Communication Training

The next morning, I woke up at five sharp. I was excited to reach the office to begin a new inning in my life. Obviously, I was thinking about a lot of things that could happen on the second day, but I never anticipated what happened on the second day of my job.

The company transport cab reported at six in the morning at my doorstep. I boarded the cab wondering why I was supposed to report so early in the morning. I used to live a good twenty kilometers away from the office and my shift was supposed to start at eight. Even in the worst case, I would have reached office by seven-fifteen! Anyway, I boarded the cab.

Inside the cab, the driver handed me the 'cab roster'. One glance at the roster made it clear why I was supposed to board the cab so early in the morning. Apparently, every cab was supposed to pick eight employees, and I was the first pick up. Darn! Was this supposed to happen everyday? I mean I was not even potty trained for this schedule!

I was new in Delhi. As such, I had no idea where the other freaking pickups were located. The cab driver was looking at me hopefully, as if I was going to direct him to the next pickup. I politely said I am new and he would have to find the pickups on his own. This, as I would realize later (and use to the full possible extent), proved to be a very good tactic. Confusing the cab driver and taking him for a ride always had its benefits. Here, I must introduce a term: Transport delay, or Tardy (pronounced as taar-dee). Tardy was a fool proof excuse for reaching office late without anyone asking any questions.

But this was my second day. So no tardy on this day. I was too innocent to use tardy on this day! But later I ceased to be innocent. Lets come back to the second day.

The driver, as it turned out, was quite experienced in finding out the remotest possible address in south Delhi and report at the employee's doorstep in time. Hummm... nice. Seven pick ups later, and after roaming through the entire south Delhi, we were finally en route to the office. The driver made full use of the empty morning roads. The problem was that they were Delhi roads. Every now and then the cab would jump off the road and throw us in the air, and then we would crash down on our seats with a ball-crushing thud. Girls were better off (I think). This ritual, I think (I still do), did some funny things to my digestive system, besides giving me a ridiculously flat ass. I was tempted to ask my cabbies if they were undergoing the same phenomenon. The driver was speeding beyond one-hundred kmph. The cab felt like an airplane about to take off but couldn't because of the potholes. The cab would appear to a passer by as a horrendous rabbit hopping full speed. Surprisingly, this did not dent the driver's (who... pilot?) ambition to reach office thirty minutes before eight.

A recent study was focused on sexual dysfunction in call center employees. And we are talking about rabbits! Did anyone checked the drivers?

We reached office at seven-thirty am. I thanked the driver for giving me a ride of my life and moved into the cafeteria. Coffee was not required after the spanky ride to the office. I was just looking around to find a face I could recognize.

'Let me guess, you were spanked too?', asked Naina, suddenly popping out from somewhere. I replied,' Yeah, what do you know. But I think I enjoyed it.'

'I kind of knew you were the kinky type', she replied. 'Well, kink is an understatement. After all I have met you!', I said.

'Don't start in the morning,' she said.

Suddenly, I felt like coffee wouldn't be a bad idea after all. I said,' Hey Naina, care for a cup of coffee?' She said,' Yeah, you can bribe me with coffee.'

I closed my hanging mouth and was about to say something when she said,' Forget it, lets just focus on coffee.'

Smart girl. I'll have my chance anyway.

At the coffee shop, a sweet five-feet-two-inches-something girl was engaged in a sweet conversation with the barista. The conversation was going too sweet and there was some mechanical sweetness in the girl's voice that was drawing us to her. She was wearing a crease-less trouser with crimson fitting top with those full-yet-half sleeves. Her posture was a bit too erect, which gave me an impression that she was trying to make up for her height. Her hair were heads-and-shoulders perfect straight and shiny. She had this beautiful news-reader voice, and the choice of her words combined with her voice had a drug-like effect on me. She was trying to order a coffee.

Girl: You know what, I feel like coffee, obviously not like coffee as in I am coffee, but I feel like drinking a hot steamy frothy cup of hard brewed cafe.
Barista: Sure ma'am, what would you like me to serve you with?
Girl: I dunno, how about some latte, you know, a big and large latte. I prefer my morning cup to be a big one.
Barista: Well ma'am I certainly don't have a big on-er-cup for you, but I would brew a nice cup of cappuccino. Its large enough for the morning!
Girl: Aww, that is so sweet. Cappuccino will be perfect, thank you.

The brista started making coffee with trembling hands. Naina and I looked at each other as if contemplating the same thing. I said, 'Wow, that was so sexy!'. Naina replied, 'Yeah, it was. I was aroused!'

The girl, being sweet as she was, came to us for introductions. 'Hi, I am Pooja. I have been hired for the technical stream. what about you guys?'

I said,' Hi, I am Shashank and this is Naina. We are in the technical stream too. This is our second day here.'

'So, you guys have ordered your coffees?'

'No, we were just deriving orgasmic pleasures from your voice.' Naina immediately changed the topic and asked her if she was excited about the communication training. She said she was, took her coffee and left.

'You tactless idiot, you pissed her off. She was a sweet girl.'

'Yes I know. I was just being honest.'

'Honest? You seriously don't expect me to laugh on that, do you?'

Yep.

We got our cappuccinos and went to the training room assigned to our group.

We were a group of four girls and five boys. All curious to meet each other.

Rohit and Sameer were two inseparable friends who, according to them, had decided to do everything in their lives together. So they decided to do their first job together and joined the same company. Rohit was this round faced plump guy who had a never-ending expression of naughtiness on his face. He was always looking to divert almost every conversation into one direction - you know what. Sameer was this six-feet-two-inches tall guy who was un-proportionately slim. He had skinny legs and arms, but a pot-belly and a ridiculous double-chin. Surprisingly, I later learned that girls used to find him cute!

Kunwar Jeet was a Sikh just out from Punjab. He was a typical heart-throw lover who used to fall in love with every single girl that used to cross his way. In fact, he even decided about the name of the kids and their school the moment he saw a girl! He didn't even spare the cleaning ladies.

Nidhi was a bespectacled and confused girl who was too homely and cute to be working. She appeared to me as the perfect house-wife material. She was short, slim, covered to the neck, curly hair, flat shoes, and had a bunny handbag. She had an air of smugness around her that gave an impression that she was contend with her life the way it was. Well, that's good.

I was about to pull the chair next to Naina when I decided against it and instead sat on the next chair. Suddenly, Deeptee came from nowhere and sat in between Naina and me. I said, 'Hi Deeptee.' She replied, 'Hey how are you? Did you sleep well last night? How has been the morning so far? You know I am soo excited to be here. I even had a dream in which I saw all this. You were in my dream too!' Ohh really? Tell me what I was doing. 'Hi Naina, my name is Deeptee. Whats your name? Oops! I just said your name and then asked your name. Silly me.' Yeah, really silly, at least you got that one right! 'So what are you guys doing here?'

Naina was becoming more and more pissed with each question thrown by Deeptee. I was wondering how many questions would make her snap. She was making this weird expression as if she was watching Abhishek Bacchan deep-throat Ajay Devgun. Apparently the last question did it for her. She said, 'What are we doing here? Um mm, lets see... well I am thinking why on earth I am actually answering these questions when I know perfectly well that I can be on a date with Brad Pitt. Shashank here is thinking what to put in your mouth to make you gag so that you can stop. We both are thinking whether its a good idea to jump out of the window as the blabber seems to be never ending.'

A normal girl would have cried after this. But Deeptee, being her, caught the remotest end of Naina's sentences, and told me, 'I am pretty experienced. I will not gag!'

I would have loved to say something corky here. But, as always, at the precise moment, the door of the training room opened. Suddenly, everyone fell quiet. Sherry, our communication tainer entered the room. Her hair were falling on her face as if she was just out of a storm. She entered into the room looking fairly windy. It was a classic filmy setting. Some smoke in the background would have augmented her entry.

Sherry was a plump and pinky lady with a never-ending smile and an ever expanding physique. Her eyes always bore an expression as if someone has just startled her. That day, she was wearing a sort-of frock that was, simply put, in tatters. Probably Armani. She had loose hair and a nice cleavage. She was carrying a big folder with a lot of papers and some sort of spiral-bound books.

Sherry introduced herself to all of us and asked us introduce ourselves with an adjective that should start with the same letter as our name. As an example, she said, 'Simple Sherry'.

'Sample Sherry' rather.

Here's how the introductions went:

Pretty Pooja.
Nasty Nidhi. Really? How Nasty??
Kool Kunwar.
Nice Naina. Numbing Naina rather.

Daring Deeptee. (I was about to ask her if she was a transsexual, but it was my turn).

Sexy Shashank. Encore...

Safe Sameer.How Safe?
Rowdy Rohit.

'See, that was a nice exercise! Now we all know each other ', said Sherry. She then distributed the spiral books to all of us. They were exercise books containing grammar tips and sound drills. Now this was an interesting concept. Sound Drill.

Sherry started our session by explaining us how to modulate our voices to 'neutralize' our accents. We should pronounce 'modem' as modumm and not maudum or modamm.

This clarification made me think of a lot of words that I feel I pronounce in the wrong manner. For example, Massachusetts, Vallejo, Donkey ( its Daunkey and not Dunkey), Monkey (its Munkey and not Maunkey), and so on.

Then came the sound drills...

Sound drills were exercises meant to remove the mother tongue influence from our voices. How that is done is still not clear to me, but performing the drills in the training was a perfect example of how reckless the companies can be when it comes to spending money.

The first sound drill was the Tuh-Tuh drill. This drill was designed to neutralize the hard 'tuh' into a soft 'tuhh'. Sherry told us that each one of us will stand and say tuh tuh tuh... till we die.

Somehow, I was the chosen one to start this riddiculous exercise. I said, 'Do I really need to do this?' Sherry replied, 'Yes sweetheart you do.'

Darn.

I started... tuh tuh tuh tuh tuh tuh......

After five minutes of tuh tuing I refused to go any further. I was red with exauhation. It was Sameer's turn next. Somehow, his tuh's sounded seriously twisted.

We needed a serious break! thankfully, Sherry was pretty generous when it came to breaks. In fact, she used to treat us with lattes every now and then at the coffee shop downstairs.

After a week of tuh tuing (and lots more, such as duh duhing and puh puhing), we started tuhh tuhhing instead of tuh tuing. I still believe it was out of pure exhaution and breathlessness.

Another important 'neutralization' that I learned in the training was the rolling-of-R's.

Sherry told us that we need to roll the R's in the words so that we can be understood by our customers.

For demonstrating how we were speaking after the end of our communication training, I will write the next line in 'neutralized' accent.

Sherrry ensurrred that therrrr is enaufff neutrrrallizaaation in ourrr accents sou that the khustuhmers khud udderstand us withaaout any praablems.

By the end of our fifteen days of communication training, we were ready to talk our way out of tight spots, weird situations, drills, role-plays and numerous other things. Sherry told us that we will become good agents.


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