Yellow...! The sunshine color..! On a normal day, I would have liked this color, but on that Friday, it seemed otherwise. I guess it was trying to steal sunshine from my face. (I know there’s not much either!). The yellow color was on my module’s task status report sheet, indicating that our module had come of the soothing green ages and was marching towards burning red.
I tried recollecting all the cheering-up ideas but came up with none, and eventually sent an email to the team, trying to squeeze more out of them. In the professional world, it looked like a ‘cheer-up’ email, but in reality, I was probably hoping that they would willingly screw-up their weekends and work, which was exactly what I was planning for myself.
Friday was running faster than I expected it to. All the pending tasks, those small – little things, which were now looking like a monster to me and spinning around my head. Having dropped the idea of calculating the centripetal and centrifugal forces for the same, I thought of knocking them down one by one or get knocked out. Will they revolve around my head faster, had I had more hair? Stupid question, I thought!
I was really busy (I mean it!), and that’s when the mobile rang. Annoyingly, I picked it up.
“Hello Sir, this is Salil here.” – The phone said.
Salil …! Trying to google it in my mind but in vein for this name, I had to re-look at the phone. Thanks to my phone, it said “Project Trainees”.
I merely replied “Hi”.
“Sir, we have completed our project, we can show you the demo provided you allow us to carry our laptop in your premises. And also we require the certificate from your organization with your signature on it as our project guide.”
Trying to make sense out of what he said, I quickly realized only one thing; I was short of time for all that, especially on the Yellow Friday.
“That’s good news – having completed your project. Can you wait for some more days for the demo and the certificate?” I asked.
I still wonder how could I manage to say that this was good news, I guess because they had done it without much guidance!!
“No, Sir, Actually we have to submit it on Monday,” the phone said.
I was furious … as if I didn’t have any deadlines from my Client, here is one more deadline. Before spitting out my anger on the phone, I paused for a moment. I recalled the submission days and deadlines during my engineering days.
Oh boy, that was a real mess…! My project was for Nylon manufacturing plant, but instead of how Nylon is manufactured, my concern was how to get Nylon binding done for this project submission!!
Having realized the criticality of submission phase of the project trainees, I said – “Come down to the office, I’ll arrange for the certificate today itself”.
Having put my tasks on hand onto the shelf, I arranged for the certificate with HR.
In evening, at about 6 pm, they came. I thought I would just give them the certificate and that would be it.
I was in the elevator, going downstairs, to hand over the certificate, when I thought – “What about the demo? How can I give them the certificate without even making sure that they have indeed completed the project? What if they have not?”
Having realized that my organization’s reputation was at stake, I decided to see the demo, and that meant sacrificing some more TIME!
“How about a demo before I give you this?” I said, showing them the certificate.
“Sir, we haven’t brought the laptop, but we can call up my friend, he will switch it on, connect to internet and we can show you the demo online.”
It meant only one thing to me – more TIME!
“Sounds interesting”, I said. I brought them to my desk.
After some telephonic conversations, finally their site was up and they started giving me screen by screen demo. The reviewer in me took the front-seat replacing the programmer and I started giving them my comments/suggestions.
They had questions and for me it was only one thing – more TIME.
“We have a session related issue, if the user logs-out, he can click back and can still access our site” – one of them asked.
Here comes the bouncer from the minnows, I thought. I googled for the answer in my mind by clicking the imaginary radio button – “pages from my CDAC days.
“You should invalidate the session on log-out.” I replied, trying to dodge the bouncer.
“We are doing that, we are in fact removing the session variables.” – He said. (Yorker, this time.)
“There is some method to invalidate the session”, I dug it out and actually googled it and showed them the method signature.
After few more overs, I was still at the crease, surprisingly!!
“Thank you very much, Sir. That was a great help” – One of them said.
Relieved to a great extent, I handed them the certificate, congratulated them for the good work, wished them good luck and escorted them to office gate.
While going downstairs in the elevator, out of curiosity, I asked “How come you got permission for your project in this organization?”
“Actually Sir, my dad is a close friend of Deepak Sharma!”
(Vice President of my organization – name changed)
Bidding them goodbye, I was thinking only one thing…
“Had I known this fact before, would I have spent even more time on guiding this project on this Yellow Friday?”
The honest answer that came from within is “No” bringing some sense of accomplishment, which really felt good.
Back on my desk, the sheet was still showing “Yellow” but it was somewhat soothing now.......!
