COO

Being forced to take part in a competition is part and parcel of my life, while I just want to whittle away and take part in things I like, like the recent first football podcast of Jeremy 360 , I end up having to take part in talent competitions , music shows and elocution's, winning a few, making an ass out of myself in a few and being a retard in all of them.

So this time around in a corporate B school, I unfortunately or fortunately have pretty good communication skills and since most people don't pay attention in class and I do, I get a pretty good score as well, this means I am cannon fodder for most people to send me to competitions. I have been able to bunk a few of em using the "muslim", "fast" excuses but once in a while you do fall into the trap and that is what exactly happened a week back.

One of our teachers was hell bent on sending us to some competition held by AIMA, the All India Management Association , some special business game "Chanakya", which was basically working against a number of other colleges in a proper simulated marked trying to sell certain goods, yes it was fun but not that I would want to be in such a thing again.

The whole shebang started with ma'am picking me and another guy, sudip, out just because we could go there, although there were a ton of other people who could have gone to the competition as they had business experience and knowledge, they were not trust worthy and we exemplified the 3 D's of our college, not the Dudley boys but "Discipline, Decorum and Decency", don't know how but I fail in all those 3 terms.

Now we needed 2 more murgas, umm members to be part of the team, while I dragged a couple of finance people wasim and soma, wasim backed out stating the "fast" and ramadan month being on and him fasting, he would not be able to go there, I could not use that excuse since I was not fasting and had been seen in the cafeteria everyday stuffing my mouth with chicken sandwiches, crap.

So we substituted wasim with a manc, Mriganka, the only thing I got that evening were calls from all 3 saying none of em wanted to go and when ma'am heard that it was fucking tough to convince em all to go along for the ride. Ultimately we came up with a plan that, whatever happens we will fail intentionally and come back.

The next morning the reporting time for our competition was 8:30 AM, while the other 3 moaned about the time, I took a cab and reached early to another college EIILM and was I in for a shock, am sorry but my college's infrastructure owns that of most colleges in Calcutta, its classy, its fucking ace ,its beautiful and its clean. Eiilm was sad to go to, the chairs were crappy, the interiors were crappy, hell the fucking floor was bumpy , not a good start.

8:30, a few people from AIMA came in and asked us to fill in forms, when I picked the form for us, we were supposed to fill in what position each person was to take, the first thing to do was to find out if all of the people were coming or not, getting the confirmation for that was a huge relief as I did not want to be the murga in all this, I picked on being the COO, chief operations officer, thinking I would have to do nothing but sit on my ass.

The other 3 members came and we went off for breakfast, which was vege sandwiches and tea, 2 things I despise , coming back into the room we were given a 10 page case to study the market conditions and the portfolio for the organization we were to work in, the beverage industry as it were, I was not reading the case but as usual was blabbering and abusing left right and center, to which a girl objected but I couldn't care less. The AIMA people were quite happy seeing Globsyn being represented by 4 chamans, probably because we were the first batch to come here and oh yeah from the 16 teams participating, 8 were from EIILM , each had to pay around 5k to take part, which we did pay later to make sure we get the certificate.

So after another 2 hours of deliberating about the rules and regulations, we got a chance to try our luck in a trail quarter to decide how much should our production be, what should be the placement of the product, price etc, we took it easy and just slotted in random numbers from our heads, while people were furiously working on laptops and trying to get in numbers, after the trail round, we were in the 4th position in our group where the top 4 would qualify, Sudip loves this bit and says we will qualify from this group and I am thinking "Oh fuck no, I can't take this crap".

Now the girl we had in our group was decent to look at but she was miles better than the utter tosh we had to see in that college and hence she was looked at by the rest of the people ala the indian voyeur, constantly gazing like she was some European Blonde with a figure of 36-24-36, she does not have that for a figure but still.

The only good thing in this whole piss poor show was the food and I stuffed myself with a lot of chicken as usual and for some reason a lot of papads, like fucking mad I had papads, hell I even nicked em off the plates of my team mates, I was on fucking mad papad eating mode. No sweets or chutney for me please, just gimme the papads please.

Back to the competition, now we got all serious for quarter 1, the real deal was about to start everyone was so up for it and then after the 1st quarter we were still 4th, brilliant, we would qualify and all, shit I would have to come back another day to take part in it. Fate however is an amazing mistress, we fucked up on the planning bit, who is responsible for the planning? That's right , me, while we didn't increase our capacity for production, everyone else did and that brought us down from 4th to 7th in the next quarter, bummed we were and now we took an oath to work harder and moved up we did by the 4th quarter to the 5th position.

Thinking our day is over , I was waiting for the certificates and all but the AIMA people came in and told us we have to play 2 more quarters the next day and then the top 8 would be selected, 4 from each group and then they would have to play another day, fuck it.

The next day , I was the same old pessimistic retard, constantly telling my team mates not to play the game seriously or we would get fucked and that is what exactly was happening, seriousness does not work well with the Bonbon, every time they asked me what position would we come, my reply was 5th, 7th and 5th, I was right twice out of those 3 times. The most important event of the day was Sudip getting a call from KBC to be part of the hot seat and all, while he got the first 2 questions right, the third one stumped him and phussss went his KBC dream.

When the competition ended we were happy just to get the hell out of there and get our participation certificates and of course the food was fantastic, while the other people were getting the prizes for coming into the top 4 per group, we , well I was busy clapping my ass off showing my enthusiasm for no reason at all, content at being the retard of the competition I head back home, head held high, happy at unintentionally ruining my team's chances of doing well, constantly distracting them with my obnoxious laughter and being a total dick.

I tell you this much, even though your company may not do well, you need characters like me just to keep the train chugging along, actually the placement season is about to begin and I need to show any negative aspects as positives so that people do make the mistake of taking me in,jeet ke aaoge? Giggity!.