The Early Days

The prompt reminded me of the beginning of my career.

I started my work life in a small private company where I was placed at the reception with an EPBX Board with two telephone lines. I picked up the job soon. So, as an incentive, I was handed over a huge ledger wherein I had to tally the total of a long list of figures.

Given my mathemophobia, needless to say, my totals never tallied. Being naive, I did not know how a family owned private concern operated – on informants who supplied office gossip. The salary was meagre and I did not understand why being a receptionist cum telephone operator I had to do accounts job which did not interest me.

My elder sister was a teacher in a nearby school at that time. I think it was her suggestion that I should try my hand at teaching. I tried small private schools first and then the school where I was a student once. I was not meant for the profession. But if someone asks me now to teach a certain age group I may not be that unprofficient.

As fated, I did not succeed in teaching but I got a lucrative offer in Kolkata through one of my school colleagues. I changed base not knowing what I was heading for.

Kolkata was not that cosmopolitan as Delhi. The city as a whole thought all Delhiites were well connected, well off and led a fast life. I was instantly the social outcast in office as well as in the locality where I put up with my relatives. In the eyes of the Kolkattans I was ‘different’. Hence, unacceptable. I was and I never bothered to change. If I belonged to some other planet, so he it.

In my new job, I was again at the reception with a bigger EPABX System with many telephone lines. I also had to learn how to send messages on telex. Somehow I loved to work on machines. After a while the EPABX System was replaced by an electronic version. It was new and exciting.

Gradually in the second half of the day I was put on administrative work – basically record keeping. It was all manual. Then came the computers. Limited in number, they were allotted to higher ups and selected few down the line. There was one for the staff.

With computers came the fear of losing jobs. It was presumed that the one who knew how to operate the tool, his/her post was secured. So, whosoever knew a little was reluctant to share the knowledge.

There were two programmes – Lotus which later evolved into Excel and the other one, if I remember correctly, was called Database, the primordial version of Word. Both were tedious. More so, without appropriate and adequate training.

I used to grab every opportunity to work on the staff computer whenever it was free since I was not allocated any. Self learning was time consuming. I would hear jeering remarks from the back I chose to ignore and carry on tapping on the keyboard.

Sometimes the cursor just refused to move forward. If you asked the staff there were chances that they would give misleading directions. The officers had the notion that it was the staff who was supposed to work on the machine. So there was no need to make efforts towards learning how to operate the ‘monster’. I , a hands-on person, was caught in between.

It was much later that with some elementary training I was established as moderately progressive on the machine. Many years later when SAP took over Finance, HR and Procurement, I was designated as a go-to person in the Department for problem resolution (while working on the system), much to the chagrin of my peers and seniors. And a decade later, I was assisting my boss in validating and refining software systems, he was passionate about.

A long…long … journey.

What say you?