The most anticipated time at any B-School is the time of placements...It's the time when true colours of our co habitants come out(for the better or for the worse). It's the time which decides the future of dozens of wannabe business tycoons..and it's also the time which gives birth to several interesting anecdotes. The focus of this post is one such incident and the word "fantabulous".
Answers.com defines the word fantabulous as a slang, meaning "marvelously excellent".
So the incident happened in the cold winter of 2005. The IITK MBA placement season was just starting. The first companies to find its way to the MBA placement committee were the likes of TCS who was offering us a pay at par with the engineers- something around 2.4 lacs per annum. This was looked upon with disdain. Lots of inner voices went like "Saala B@^&#(^*d....2.4 de raha hai....phir 2 saal hum ne yahan pe ye Ch******p kyon ki hain?". A more polite version of this would be "The esteemed company is giving us a package of 2.4 lacs. Pray tell us why we went through this 2 year course in vain". Then one fine morning, a mail comes announcing the arrival of GCEB (Identity masked to protect myself) bank on campus for their PPT(Pre Placement Talk). For those who are not aware of the structure of a PPT, it goes like
1. Introduction
2. A brief about the company
3. The details of the openings they have
4. Pay structure
5. Details of the selection process
Most of the audience present would be hanging on point no. 3. There were people who were willing to betray their specialisations for the proverbial 30 silver pieces. i.e. If paid enough, a guy specialising in operations was willing to stab his specialisation in the back and grab a marketing job.
So once the news hit the campus, the well oiled ppt preparation machine sprung into action. 3 piece suits were being broken out, shoes were being polished, the history of GCEB bank was being researched and then some more. There were lots of banking enthusiasts who were willing to give a pound of flesh to get into the banking industry. Being very sure that I wanted nothing to do with the financial sector, I stayed away from all this. Little was I know what I were to miss. The PPT was at 1000 hrs one day. When I met my batch mates at the lunch table, they looked as if they had seen a ghost. Their faces were drained of colour and I heard one word being repeated often- "fantabulous".
After lunch, with lots of questions on my mind, I approached one of my close friends who had gone for the PPT. Then I came to know the whole story.
All of them reached the venue well ahead of time with the full back ground preparation to make that killer first impression. The bank officials came and the PPT started. The kicker is that their PPT never went beyond pt. no 2 on the above list. They spent about an hour extolling the virtues of GCEB bank and how kind they were to come to our institution to offer us job opportunities. (ok. the second part of the statement is a bit exaggeration. Learn to live with it.). So once the PPT was over, obviously there were lots of questions. Especially regarding the points 3 and 4. The excerpts from the question answer session is as follows.
Enthusiastic Student 1: Hello Sir, My name is ES1. Could you tell us a bit on what kind of profile you would be offering us?
Overenthusiastic Official 1: Don't worry about the profile. Wherever you join in our bank, you will be growing exponentially. In the post you will be joining, you will be handling lakhs of rupees every day. It will be a job that will require tremendous mathematical aptitude and qualities like honesty and diligence.
ES1: That sounds very promising sir. What post would that be?
OO1: You guys will be joining as Assitant Cash Managers.
This reply was the beginning of the very painful end. Some of the pessimistic lot had a suspicion about this embellished job title.
Pessimistic Student 1: So what exactly would we be doing in this post?
OO1: You will be in charge of collecting the cash from our customers at the bank and ensuring the correctness of the accounts.
PS1: You mean we will be working as Cashiers?
OO1: We have abandoned all those derogatory job titles long back. Now we use the term Assistant Cash Managers.
There were still some people in the crowd who if paid enough were willing to be a cashier. Well if you get paid 5.5 lacs to do nothing but count money each day, some would say it's a bargain.
Optimistic Student 1: So what would be the pay package be like?
OO1: Don't worry about the salary. You will be compensated adequately.
OS1: Still, it would be great if you could give us a ball park figure.
OO1: According to your qualifications, your pay can be up to a FANTABULOUS 1.75 lacs per annum.
This was the last straw that broke the camel's back. Those who were bad mouthing TCS for their low pay were now assigning the dream company title to TCS. They had no retorts for the bank officials. This was a blow below the belt.
One thing that came out of that fiasco was embellishment of the vocabulary of the whole class with the word "Fantabulous".
Tail piece: Although we stumbled at the first step, we soon started galloping afterwards. The placement week of 2005 was an unprecedented success with big wigs like IBM, Accenture, Citibank and Infy all recruiting heavily. After all these, the story of the bank officials offering a fantabulous 1.75 became one to be laughed about over a cup of chai and an aloo pyaz paratha at the Hall 8 Canteen.
Answers.com defines the word fantabulous as a slang, meaning "marvelously excellent".
So the incident happened in the cold winter of 2005. The IITK MBA placement season was just starting. The first companies to find its way to the MBA placement committee were the likes of TCS who was offering us a pay at par with the engineers- something around 2.4 lacs per annum. This was looked upon with disdain. Lots of inner voices went like "Saala B@^&#(^*d....2.4 de raha hai....phir 2 saal hum ne yahan pe ye Ch******p kyon ki hain?". A more polite version of this would be "The esteemed company is giving us a package of 2.4 lacs. Pray tell us why we went through this 2 year course in vain". Then one fine morning, a mail comes announcing the arrival of GCEB (Identity masked to protect myself) bank on campus for their PPT(Pre Placement Talk). For those who are not aware of the structure of a PPT, it goes like
1. Introduction
2. A brief about the company
3. The details of the openings they have
4. Pay structure
5. Details of the selection process
Most of the audience present would be hanging on point no. 3. There were people who were willing to betray their specialisations for the proverbial 30 silver pieces. i.e. If paid enough, a guy specialising in operations was willing to stab his specialisation in the back and grab a marketing job.
So once the news hit the campus, the well oiled ppt preparation machine sprung into action. 3 piece suits were being broken out, shoes were being polished, the history of GCEB bank was being researched and then some more. There were lots of banking enthusiasts who were willing to give a pound of flesh to get into the banking industry. Being very sure that I wanted nothing to do with the financial sector, I stayed away from all this. Little was I know what I were to miss. The PPT was at 1000 hrs one day. When I met my batch mates at the lunch table, they looked as if they had seen a ghost. Their faces were drained of colour and I heard one word being repeated often- "fantabulous".
After lunch, with lots of questions on my mind, I approached one of my close friends who had gone for the PPT. Then I came to know the whole story.
All of them reached the venue well ahead of time with the full back ground preparation to make that killer first impression. The bank officials came and the PPT started. The kicker is that their PPT never went beyond pt. no 2 on the above list. They spent about an hour extolling the virtues of GCEB bank and how kind they were to come to our institution to offer us job opportunities. (ok. the second part of the statement is a bit exaggeration. Learn to live with it.). So once the PPT was over, obviously there were lots of questions. Especially regarding the points 3 and 4. The excerpts from the question answer session is as follows.
Enthusiastic Student 1: Hello Sir, My name is ES1. Could you tell us a bit on what kind of profile you would be offering us?
Overenthusiastic Official 1: Don't worry about the profile. Wherever you join in our bank, you will be growing exponentially. In the post you will be joining, you will be handling lakhs of rupees every day. It will be a job that will require tremendous mathematical aptitude and qualities like honesty and diligence.
ES1: That sounds very promising sir. What post would that be?
OO1: You guys will be joining as Assitant Cash Managers.
This reply was the beginning of the very painful end. Some of the pessimistic lot had a suspicion about this embellished job title.
Pessimistic Student 1: So what exactly would we be doing in this post?
OO1: You will be in charge of collecting the cash from our customers at the bank and ensuring the correctness of the accounts.
PS1: You mean we will be working as Cashiers?
OO1: We have abandoned all those derogatory job titles long back. Now we use the term Assistant Cash Managers.
There were still some people in the crowd who if paid enough were willing to be a cashier. Well if you get paid 5.5 lacs to do nothing but count money each day, some would say it's a bargain.
Optimistic Student 1: So what would be the pay package be like?
OO1: Don't worry about the salary. You will be compensated adequately.
OS1: Still, it would be great if you could give us a ball park figure.
OO1: According to your qualifications, your pay can be up to a FANTABULOUS 1.75 lacs per annum.
This was the last straw that broke the camel's back. Those who were bad mouthing TCS for their low pay were now assigning the dream company title to TCS. They had no retorts for the bank officials. This was a blow below the belt.
One thing that came out of that fiasco was embellishment of the vocabulary of the whole class with the word "Fantabulous".
Tail piece: Although we stumbled at the first step, we soon started galloping afterwards. The placement week of 2005 was an unprecedented success with big wigs like IBM, Accenture, Citibank and Infy all recruiting heavily. After all these, the story of the bank officials offering a fantabulous 1.75 became one to be laughed about over a cup of chai and an aloo pyaz paratha at the Hall 8 Canteen.
