Well I’m not attempting to do a McCormack here..but just wanted to share an essential feature that we overlook at the best B-School in APAC. What I’m gonna talk bout is ‘Table manners’....the reason being ..that i’ve recently had to change gears from being a carefree student to a pseud (if i spell this one wrong...it’s only coz this word never existed in my dictionary) i-banker....and that transition is becoming a li’l more difficult for me to absorb than the overnite 35 degree drop in temperature...which happened when i moved in from peak kolkata summers to peak Sydney winters.
Ok so how difficult is it to expect a person to adapt to situation 2 from situation 1 –
Situation 1 –
Scene location: Dorm 4, top floor, IIM A
Context: 15 hungry inmates....awaiting delivery of a consignment of assorted paranthas ordered from a local restaurant...all in their rooms ... the environment is as calm as can be.
Ok..now the parantha man comes up to the 2nd flr and calls out for one of us....and then suddenly..those privileged to be a part of the 2nd floor spring out of their rooms (1st floor guys flollow suit..) and dart at the delivery guy as if a vulture had found its prey..and before the guy would know what hit him...he would be standing in a lone corner with a bill in his hand with no takers for the same ...and off course the paraanthas would by now have been half eaten...or should I say devoured .. in a fashion that would be best understood by ppl who have seen the scene in Amitabh and Hema Malini’s “Satte pe Satta” where 7 men hit out for the food....but guess what..food never tasted better....i guess we guys are used to competition everywhere....and we kinda love it!!!
..oh ya..an important fact that I missed...I am one of the 15...and spent my 2 years in Dorm 4 ..on the 2nd floor
Situation 2 –
Scene location – The most expensive steakhouse in Sydney city....basically meant for the corpos who can gobble as much at their company’s expense...on account of client entertainment.
Context: My boss includes me in for a team lunch...basically hosted by his boss who has come down from overseas.
Ok...now assume that the parantha guy is transformed into a waiter who comes upto you to carefully handover an exotic looking menu and is careful to place it on teh right side of the table... First..u better say ‘thank you very much’....else.u are the odd man out...( am just wondering how the parantha guy wud’ve taken to such courtesy...). Ok so now u have the menu with u...u open it...u go thru it once...and then once more...and then u wish u had taken the german class back at IIM A a li’l more seriously...coz u wud’ve understood the menu better....but just then u realise that the full menu is in english. WOW!!! So now u are stuck in a situation where u see the rest of the gang carefully explaining to the waiter what they want...and how they want it cooked , and u have no clue of whether what is mentioned in there is food..or something else. And top that with the fact that u’re a veggie. ( I wud’ve felt more comfortable doing stochastic calculus..than placing my order). Now the waiter comes to u...in the faintest possible voice u ask the waiter if he has something vegetarian...hoping that he would suggest something and all u wud do is say “ yeah..that sounds grt ..get me that..” and get out of the muddle. But no ..this is a steakhouse that has 4 veg dishes !!!...so he points to the 4 dishes...and u are forced to take a 3rd look at the cryptic symbols....whew!!!
Anyways..u go for the safe option and ask him to get what he feels is the best. He finally leaves...u think u managed to survive the battle....but no dear...the WAR has just begun. So as it happened with me..10m later when we were busy drinking wine( something i’m relatively more comfortable with) and I was trying to desperaely to show that I was understanding all of what was being discussed...the waiter comes and deposits a small dish on my table and walks off. So 9 faces staring at me and the dish now. I look down and see something that resembles a scoop of cream over some neatly cut carrots and some other stuff which did not look so veggie veggie to me...also I thought that the helping was too small to constitute lunch. I waited for the others to get served...but lo..the waiter never returned... So helpless as I was I took the fork ( assuming that the dish was veg.) and was about to dig into it...when the waiter comes running to me and asks me if I had ordered the’xyz’ dish...i hadn’t the faintest idea of what I’d ordered...forget what was on my plate. Sooner than later he realised that he had served the dish to the wrong table ( and later I heard dat its main ingredient was pork)...Survived that one !!!
Ok now the waited comes in again and serves brown bread and butter for starters. This looked easy. But aah it wasn’t. As luck would have it I started on the bread that was kept on my right hand side( next to my super boss who was busy talking to take notice). Then suddenly he( s. Boss) looks to his left and then to his right...and poor guy realises that there’s no bread for him. And then I realised that we’re supposed to consume the one on our left....just wondering whether I wud’ve ever got a bite of a paraantha if I were so careful....Neways I managed to swallow this one too. I had to ...coz there was more coming...I could sense it !!!
Next comes the main course. Mine had loads of brocolli and other Ghaans phus..they expected me to eat dat...and dat to wid a fork n knife... I desparately tried to find a substance on my plate which was easily eatable with the stainless steel instruments...but off course..I was destined to be the joker on the table for the day...how would there have been any....
So where I saw everyone else eat with utmost comfort..I wud sometimes try and gobble in a large piece of ghanns phus and then like a cow ..munch and munch and wait for the entire piece to go into my mouth. It was hard..but I cudn’t complain...infact I smiled and even made polite conversation simultaneously... man..some steep learning curve I would call this!!!
So anyways twas time for desserts..and though things looked tempting..I wanted to avoid uncertainty of any kind...so I ordered a latte....and nothing went wrong with that!!! (flashback over...back to the present now )
So the point here is that why is this not a part of a ‘soft skills’ course at IIMA. We do every possible quantitative model in the book to be able to prepare us for i-banks...but what we forget is that there’s a very high weightage given to such soft skills outside academic life. This definitely needs a lot more attention espl. If one goes overseas..and atleast 1/3 of our batch does that. Maybe we could start with using knife and fork for the paraanthas...only I’m a li’l scared that we would be using them to get to the paraanthas ..than to actually eat ‘em.
