If there was anything that
irritated Aniket about coming to work it was the office tower lift. The
building had four lifts, all situated three meters apart from each other. What
Aniket found oddly funny about the lift were the names given them. Gold,
Silver, Bronze and Platinum as if the employees needed to earn their position
to use a particular lift. But that was not what was the cause of irritation for
him. In spite of having four lifts, all of them were supremely busy all through
the day taking a hell lot of time to reach the ground floor or the top floor.
Employees would use the lift for travelling from one floor to another and
another set would then get in to come down to some other floor due to which the
lift would reach the ground floor after almost an age. What added to the
irritation were the ones who travelled by their private cars and after parking
it in the building basement would travel by lift from either, B1 or B2, the two
basement car parks level.
As Aniket stood there that morning
waiting for at least one lift to reach the ground floor, he looked at all four
closely. Just when the bronze lift reached the ground floor, the indicator
showed the downward signal. The lift would go down first and then come to the
ground floor again and then proceed up.
“That would take almost an age. I
can have a nap during that time.” He joked to his Colleague, Vikas.
Aniket Joshi worked in the Data
Analytics department of the company as an executive. In spite of being as young
as twenty-three, he had jumped from being an intern to an executive at lightning
speed. With exceptional Data analytics, Microsoft excel and power point talent,
Aniket had become quite famous on the floor and regularly helped people with MS
Excel formulas, Macros and his latest skills on Power BI. Having worked for one
and half years with the company, he enjoyed his work and the company too,
except the lift though. There was hardly any hiccup for Aniket during his one
and half year duration at the company but off late his new reporting manager,
Brinda Parekh was giving him some tough time.
Brinda Parekh was a
twenty-six-year-old ambitious girl who worked as Data Analytics- Assistant
Manager. Though she was quite good at her work and had earned praise for her
contribution to the team, one aspect that stood as thorn for her was Aniket. It
had become quite routine for Aniket to pin point lose ends in Brinda’s files
and that too in front of the entire team during meetings. He would end up
suggesting better methods and formula logics to get the desired results at
faster and optimum speed. His exceptional talent in Advanced Microsoft Excel
often made him forget that he was talking to his seniors and this trait of his
had often put him in trouble.
“Never show your reporting head as
wrong to others.” His colleague Vikas would suggest to which Aniket would
hardly pay any heed.
However, being immature and
inexperienced had its own cost and Aniket would often pay that cost by getting in
the bad books of Brinda. That week too was no different. Aniket was working on
an assignment for some five days and Brinda was continuously following up for
the final file. Being the perfectionist that Aniket was, he never gave
incomplete files. The assignment had two parts. One was preparing a MS-Excel
working file from the huge volume of data that was extracted from the
operations software and subsequently preparing a dynamic Dashboard presentation
that would be presented to all the heads of the Data Analytics team. The
assignment was important for Aniket as that would provide him an opportunity to
be exposed to all heads of his department, from senior managers to VP.
Routinely, he would reach his seat
by nine thirty and Brinda would arrive by ten. In spite of working till late
night, there was still some patch work to be completed with the auto dashboard
file. He looked at the time and it was 09.35. The meeting was scheduled for 10
30. He realized that he would easily complete the file by 10.00 but his
headache was Brinda, who would arrive at 09.45 and ask for the files to be
mailed to her. She would yell on him if he replied that he was still closing
the loose ends. Shrugging aside his thoughts, he continued to work on the file
at rocket speed without looking up even for a second. He looked at the watch
and it was 9.40. He immediately called up Vikas at his desk.
“Vikas, Listen. Go to the lift and
press all the buttons from 1 to 6 of all the lifts.”
“What? Have you gone crazy? I’m not
going do such crazy stuffs for you?”
“I will make you a MS- Excel expert
within a month. It’s a deal. Now please proceed.”
That was quite a lucrative deal for
him. Vikas had his seat near to the floor entrance. He immediately ran out to
the floor lobby and pressed for the first lift. It had just arrived. It opened
up and people came out of it. He entered the lift and looked towards the floor
security who were busy with sorting some keys in the key block of the floor. He
did as was told as he pressed the buttons of the all the floors. He immediately
walked to the next lift and did the same. The other one was on the fifth floor.
He gave a run to the fifth floor and just managed to reach before it was about
to close. He pressed all the floor buttons again. The fourth one had left the
fifth floor and was approaching the sixth floor. He immediately ran up again to
the sixth floor and waited for the occupants to empty the lift and then finally
concluded his part.
At the same time, on the ground
floor of the building, Brinda looked at all the lifts in extreme rage.
“What the hell is going on?” she
uttered to herself.
“Why are the lifts so slow today?”
She closely observed that one by
one all the lifts were halting on the fifth floor and then the fourth floor.
She was terribly irritated. She looked at the stairs but considering that she
had to walk to the sixth floor, she kept aside the idea and waited for one of
the lifts to arrive at the ground floor.
The clock on the ground floor
showed 10.05 and finally the first lift, Gold, arrived. But there were too many
people by now wanting to get in and Brinda couldn’t enter as the lift had
surpassed maximum carrying capacity. She waited for the next one and
immediately got inside. Finally at 10.15, Brinda reached her seat. There was
one Power point print out on the table and a pen drive with a note on it.
“All files mailed and also stored in
the pen drive and power point print out kept on your table.
Going for a quick coffee. Will be at the
meeting on time.”
At the floor cafeteria, As Vikas
filled in his coffee mug, Aniket had a 360-degree smile on his face.
“What’s the smile for?” Aniket
asked as he sipped his coffee.
“The building lift isn’t that bad.
Is it?”
