Almost landed up in a call center.

The nokia tune sounded hard on my ears. It was 6.30 in the morning of a Monday. I was reluctant to get up and pick up the phone. But it was going on and on. I picked up the phone hastily and quite surprisingly, it was my friend Vignesh who's on the line. He doesn't call me often and even if he wished to, he jus gives me a missed call. There was a gush of enthusiasm when he started. The first words that he spoke were sounding so loud. "hey! there's a call center opening today. u game?".

I had jus finished my engineering and waiting for my company to call me for the job. I once told him that I might consider working for a call center before my company calls me. I really don't know how he managed to remember that. "U just woke me up da. When's the interview?". He instantly gave a reply to that. "please be there at the nungambakkam office at 10. Get 2 copies of resume and a passport size photograph. I'll be there on time". All I heard after that was a hush silence and my cell was displaying the call duration. I hurried up and got ready by 9.30 waiting for my dad to leave for his office so that he can drop me off at the destination. I was there bang on at 10. Vignesh was as usual late by 10 minutes. We hurried into the elevator and when the security told us there's no walk-in interviews here, I almost lost my temper. We were then asked to leave for it's main office at Santhome.

We then started roaring to Santhome. The sun was scorching at us and I can feel my skin getting tanned. I was in full formal wear and it was fuming inside me. I almost felt like I was inside a blast furnace. We were asked to leave our bags and collect our badges for the interview. There were some 80 candidates seated outside and we managed to find empty seats. A representative from the company asked us to submit our resumes. I had a look at the candidates. Most of them were from the arts and science backgrounds and there were only few from Engineering stream. After half an hour of wait, we were asked for the post we were applying for. I had no clue whatsoever about the roles in a call center. My friend asked me to check the one which had technical support. I obliged him and soon we were asked to sit for a group discussion.

I was soon sitting in one of the air-conditioned rooms for the GD. There were some 15 other guys who were sitting along with me and Vignesh. One of the sick looking HRs of the company came and addressed everyone. Her colleague entered the room with a dash and suggested that he would be the one to give us the topic for discussion. And without any surprises, He asked us to discuss about IPL. Suddenly, everybody were looking restless and I too sent a sigh of relief after hearing that. who wouldn't love to talk about cricket in India? A guy started the discussion in a lousy manner. He told everybody that he would talk for the advantages of the IPL and ended up with explaining the side effects of it. Soon, everybody started talking in a random manner and there was a scene of parliament in front of me. I then slid in between the talks to say whatever i can. After 15 minutes of chaos, there was silence and I was one among the 6 selected for the next round. We were handed a different colored tag and were asked to wait near the HR bay.

It was 1.00 in the afternoon and I was bearing the brunt of it. Luckily, I was called for the interview sooner than i expected. The HR was a middle aged female with typical south Indian iyer looks. She greeted me with a smile and i responded the same way. She soon asked some general questions. She suddenly sprang up with a question that almost caught me on the hook. actually the company had visited my college for recruitment and I didn't attend it. When she asked me about it, instantly came a reply that our class was on an educational tour. she tried to ask me the details of the tour hoping I would come up with something really stupid. I managed to jump over all the obstacles with a smile. She then tested my soft skills by asking me to read a passage which was a cakewalk for me. The interview ended thus with the HR gleaming her beautiful smile which almost assured me of a positive result.

We were asked to take lunch from the office dining room and we paid some 30 bucks to get a south Indian thali. Myself and Vignesh were were starting to get bored. We also found a friend in a guy who got selected along with us. A guy named Sabal from pondicherry, slender and fair. I found out at once that he was a mallu. We were asked to wait for one more hour to take up the online aptitude test. Ya, btw, I forgot to mention that all three of us cleared the HR round. Myself and Sabal were talking about our colleges and about the company that were into. We were also peeking into the systems where other selected candidates were giving their online tests. The questiones seemed to look very simple. Vignesh was the first one to give the test. He came out in half an hour. It was the same set of questions for everyone and vignesh gave us the answers for the questions. Myself and Sabal answered everything in a jiffy and we cleared the test in just 10 minutes.

All three of us were asked to meet a HR after that. It was 6.00 in the evening and I was out of pulp. I walked down back to the HR bay. We were asked to collect the offer letter the next day on producing the cpoies of our marksheet. We were informed that the salary would be 10.5k per month and a training period of 2 weeks. But we were never informed about the shifts. We assumed it to be morning shifts and we weer quite cool that there would be conveyance arrangements. That night, Vignesh called me up and told us the shocking news. The job had working hours between 12 in the night and 8 am. I was thrown aback after hearing that and moreover, we were supposed to go to work in Perungudi, which was almost 30 kms from my place. When I told these details to my parents, they asked me to sit at home and hatch eggs instead of wasting precious time for sleep. Phew.. All in a days work.