Dud Sea Scrawls The Writing, clearly, is not on the wall!

“Sir, What is PAN?” comes the question from one of them immediately after I say that they can see the PAN numbers in the salary slip. Without showing my surprise about lack of knowledge about PAN, I tell them firmly for the second time that I should not be addressed as Sir and everyone is in first name basis in the company. A silent nod is their reply but I can safely bet they will address me like that few more times during the class.

I thought I should take a class to freshers to the project and I had an agenda. I wanted them to know the business behind the project before getting on with the actual work. I usually interact with people with some experience and this is one of the bigger groups I was dealing with at such a starting level.

I explain about PAN and tell them its importance in filing taxes and I say “You should be knowing about tax calculation”. A set of blank faces is what I see. I stop my presentation there and start an open house session. I feel company business can wait and personal things should be taken care of first failing to understand why no one told them about these things in their training. I start explaining to them what different headings mean in their pay slips. Now they are interested. They all open up their pay slips. I tell myself that I should explain them without actually looking at their payslips. I explain them the nitty gritty of taxation and saving schemes. In the end I add that young people like them should look forward to take risk and invest in stock markets or atleast in mutual funds. I catch myself saying the words “Young people like you”. I quickly add that I am 27 and not that old!

Topic moves to projects and suddenly I find that people are more interested to know about places I have seen rather than work done! I tell them to be patient. I see impatience in their faces. They want to get out of their “freshers” tag and want to be market players. Thats understandable. We were like that too. I give them a big lecture about corporate life and suddenly think what experience I have to talk to about that. They are listening . They think I am experienced enough to talk to them and I suddenly feel like an old person!

No one is really interested to listen to my presentation. They have own doubts about the company, about the industry, about the technology, about business. I dedicate a complete session to clear their doubts. I can understand their eagerness to talk to someone who has some experience since they cant ask some of the doubts with HR.
We get on to the actual topic after a long time. For someone like me who never really wanted to handle session with new joinees its been such a nice experience. I have actually started looking forward for the training sessions! May be one day I will fulfill my long standing dream of teaching to primary school kids!