So you have done the job, made all the needed / imaginary / uncalled for / unwarranted changes and have satisfied everyone – from the boss, to the hanger-on’s in his chamber, to the liftman ? Great. Now prepare to look guilty and cringe before everyone – from the liftman upward as you prepare to present the bill. Overnight, the looks will change into glares and even the receptionist while filing her nails will subject you to her choicest treatment of utter disgust as if you are some leper who’s walked in unrestricted, begging bowl, rancid smell, et all, as she looks up at the framed notice on the wall behind her “Beware of Assholes bearing Bills”
The Boss, will naturally be either travelling or in endless “meetings”. Calls to his cell phone will go unanswered as unknown to you, the ringtone associated to your name has already been changed to “debtors” and put on the DND mode. He will be sitting in his office playing Farmville, yet, you will be told that he’s in a meeting: that in American parlance involves matters as grave as “National Secrurity” – something akin to Obama being cloistered in the war office, monitoring the seals strike on Bin Laden.
After a couple of months of this rigmarole, the accountant will be kind enough to grant you audience, only to show you six quotations for the same work ranging from 2 to 10 percent of what you have billed. This off course, will be after, he informs you that your bill has been misplaced (probably when the office was being renovated) and buying time as you have to go back and resubmit everything in triplicate along with the necessary supporting documents. He will look at you through incredulous eyes and even complement you for getting life easy, fleecing honest clients as it were. The haggling will start and your feeble arguments will be hit for repeated sixes. He will then ask you to be “reasonable”, pointing out the fact that it will be against his grains to present the bill, which is “so obviously abnormal and inflated to a point of being unacceptable” to the boss. “But the amount was mutually agreed upon” you will try to interject, to which you will be subjected to a mild rebuke “the Boss is like that. Do as I tell you, as otherwise, you will never get to see the cheque with the black hole of disagreement sucking everything in”. And this, he will tell you in the most conspiring voice, as if he the Executive Dairy that he expects from you at the beginning of the year has literally made him sell his soul to your cause. Even as you reluctantly sign on the “reworked” (read mercilessly slashed bill that does not even cover your costs) he will, smiling ear to ear, extend a Subscription Form for the Little Magazine that his co-traveler in the local train edits, or an advertisement form for his para puja.
Then, all of a sudden (blame your cursed luck) the economy will go on a tailspin. The tight money situation will dwell upon the economy and despite the best intentions; the client will be forced to put your bill on the backburner as their revenue sources will dry up. Yes, this is the time when the boss will be uploading the pictures of his swank new car in Facebook, if not the pictures of him chatting up the gals in the most exclusive night spot in Dubai! Some bloody damn economy, that.
Then one day, after many frustrating pilgrimages to the office of the client, you will be informed that the financial situation has improved only “slightly” and that considering your “preferred partner” status, the boss has instructed that “a part” of your bill (of whatever bit it was slashed to) is cleared at the earliest. Yes, at this point, the entire office will look at you with expecting eyes – not only will a party be the order of the day, but you will also be expected to grovel before each one of them in total subjugation, if not do the “Lungi Dance” in sheer joy.
I am sure you are not naive enough to think that to be the end of the troubles. For right after the so-called situation improves (“despite the best efforts of a spineless Prime Minister having subjected the Nation to policy paralysis, a videshi bahu who has decamped with the family jewels and the need to vote for the Gujarat Model” the Boss will tell you with an obvious air of intellectual superiority) the cheque signing authority – someone you have never seen in office – will go for his annual holidays abroad, putting another three helpless months between you and your cheque.
Will you get your cheque after three months then? Hardly, for after the gentleman returns, the bank will close down the branch in which the account of your client was maintained, leading to another bout of delays. After that, it will be the turn of the accountant to go on leave – his mother choosing to pass on to the netherworld, the day before he was to prepare your cheque.
This will be followed by the Kolkata version of Murphy’s Law coming into play: “Everything that can go wrong will be made to go wrong” and the company will run out of leaves in its cheque book. With the “damn foreign banks” mailing their cheque books from Madras these days: that will be another month of delays, if you are inordinately lucky!
But you have no reason to celebrate the arrival of the cheque book, for at this point, you will be asked to file papers (all certified true copies by a Gazetted Officer or a Party Leader or your Bank’s Manager, preferably Notarized) including your Father’s Death Certificate, your Voter ID card, Trade License, Professional Tax receipt and the like. The more “evolved” the client’s office, the more papers they will ask for, the probability of them “unearthing” discrepancies going up in direct proportion to the number of supporting documents demanded.
Then after a long 9 months and 10 days after the cheque is delivered, you will notice that either the name of your company is spelled wrongly or that the amount differs in figures and words. Drop that pittance (after the one month delayed date on which it was drawn) in the Bank and wait for the dreaded call – for inevitably, the office security guard will call you and ask you to hold back stating “paucity of funds”. And, even after they give you the go ahead, the cheque will bounce and you will realise that the amount that was not credited after all the ordeal was not even enough to cover the bank charges!
“So you want to be on your own as you are confident of your creativity” my father had asked way back when I was taking the plunge. “My son, take up a job. For you will see that while being creative is good, the running around you have to do to sustain yourself will be killing. However creative you are, much more creative people are out there waiting to take you for a walk up the garden path.” Wish I had paid heed to his words.
– Chawm Ganguly
You can follow me in Twitter: @CharmChawm