My friend, Rupa Rajagopalan’s inspired
me to share this two-in-one anecdote with you. Many of you may find it amusing,
while some of you may not:
1. A
few months ago this year, I received email as well as a phone call from a
placement agency located in
Chhattisgarh informing me of a job
opportunity with a leading vocational training company in Mumbai. I asked them
to share the job description and after reading it, I told them that I did not
have the proficiency they were look for in a candidate, but they insisted on my
applying for the job, saying that I should not go by the Title of the position,
and I had the required experience and skill set for the job. After a few weeks,
they emailed an Interview Call Letter and asked me to attend the interview on
the scheduled date at the company’s Mumbai office. I travelled to Mumbai and
reached the venue of the interview only to be greeted by a rather exasperated HR
Manager, who said, she was on leave on Friday and had tried to contact the
Placement Agency to reschedule the interview to another date as the interviewer
was not available today. While she had a copy of my CV in her hand, she asked
whether I was from Mumbai. I told her that it is mentioned in my CV that I am
not. She was all the more annoyed and blamed the Placement Agency for not
asking to arrange for a Skype Interview. With the intention to diffuse the hard
feelings, I expressed my happiness of having seen the office and met her. She
told me that she would get back to me through the Placement Agents for a telephonic
interview and she continued expressing her displeasure in the way the Placement
Agency had handled the matter. The very same day I returned to Belgaum and the
following day when I telephoned the placement agent and tried to inform her of
my visit to their client’s office and their reaction, I was startled by a
barrage of accusation from the Placement Manager, she went to the extent of
telling me that I was of her mother’s age and I proved to be quite contrary to
my description in the profile. According to her I proved to be an overbearing
person and how could I handle a team at the workplace and she had a good mind
to blacklist me. She refused to listen to me and after she had had her say, I
asked her why she had not asked me the purpose of my phone call, which was to
find out whether I still was the person they were looking for as I am not an
Authority in Finance and Financial Services. The rest is anyone’s guess. The
phone call was a mere formality and I unfortunately proved myself right, I was
not the person they were looking out for.
With the
intention of boarding the bus from Navi Mumbai to return to Belgaum after the
interview charade, I took the local train to Dadar and when I stepped out of
the Railway Station, I found myself caught in a torrential rain. All the taxi
and cabbies at the taxi stand refused to take the taxi fare as per the meter,
they asked me to pay they nine hundred and fifty rupees and also insisted on my paying the two and fro
toll charges. A taxi driver agreed to payment of the fare by the meter, but
insisted on my paying the two-way toll fee. As I was running a race against
time, I agreed to it and he said he would take me be the Free-way to avoid the traffic jam. On the way, he
struck a conversation with me and told me that he was from a Brahmin family from
Uttar Pradesh. Before coming to Mumbai, he had accompanied a low-caste friend
to work in a workshop in Chandigarh. He had a bad experience their and returned
home without getting his full pay from the workshop owner. When his father learnt
about it, he immediately went to his friend’s house and confiscated their cow
telling his friend’s father that they would get the cow back only when his son
would get the remaining salary from the workshop owner. His father’s strategy
worked and he got his remaining salary. While he was narrating his experience to
me, I could see that his meter was galloping like a race horse. By the time we
reached Vashi, his meter reading was rupees nine hundred and fifty four,
exclusive of the to-and-fro toll fee. Unlike MNS Supremo, Raj Thakare, I do not
believe in generalizing the behaviour of the people on the basis of the region
they hail from. While living in Mumbai, I also came across cabbies and auto rickshaw drivers
who did not take a penny more than the meter fare. Oh yes, when I had also
visit Bangalore this year to attend an interview, to save travel time, I
travelled by auto rickshaw to reach the venue. The auto-rickshaw driver had
pasted his news article at the back of his seat so that the passengers could
read his heroic feet of taking a girl, who had fainted on the street, to the
nearby hospital and admitted her there. When I reached the venue for the
interview and was paying him the fare, he insisted on paying him twenty rupees
more than the fare. We should discourage such malpractices and the cabbies as
well as the auto-rickshaw drivers should realise that they through their unions
2. they
get the fares regulated to address any increase in their operational cost. Inspite of it if they tamper the meter and
charge more than the meter fare then they are not earning the trust and good
will of their passengers and they are even depriving themselves of the
opportunity to get any additional money as mark of appreciation from the
passengers. Many of us have accepted this form of corruption, but that makes us
a culprit too.
I am sharing the
following links about Apps to get correct meter readings and how to detect
meter tampering and report it too:
http://www.gadgetsnow.com/computing/App-to-check-auto-taxi-meter-tampering/articleshow/15103633.cms?
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