Monday, August 6, 2007
The New Life (Turning Point)
Hello Frnds,
As I promised I will let you all know how my first day in the corporate world went. The world of CSC!! :D
It was bloody fantastic, I know this was after all my first day and I might be prejudging the companies credentials but they left a huge impression on me.

Well the day started off brilliantly with my dad offering me to drop me to my work place, which happens to be Raddison MBD Hotel, Noida.
I was one of the first to reach the hotel and lined up behind 3 foreigners in the reception counter. Everyone of em took out a Rs. 500/- note and handed it to the receptionist as a tip, who gracefully gave em a smile and sent them to their respective rooms with the bell boy. When it was my turn she gave me the full profile stare, that was enough to stun me and I stood there speechless for a while, when she lowered the tension by asking in a cordial voice "Can I help you?", I managed to utter the words "Where CSC meeting?" she giggled and sent me on my merry way, it took me a while to regain consciousness from my stunned state and realize what I just uttered but as soon as I was returning to my normal form, I was again caught off guard when I saw a beautifully decorated conference hall with a gorgeous women welcoming us with a bouquet of roses and an equally impressive voice saying "Welcome to CSC" (later I was about to find out that the beautiful women was supposed to be my senior!!).

This time I did well to control my emotions and headed in, after a while every fresher from all fields of academics [B. Tech, Diploma, M.Sc (IT), MBA and so on] started to join in and the room filled up. We all had the complementary free Coffee/Tea (I of course had Coffee cause it sounds expensive :p) and everyone was looking a bit tensed and a very few words were being uttered in the cafeteria gallery.

I also noticed everyone was scared to go to the cookie section, as it might dent their professionalism.. I, being a lunatic of the first order pierced my way through the crowd and filled my hands with 5 cookies (all different flavors). As I struggled my way to finishing those 5 cookies and the coffee with no table (or chairs) to assist us it was time 4... My first professional briefing.


As I stared into the 2 giant screens flashing before me I saw the famous figures of Jens Voigt, Carlos Sastre and Fabian Cancellara of Team CSC (Those who follow the " Le Tour de France" will know em quite well) and I started boasting to my buddies on how I follow their each and every move and how I know a lot about them (yeah! I know what your thinking, coffee made me act hyper!!). As soon as the meeting went under way, my excitation level trippled, a familiar face of Purushottam Senger came in front of us and he started welcoming us. Students from my coll knew him because we went to the fella when we first received our offer letters and cleared all our doubts, well actually we went to him to know how much were we gonna be paid :D.

As he commenced the evening, he started talking about the head count at CSC and asked us all to tell him the figures (which we were told way back during the interview). I springed up from my seat and shouted "7000" which was the correct figure, as soon as he turned away to update us, I (being high on sugar with all the coffee and the cookies) I blurted out "It was before the Covansys acquisition, the current figure is around 14000". He looked impressed and he nodded and clicked on the Laptop to display the next slide, to my and everyone else's surprise the figure was exactly what I blurted out. I threw my head back in pride as I took back my seat . As I was positioning my seat back to its original position I saw a bowl in front of me, it had something in it... I moved forward to take a closer look and it was Chlormint!! I absolutely love it and without even thinking twice I tore open one and popped it in my mouth. To my horror, a HR executive from CSC was standing right besides me and was giggling.

I sunk into my seat and took a deep breath, but on came Mr. Senger to my aid, he called up the executive to brief the students on the joining process. I sighed a breath of relief and carried on, it took something like 3 hours to fill up the stack of forms and formalities... Sign here, I did... Sign there, I did... Write your name in Block letters, I did... Write your nickname(??), hesitatingly I did...
I was knackered after I went through the whole process and the lunch time couldn't have come any sooner. When I went out of the hall, I was stunned (yeah, AGAIN!!) to see so much to eat!! I didn't had my dinner last niteI didn't know where to begin with, there was soooo much food. I ran around to find me a plate and when I finally found one, I was ushered off by the waiter cause I picked up the dessert plate!!!! I took another 2 rounds to finally catch hold of the guy who was handing out the plates and filled it with lotsa grub.

I did well to put everything in my plate which came in front of me and then it was time to eat. I said "bon apatite" and dug in, after completing my 3rd serving I turned to desserts. I didn't know there were so many types of Ice creams and puddings, being full on my huge lunch I only took one scoop of everyone of them. Put a lot of Choco syrup over it and started having it, it felt like Heaven!!
It was tough to collect my energy to go to the conference room again, as the combination of food and the centralized air conditioner was making me feel sleepy. I went to the rest room, washed my face, shook off the sleep and was ready to go again. As I geared my self for another long boring session of hit and sign, I was taken aback when I saw that we were being handed a bag of goodies. The bag containing of 2 CSC Diaries, 2 Notepads, 1 Employees manual, a whole set of stationery ranging from the stapler to the simple rubber and pencil, 1 Punching machine, and 10 free food vouchers at CSC. Oh yeah, the bag also had a very odd looking stress busting toy,which I will use as my bedroom buddy.... :P

I thought CSC have already gone through a lot of pain to arrange all this with the free goodies and the 5 star hotel and the free food. I said to myself they couldn't possibly do a thing to make the evening any better. But I was wrong, very wrong as they hooked us up with the ICICI bank for a free of charge official bank account, with Credit cards and everything. They even offered us a special Sim from Airtel with tariff as low as the earth it self! I happily collected all the stuff as it didn't even cost me a penny (paise if your being picky).

As the evening drew to a close, I could see a lot of happy faces around me. Everyone laughing and realizing how good it feels to work with CSC. Little do they all know that it was only the first day and they will work the hell out of us to reimburse whatever they have given us!!!!

He He, I love Sad endings....
Vandana
CSC,GTS Unit
P.S. For those who went through the pain of reading this, THANK YOU!!!!