Kings & Automatons.. Is it?

It is a chilly winter night. Pranav is having his favorite mocha at Senso, the much famous coffee shop of Imperial Palace hotel. Waiter recognizes him and along with coffee puts in Brazilian coffee beans on his table. Pranav along with his friends is enjoying his mocha, bitter, to his liking. They are planning their holidays. Pranav is thinking do I deserve this holiday or what? He reflects back to past month or so. He is tired. And right now all his tiredness is being given proper attention. He is relaxing. This coffee breaks and some quality time with his friends heals his fatigue and helps in fighting the all rising stress levels. 

He finishes his coffee and all the friends decide to call it a day and retire to their home. Pranav comes out of hotel and for a microsecond tries to remember in which vehicle he came. He remembers its maruti car today. He ponders for a while the funniness of him traveling in all sorts of vehicles everyday. Sometimes he has Activa, sometimes its bike and other times it’s either one or other car. He is about to open his car door and someone calls him from behind. He turns back and is pleasantly surprised to find his old friend Hitesh. All the college days are flashed in front of him in a minute and he gives him a tight hug. “Saala Hitu, Where were you all this years?”

 

“Hey!! Pattu, Nice to see you after all this years yaar!! I am with Infosys in banglore. What about you?”

Pranav released hug and looked at his friend from top to down. “I… I am just looking after my dad’s established business. Actually, that’s the answer I used to give 1 year back. Now I can confidently say that I am taking my father’s business forward.” Hitesh’s other friends take their leave. Hitesh says good night to all of them and turns back to pranav. “Hey, pattu its been long time. Care for a cup of coffee with old timer? That is if you are not in a hurry.”

“Sure, it is 11.30 and your bhabhi is away at her mom’s place so I guess we can have 2 hours to ourselves.”

Both of them, head back to senso. Same waiter finds them again and gets the same table for them. After exchanging some niceties and catching up with each other for all the missing time they drifted to some serious matter.

Hitesh had a sip of his second mocha and said “Well the job I have got is nice one with all the perks and good salary but nothing like you. Whatever I do upto certain extent it is always fixed income. Timings are mundane although our company tries to keep flexible hours but at the end of the day you have to punch certain amount of hours and at the end of the month you got to punch certain amount of days to get your basic pay. We don’t have overtime income. Yeh sure we have a performance bonus but to achieve that is next to impossible. This all job thing sucks. Businesses are always better. You can do whatever the hell you want to do. You have your own set of timings and you are not expected to put in x number of hours in a day. Plus you decide your own profit margin and if you are really ambitious you can work really hard without seeing time or effort and you are guaranteed to get better profits. For you people it’s always profits and for us jobbers it is always pay scale. Probability of making fortune is very high with you people and it is almost non existent with us. In addition you decide holidays on your own and don’t need to depend on your boss’s mood. Your line of work makes you risk-takers and more often then not if you have decent mind up there, your risks pays off well. We are extremely restricted in taking risks especially financially. That mentality carries off in other decisions of life as well. We always want to play safe. We always want to play in fixed income that we are sure of getting. In one line I can say that you are the modern day "Kings" and we are mere tools designed to do a specific job like Automatons.” He then had another sip of mocha and sat back in the chair. 

Pranav’s thoughts were taken to ride by Schumacher. He was thinking if only hitesh knew about my last month or so he wouldn’t have made such remarks. He called waiter, ordered for third refill of his mocha, took one last big sip of his second refill and started. “Ok.  Stop there buddy I got what you are saying. Now, here me out. You think we businessman are on top of the world with no worries and all the good things only. You are mistaken my friend. Yes I agree with you that we get to make our own decisions sometimes but it’s all not that rosy as it seems to you.” Waiter came and refilled Pranav’s cup. 

“I will tell you just about myself, what all I went through with as businessmen in last month. It all started with passing of our cc in our bank. I was ecstatic. First thing I did was I paid off all the long standing dues of my creditors then the recession hit us hard. We had very little work. Nothing problematic mind you but enough to create jitters. Almost all our debtors said they want be able to release payment which was a very bitter pill to swallow for so called modern day Kings. Then also we kept on working managing to pay up worker’s salary from savings. Then one day income tax department notice came to pay up Rs. 42000 as tax for 1981-82 of my grandfather. We are not sure whether my grandfather’s total yearly income ever reached that figure. But we paid up because we wanted that thing to close. Then as on queue sales tax notice came for giving bill of lading for all sales that we had done against “H” form for year 04-05. We started working on that before we can finish that, a notice came from department of statistics to submit some weird survey data whose head and tail didn’t make any sense. Anyhow we found out an eccentric consultant who filled up survey for us and we submitted thinking thank god atleast we are through with one thing but no sir, that was not the case, some officer called up from that department and asked why we did not choose him for completing survey and choose someone else. Then he said he needs to recheck whole survey again and make report of it. So now “King” is confused and tired and is having all sort of brain stretching sessions with that officer. In between all this “King” needed to file monthly VAT online returns for his companies and submit stock statements and debtors list to his bank. Which he does dutifully. And of course it was December so 2^nd quarterly advance tax was to be paid for all the pan holders. After completing all that “King” was thinking to take easy for a while but how can he do it as central sales tax department decided that they too will make their return submission online. Hurray!! :) Of course that too from 01/07/08 that is 6 months back. So here goes “King” in battlefield with all his weapons. he somehow laboriously fills all the returns of cst online. Now as its New Year factory inspector remembers the “King” and pays visit to his factory. No matter what you do he is not satisfied with the way you keep workers and safety equipments. Inspector is worried why there is no updated list of items in medical kit. Why there is no contraceptive material for men in first aid kit. Why expiry dates are not updated of tincture and Metacin. Finally you call up your factory act consultant and he talks with inspector and he leaves after saying he is satisfied. Next day factory act consultant visits you saying that we need to pay 5000 to inspector sahib. As we paid up last year. ’King’ doesn’t like it but he has to pay up”

 

Pranav takes a breather and a sip from his 3^rd mocha. He is not happy with the taste, he calls waiter and explains whatever was wrong. Cup was instantly changed. He sips from new cup and is satisfied with the current cup. Then he continues. “You know Hitu, all the above things I told you is besides actual business I do. :) I wonder if jobbers need to worry about any of these things besides their actual job. See, my friend I am in no way undermining the work you do but sometimes it’s difficult to handle some tasks that are actually no business of yours. You said something about flexible times here I would ask you only one question, how many times you have gone and worked on holidays? I bet not as much as “King”. You said it’s always about profit the flip side here is that whether I get work of Rs 10 or 1000000 I need to pay my workers. I need to pay even if they are sitting out entire day because of non availability of work. Even with the profit everything goes back in business whatever excess you have earned. Yes you can satisfy some of your fantasies but after that it’s back to business. “Kings” have hard time switching on and off in business maters. How many jobbers would take the tension of work home after office hours? I guess it depends ultimately on the person but if you work out ratio it will come somewhere round 10:1. i.e. businessmen : jobbers. Don’t worry I don’t carry my work tensions home. :)  In 95% of jobs, jobbers are not required to do anything else then their main of subordinate job. In other words they don’t have to do what they are not suppose to do. For “Kings” scenario is different, they are suppose to do everything whether they like it or know whether they are suppose to do or not and sometimes whether they know about it or not. Lastly I would like to comment on your understanding of risk. I do believe it’s always a good risk to take if the safety net is firmly in place. Jobbers, atleast have some sense on safety net then businessmen. They don’t need to worry about their basics as long as they satisfy their employment needs. There are many things other than that I have described but its really getting late and maybe when we meet some other time we will discuss them.”

Hitesh finishing his coffee said “Ya I guess so, I have never thought about business in such manner. It’s astonishing to say the least. I have some questions and counter arguments to some of your thoughts but as you said it’s really getting late. What I would do is I will leave COMMENT on your thoughts. I am sure other people will also have their COMMENTS for your views. Got to go now, see you around and keep in touch.” Hitesh gets up having his last sip of coffee. Meanwhile waiter comes with the bill and Pranav takes out his wallet but hitesh is faster he blinks and says “Jobbers are not as bad as you think” He pays the bill with sufficient tip and hurries out of the café.