Vicky does a Star Turn

In the new millenium, one species that rapidly vanished from the corporate workforce has been the Confidential Secretary and 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’, which, if irony had a throne, would be king.

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 worked for two of us in investments. Vicky Carvalho - that was her name - was in a class of her own.  When I first joined the company, a colleague asked who would be the secretary I’d be working with.  “I haven't bothered to find out.” was my response.  “If it is Vicky, it is the only thing that you will be bothered about,” 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 scratched their heads to find out where to begin sorting the mess.   

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 (I am not making this up, honest).  And this was one of her minor errors.    

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 words such as ‘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 breathlessly as if she had just seen a dragon outside the window.

Vicky never walked like mere mortals, instead rushing everywhere as if to convince you of her intention to do a good day’s work.  So, she'd rush up to you and exclaim that she had read the page after printing it out and that it was fine.  Once you swallowed twice, counted to ten, drank some water and let her know where those fifteen mistakes were, Vicky would be look crushed, her face would fall and she would most regretfully say her Sorry sixteen times in rapid succession – one for each mistake, and one for the honey pot.  Her second draft 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 (and he could go rich pink, I promise), she couriered it.  No, she didn't send it to the intended recipient, but to the client against whom we had advised.  The client, of course, had strong views about us writing to someone else about him and let us have those views in clear, precise, thoughtfully-scribbled, richly-endowed, vibrantly adjectivised English what he thought of us.  

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 should have been categorized as Level 3 in the Unmitigated Disaster Index: Vicky would fly into a panic because she understood nothing, would drive others into a panic as well, 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?