Diggin' for old treasures...

So I have doing a lot and lot of reading lately. Light reading. Funny, witty, roll-with-laughter, and stark real-life funny stories. And I have also just stumbled upon (not accidentally thought, it was deliberate) my treasure chest. Yes the Writings from The Past. During my last school-year I was on writing aphrodisiac. I wrote like a possessed one. I wrote a variety of things- essays, stories, essays that read like stories, songs, poems, letters and whatnot. I scanned through and think although they could do with a little bit updating here and there, they are not totally worthless. I mean like they are still readable. So here goes . today I will post one my ‘humorous ’ pieces. I didn’t think I could crack a funny bone even if my life depended upon it. But I sure did try. So here goes…



Finding A JOB.

During the last summer vacation I decided to take up a part-time job so that by the end of the holidays I would have saved enough money for a beat-up car. I was looking for something easy, that did not require any particular skill such as being a sales rep, or a telemarketer. I sent out my applications beginning of summer and waited patiently for the much awaited letter from the HR department.
When two weeks later all I got in my mailbox were dry and cruel (I thought) rejection letters, I decided to take matters more seriously. This time around I applied to firms and stores left and right, and I made rounds at all the places that had a ‘Vacancy’ signboard, without bothering about what kind of job was being offered. Well you know beggars cannot be choosers and I wanted a car that bad. Finally , I received a few replies. An envelope from ‘Harrow and Rhodes’ caught my attention as it was a publishing-cum-retailing venture just a few blocks away from where I lived. I like to think I have it in me something literary, so I was instantly interested (not just enough because they asked for interview, my interested rose to hysterical heights because they were in the literary world.). I made an appointment to meet the owners the very next day. It’s a small venture I told you, so owners were the HR people.
The office was in the fifth-floor of a rusty corner building that had been around since the beginning of My Time. Needless to say I was excited and nervous as it was my first job interview. I ran up ten flights of stairs, panting, knocked on the heavy oak main door, and breezed inside after I heard a muffled but somber-voiced ‘Come in’. they two men sitting on the other side of the dark mahogany desk were interchangeable in terms of clothes and they expression they wore on their faces. Dressed in shabby, oversized Sunday suits of their grandfather’s era the two men took turns to ask me four very routine questions. They took down my name and address and asked me if I could join from the next day. I was glad (and a little relieved) they hadn’t pressed on knowing about my skills and qualifications and I obliged happily.
The nest morning, the two men who might as well have been twins with two different surnames, lead me to an inner room inside the office, where I was to perform my operations. It appears I may have misjudged their enterprise; for as small as they were they could afford a fully-functional air-conditioned office with expensive (albeit century-old) furniture and room fittings, a fax machine, a scanner, printer, IBM computer. I was then told about my responsibilities: to keep records of daily sales and publishing information. I was to enter them into the computerized system after I received all the necessary paper receipts from the different departments. Before leaving me with my work, the two men said, in chorus, they were very strict about record-keeping and did not approve of miscalculations or slack offs.
My knowledge of computers up until then had been limited to playing games that came along with it, like card games etc. but I was confident I could at least type down the names of the writers, books, and the ISBN, and the date of sales, etc. I finished the first day of work by just looking at the previous records, and getting to know the environment and came back home already feeling good about a fat pay cheque at the end of the month.
My actual work began the next day. After lunch I got the receipts of the day’s-sales-so-far. I opened the particular file and punched in the serial number SL61…..er…what were the other digits? Oh No! my receipt fell on the ground. In an attempt to pick it up quickly, I knocked down my coffee mug and spilled the contents onto the shiny keyboard. I got tripped in one of the many wires coming out of the CPU, and by the time I understood what was happening there were alarming sounds coming from all directions. I jumped back , startled at all the sparks. Harrow and Rhodes came running the corridor and called for reinforcements to take up safety precautions. They kept giving my fiery glances and I was ashamed. I fired myself before actually being fired by the Twins. I walked out of that wretched old building, and that was the end of my summer career. My dreams of the beat-up car started to become more n more vague. Ah well…some time in future…