I just happened to mention about Sajith, my colleague and friend since January. Turns out Sajith & Madhu had studied Hotel Management in the same college and were friends who had lost touch over the past few years. Natural since Madhu is from here and Sajith is from Bangalore. So I called him up and he said that he would join us.

So now we were a foursome and the talk shifted to Sajith rehashing to us stories of him & Madhu during their Hotel Management days in Chennai and we had a good laugh. Pretty soon it was 11 pm and time for us to head home, so Anil dropped me at Kacheripady on his bike. That was an evening I will never forget.

Song for the day – “Rock Of Ages” – DEF LEPPARD