Honesty is not the best policy

Those were early days in my first job and i was already confused. i had managed to pass out of Roorkee with an engineering degree. It is another matter that i was more clued into Ayn Rand than i was with chemical engineering. How did all those intelligent professors let me pass?

It was thus, with severely idealistic notions of life that i had set foot into the corporate jungle. Naturally, i embodied an arrogance of a degree holder from a premier college rather than the real confidence that comes with knowledge. Somehow the company professionals who recruited me from campus had the wisdom to not give me a hardcore technical profile, and I started my corporate life as a Sales engineer. Nevertheless, i was pretty high on enthusiasm to do wonderfully miraculous things and tell the world or whosoever would care to listen that i had arrived.

After the eminently boring induction alongwith several other young turks, i was put "on the job". It did not take me too long too realise that i was not really a fish in calm waters. I started to wonder whether i belonged here. Sample this : it was standard practice to put in false conveyance claims, so my seniors claimed. More importantly, i was not allowed to deviate from the "policy" as it would reduce their sense of moral uprightness. More important lessons soon followed.

There is nothing like a honest salesman! Wake up dude. You see, you have to get the orders. And all that comes with "selling skills", read buttering of decision makers, greasing of the gatekeepers, copying stuff you are not supposed to see or have, et al. The product or price or how its benefits are communicated were only required if somebody enquired. Wow, this was neo-science, i thought. Or did i skip these life changing chapters, when i should have paid more attention.

Howard Roark stopped laughing!