April 9th, 2012. History repeated. This time my dad accompanied me again. Been to all the formal occasions of his son, convocation, college admissions... why leave internship? And I thought maybe from today I would walk like a “grown-up” professional in my hometown! Poor me and my pipe dream!
Though he assured me that morning that he won’t make me feel uncomfortable and only escort me to Cafe Coffee Day’s Kolkata office, my premonition had already extrapolated him(courtesy his earlier behaviours on similar occasions) meeting the supervisor or HR before leaving and introducing me, and I staring at them like a dumb Einstein. No point arguing with a retired Sales Manager, he was more eager on that morning to market his product (me) than I was for my experience. It all transpired as I had imagined. In retrospection, he was natural in his expectations as a father: being the financer of the two year course and fortunate enough to have his son located in his hometown for summers.
After a brief interaction with the HR manager, a guy named Rajdip presented himself, informing me that I would be working with him and Arun, the marketing head for east. After induction, the trainer instructed that it being my first day, I needed to spend time in a CCD outlet. Now came the awkward part. Since I would be spending time behind the counter at the outlet, I should dress like a cafe staff (called employees colloquially). I was handed a CCD staff uniform which I stuffed into my bag.
After I reached the nearest outlet, a staff greeted me with a smile that vanished soon as he saw me approaching the counter. After talking with the cafe manager, I was shown the change room. As I was changing my clothes, one staff got in and started his litany of curious enquiries. I had a hard time making him understand that I am a summer intern. Somehow he could not digest the idea, eyed me suspiciously like a competitor and then left the room. The next couple of hours I was behind the counter, dressed in that black and purple outfit, observing the cafe interiors and the beautiful faces. Amidst all these, I was fighting an uncanny affinity to stay in that outfit, boss around (the staff were addressing me as Sir!) and take pride every time a customer stepped in and the conflicting willingness to divest off the uniform, reveal my well-ironed formals and tell the visitors that I do not work here but a management intern on a visit.
The next day, in a meeting with Arun and Rajdip in the conference room, all my dreams of developing marketing ideas in corporate boardrooms vanished into thin air as I was told to do CMC(Cafe Moments Card) sales in high-footfall cafes in Kolkata for some days. The card’s benefits were explained to me in that meeting by Arun. Living up to the definition of conference room as the place where everybody talks, nobody listens and everybody disagrees later on, I had nodded my head several times perfunctorily with little attention hoping Arun would hand me a nice brochure after his oration where everything said would be written. But when Arun got up after giving me a target of 10 cards sale per day and started leaving the room after wishing me luck, I realized that I didn’t catch the drift. Rajdip read my perplexed expression, and after Arun left, briefed me the card details again. He advised me to choose any mall outlet for the first day of sales work.
Before bidding goodbye to the alluring ACs and stepping out to the sultry heat, I mustered some courage and managed to ask Arun about the travel expenses reimbursement policies for interns (always get butterflies in the stomach for discussing such issues). Acquainted with Rajdip’s considerate nature, I went on to ask him the pressing question I was struggling with: “When should I exactly approach the customer after he enters the cafe?” I still remember the way he beamed at me and said: “Being a marketing student, you should be able to able to find it out yourself!”
The sales experience was a blessing. I tried a variety of waiting positions in the cafe: standing behind the counter, seated at a table and sometimes just standing in a corner trying to figure out whom and when to approach for card sales. At times I felt like a good-for-nothing manikin and the seated customers wondering: “What is that guy over there doing? Standing and doing nothing?” People say when one door closes, another opens, but for my first few sales attempts the second, third, fourth...all doors kept slamming in too. After some failures, I got comfortable with a sales pitch that sounded like “Good Afternoon Sir/Madam, I’m from the marketing team of CCD and we have launched a card as you can see here (pamphlet was kept on each table). Using this you can blah blah and blah, so would you like to take one?”.To get a hold on this blabbering, I practiced it sometimes in the mall restroom mirror taking care to see nobody was around and not surprisingly, made a fool of myself twice when a sweeper saw me.
Gradually I figured out I was more successful with single customers, okay with couples but terrible with groups. Some customers had their quaint ways and idiosyncrasies. One old man I approached, discussed everything but the card, two old ladies treated me like an obstinate child - assuring they would surely buy one next time, most couples saw me sympathetically as the hapless salesperson they could perhaps make happy and one corporate guy came up with an ingenious complain about an outdated card. The freakiest cases were the already-approached-and-refused customers who simply avoided gazing at me, fearing I would catch them again.
After the 4th day, when I reported to office, Arun seemed impressed as I had managed to sell 12 cards (as if he knew 10x4 days=40 sales target was impossible!). In the enthusiasm of sharing insights with him, I blurted out that I had used a card for demonstrating to potential customers which I was mistakenly still carrying. No wonder a lecture about audit issues ensued and Arun advised me to return the card at the earliest to the cafe.
That same day, Rajdip escorted me to a room where I had to deliver my “precious” discourse to some new interns hired exclusively for CMC sales. The session with the interns went on smoothly; I was on cloud nine and felt like delivering a TED talk though I was only jabbering my experiences. Anyways, sales reality was that out of 12 cards I had sold, I had bought myself one for ?100 and then lost sleep over the combination of items to eat(13.5 % tax added with the menu cost) so as to use up the card credit amount fully in the best possible way!
Sourcehttp://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2007-12-05/
My primary project was on consumer behaviour. I had to visit all types of cafes and find the trends through observation. It had some intriguing days too. Nobody pre-informed the manager of the cafe I was about to visit everyday. So it created an awkward situation for me as well as any cafe-manager when I tersely introduced that I was from the marketing department and would stay in the store for observation purposes in a grave tone (that is the only way I sound serious!). After that I was like“Could the cafe manager guess I am only an intern? The manager was probably like “Is this a new guy from the marketing department sent to see how I am managing my cafe?” They were unsure (and rarely asked) of my designation, why this research was being carried out and why their cafe was chosen. Some showed wisdom; calling up the CCD office to ascertain if I was really sent from there!
For us, a college faculty mentor visits each intern to ascertain a student’s progress. My mentor turned up in the city and that too on my off-day. We met at a CCD outlet to discuss the project. For his every testing question, I gave him a Sherlock Holmes’s "Elementary, my dear Watson" look but then grappled with the answers. I offered to pay for the refreshments we would order only to realize at the counter (fortunately, the faculty was seated at a faraway table) that I don’t have enough cash. But in life it's never so bad it can't get worse. I wasn’t even carrying a debit card!
Luckily, I had been in that cafe earlier for duty and knew the manager. I explained to him (God knows what he thought!) the situation and assured to pay him back. He saved me from the bigger embarrassment that day.
Contrary to popular belief, I didn’t have any exclusive “free-food” perquisites. But there was a gala event on the official press launch of Cafe Moments Card in Kolkata in a particular cafe; encompassing endorsing celebrities, reporters and even the Marketing President of CCD. Needless to say, all the invitees could order anything on company expenses that day. But as it usually happens, food was the last thing on mind on that day.
Looking back, I remember the merciless sun, sales work and monotonous implementation of travel and observation at new cafes everyday from 12-8 pm but even the worst haircut grows out as they say. Inferences from my twice corrected presentation fared well with Arun and Rajdip, as four friends (Word, Paint, Excel and PowerPoint!) helped me out. It dawned on me that the cafe staff had their own parlance of off-days and shifts and the cafe managers of company policies good and bad (when they spoke candidly). The camaraderie with some of the friendliest cafe managers was worth remembering. Tete-a-tete over a cup of cappuccino behind the counter one day, one manager had quipped a humorous take on the punch-line that lingers on in my mind “A lot can happen over coffee - you could lose your job too!”