When I was in Lowe, I had an opportunity to meet up with one of the most cunning fellow's in the whole wide world. He was our office boy Vinay.
He has been here since eternity and if you want to learn how to con people then he is your man. He can easily be the dean of the prestigious University of Con.
People in the agency who have never ever used an excel sheet in their life are experts now, thanks to Vinay because if they don't keep a tally on it then trust me, their salary is going to get over much before its usual time. But even then after taking all these precautions, we ended up being coned.
There are a lot of stories, the most famous is the Biryani one, Every now and then Vinay offers chicken biryani to us. On those days half of the population of crows of Basavangudi goes missing.
In advertising, we hardly get time to eat, so it becomes difficult for us to have a rain check on our lunch timings.
Vinay saw this opportunity and started to provide thalis in our office. The thali usually consisted of a portion of rice, one sabji, pampad, curd and sambar. He used to get the food from the local restaurant and serve them to everybody. By special request, he would also get other items such as biryani from Koshy's or Chinese from Chung wah. As alway's in an ad agency, the creative floor gets the food first, followed by the finance department and last but not the least the servicing, planning guys usually are treated indifferently as there were very few of us. yes yes however I hate to say this, we are at the bottom of the pyramid.
Now if for any reason a person in the servicing team annoyed dear Vinay, he made sure that the person would be the last one to get the thali without any pampad and sabji, in fact, he would be lucky to get sambar. It was no point shouting at him because he would just listen to you and put your name in his infamous diary. From that day onwards you will be in his list of specials. He will take extra care to extract as much dough as possible from you. You keep on fighting, shouting and doing whatever you want, he won't budge.
Vinay had a trusted team of lieutenants. Some times due to unimaginable requirements by our clients, we are required to send them creative proofs at unholy hours. Obviously, the office boys saw an amazing opportunity and always demanded extra money to take the stuff. The protocol was the auto fare along with food/quarter if it is after 9 pm. Only cash was exchanged so it was necessary for all the servicing people to ensure that they always had the proper amount of cash with them. It is said that Vinay was the mastermind behind this extortions by the office carrier boys. I am pretty sure that he gets a cut out of it.
I had a client named Rohit, he was the brand manager for Nutrichoice in Britannia. A very sweet and dedicated person who always had his own creative input on everything which we presented (which annoyed my creative team). One day he was driving back from a party with a little bit of booze running through his bloodstreams and unfortunately got caught by the cops. His licence was taken from him and he was asked to collect it from the court with a heavy fine. I don't know how but Vinay got hold of him and promised to get back his license. From then on Rohit was on a rollercoaster ride. Vinay took some money from him to get the job done and he didn't do anything for the next 5 day's, Rohit called him in vain and Vinay true to his legendary style never picked up his phone. Rohit panicked and called me and asked me to intervene. Now I was in a catch 22 situation, I didn't want to upset Vinay and lose one decent meal of the day and on the other hand, didn't want to upset my client and get kicked out of the agency, so I went to Vinay and spoke to him in my most polite manner. He said it's happening, I asked when? he said to wait for da, don't worry macha, but if you want me to do it faster then you have to pay me some pocket money or a quarter. Trust me I didn't mind paying the money but I needed a guarantee. So I promised him that I would give him a quarter if he got the job done in the next day and miraculously Rohit's licence was on his desk at 9 am in the morning.
I am sure that all the people in the agency must be having similar experiences with Vinay. The only person whom Vinay fears in the agency is Krishna, our beloved HR manager. Only he knows how to handle him. All the new people who join the agency are cautioned and still, they become victims of Vinay's cunning. But when I think of it, I have to thank Vinay because had it not been for him, I would have never learned excel.
Although he seems to be a complete villain, he is actually not a bad person, he is just cunning and he knows how to maximize and utilize situations, which actually proves that he is smart. For him making a living and supporting his family is not easy through just a simple job and I salute his spirit, all said and done Lowe will never be the same without him.
Although he seems to be a complete villain, he is actually not a bad person, he is just cunning and he knows how to maximize and utilize situations, which actually proves that he is smart. For him making a living and supporting his family is not easy through just a simple job and I salute his spirit, all said and done Lowe will never be the same without him.
