In the last decade, one species
that has rapidly vanished from the corporate workforce is the Confidential
Secretary. These unique specialists now
work only with those who occupy high positions of redundancy in Indian companies. Right until the late ‘90s though, they
existed in strength and were almost entirely alike one another: largely women,
a chatty, gossipy lot, with distinct sartorial tastes, who knew much more than
they should about things like managers’ salaries, transfers of executives, annual performance
ratings, who had said what about whom, and how everyone, no matter the age,
fudged travel bills and the like. Hence
the word ‘Confidential’. Most of them in
Bangalore were Anglo-Indian, Goan or from Mangalore, their convent education and
putative command over English and European customs getting them their job after
a course in a finishing school. As a
class of employees, they were reasonably content with their lot – hardly aspiring
for higher roles in the organisation - and more bothered with leaving the office on
the dot of five and plunging into the domestic and social life around
them.
In the years I spent in the
corporate sector, there were a number of them I encountered, but this piece is
about the secretary who reported to me in my first job. Vicky Carvalho - that was her name - was in a
class of her own. When I first joined
the company, a colleague came up to me and asked who would be the secretary I’d
be working with. “Does it matter?” was
my response. “If it is Vicky, it is the
only thing that matters,” he replied, and, boy, was he right.
Vicky was not just incompetent,
she set new standards in the Science of Incompetence. Her ability to make mistakes – new, creative
ones every week and repetition of old ones every day – was legendary and a
talent, no less, that’d leave lesser mortals gasping for breath as they picked
up the pieces, and her peers gazing in wonder (when the laughter had subsided).
If she had to prepare an expense
statement from a set of bills and saw “In Room Dining Available 24 X 7”
anywhere, she would multiply 24 by 7 and add it to the bill. If you dictated an official letter that she
had to type into the computer, her first draft would have about fifteen
mistakes, including ones that a six-year old would have avoided (such as
spelling ‘the’ in most innovative ways, adding an extra one for good luck or
leaving it out altogether). The letter
in hand, she’d come rushing up to you (she never walked, rushing everywhere
instead as if to convince you of her intention to do a good day’s work) and
exclaim that she had read the page after printing it out and that it was fine,
which, of course, it wasn’t. Well, Vicky
would be adequately chastised and she would most regretfully say her Sorry
sixteen times in rapid succession – one for each mistake, and, what the hell,
one for the honey pot. Her second draft
(after you had corrected the first with patience), would have another fifteen,
since she believed deeply in statistical consistency. And so on.
Her closest friend in office was the bottle of correction ink (which she
called “white fluid” to the endless amusement of a rather wayward
colleague). When you had the final
letter ready, much paper having been churned, she would spill coffee on it, so
that we could begin all over again.
Vicky reserved her best for the
CEO though. Once, when his secretary was
on leave, he asked her to mail a crucial letter to our financial partner,
warning them against dealing with a particular client. Vicky rose to the occasion and generated a
smokestack of drafts, before printing out the final version. After taking the signature of the
now-pink-in-the-face-CEO, she posted it - to the client, instead of our
partner. When the roof came down, our
Lady Mr.Bean was on her annual vacation in Goa.
I began to call her Vicky Doosron
se kaam Carvalho. Wasted, since she
didn’t understand a word of Hindi.
Occasionally, there were tasks of
greater import assigned to her by well-meaning but goofy people, who had just
attended training programs on How to Motivate your Star Employees by Setting Challenging
Goals. The ensuing periods were
traumatic and, had UN representatives been present on the spot, would have been
categorized as Level 3 in the Unmitigated Disaster Index. Vicky would fly into a panic, drive others
into a panic as well (when they were not up the wall), re-do her work about
twenty times, rush off to Goa in between for a friend’s wedding, post a
personal birthday card to a client instead of a bill and call up my
long-suffering CEO on the intercom and ask him to fetch her some tea. My colleague and I were free-loaders in this
entertaining performance, as long as, of course, we did not have any work for
her to do.
Astonishingly, no one really speculated
on just when she’d be asked to resign. She
was a gentle soul, more hapless and confused than anything else and somewhere
in our bureaucratic mess, there was, I suspect, a hefty dose of mis-placed
sympathy which pre-empted such action. “Poor
thing, nobody will employ her,” was the apologetic refrain, one that, I admit,
I heartily disagreed with. Instead, the
organisation gave her minimal salary hikes in the annual review, which she
seemed to cheerfully accept: she would say Thank You about six times, with a
Sorry added in when least required. Most
(including the writer) who did the speculation on the pink-slip-for-Vicky
actually resigned much before that event instead. Yet, one day, the pink slip did arrive at her
desk, much after I had left the organisation (but then, one pursues these
matters with abiding attention). Vicky
reacted very surprisingly, engaging a lawyer to fight for her reinstation or,
in its absence, additional compensation.
My sympathies were clear: the lawyer needed all our emotional support,
for he had to deal with her, possibly everyday.
One can only speculate on the
result of that momentous court battle.
The important question that Civilisation needs to pose to itself instead
is : who typed the legal draft?
