BODILY DELIVERED BROCHURES

BODILY DELIVERED BROCHURES

Article by Prakash Subbarao (Prakash@3xus.com)

Schools close in the UAE during the summer months of July and August.

During this period, a lot of people go back to their home country for their annual vacation notwithstanding the fact that airlines have substantially jacked up the air fares and are making a killing.

All flights are full both ways. Air India normally upgrades its chota A-310’s to huge Jumbo 747s and still flies full! Indian Airlines tries to increase the number of flights it operates. Other airlines offer all sort of incentives and, believe it or not, people fly from Dubai to Mumbai via Teheran, Kuwait and other exotic destinations at cut price fares. Mnay Indians also experience the spine tingling transit through Karachi a la Pakistan International Airlines. Most have lived to tell the tale!

Others decide to take their vacation during Christmas. Yet others, especially the Brits, decide that a “white Christmas” isn’t all that fun and it may be better to get Dad and Mom over.

Some (like me) do not take a vacation at all. Whether we are workaholics or babes in the woods when it comes to letting our hair down and relaxing is a dateable point.

People can, of course, switch amongst categories with ease.

I fell into the last category – “I’m not vacationing this year” one - during the summer of 2003.

Although temperatures soar to 48 degrees Celsius, one doesn’t feel the heat as offices are air conditioned. In fact I have, on occasion, had to hurry downstairs to the torrid sands outside my office to “warm up”! Office temperatures can be very low at times.

Summer is a time when computer institutes stop giving computer classes and start organizing computer-centric Summer Camps.

Stops computer education because the students and most of the faculty are going home on vacation; starts conducting summer camps because there are a lot of children that aren’t going home for a holiday and their parents do not want to leave them alone unattended and so enroll them into summer camps.

I worked in those days for a computer education outfit which had branches all over the country. I was in charge of ensuring the success of the camps conducted by my company.

Since computer education is much “regionalized” – children do not want to travel too far from their home, a very cost effective way to create awareness is to drop leaflets at each flat in the immediate vicinity of the education center.

Another way of creating awareness is to seek the permission of schools to hand over the leaflets to parents at the “annual day” of the school where parents and teachers meet for the generally distasteful task of discussing the ward’s (poor) performance.

Last year this direct-to-parent approach was very effective and gave good results but this year, a very large number of companies jumped on this bandwagon and each parent was inundated with around 25 brochures. The mind overloads, the fingers go weak and the brochures flutter gently to the ground. They cycle then completed, the vendors (a.k.a. people temporarily employed by people like me) pick up the fallen brochures and ‘recycle’ them. The process goes on till either there are no parents or no brochures or, in rare photo-finish instances, when there are simultaneously neither of both

This brings us to the theme of this story. The need for bodies to deliver brochures.

Since this was the first time that I was conducting this exercise, I felt the best way to go about it was to put a small classified in “Gulf News”, the English daily of the UAE.

The ad wouldn’t be accepted under the heading “Situations Wanted – Sales” since this was not a selling job, and we were soon breaking our heads as to which category to put it under. Finally, we decided on the “Miscellaneous” category and ran an advertisement for “delivery boys”.

Being an inborn pessimist (I blame it on studying Murphy’s Law too often……….”If anything can go wrong, it will”) I was unsure of the results. However, on the appointed day our ad ran and we were soon besieged with job seekers.

I left it to my secretary to wade through the logistics of it and shortlist 6 people so that 4 could be finally selected. Being an efficient soul (though this was her first job) she soon had the specially selected six lined up for further interrogation. (How can one specially select six “delivery boys”? Don’t ask me. I don’t know).

I decided that since she had sailed through smoothly so far she might as well conclude the exercise by choosing the four musketeers and left this to her. I forgot all about it.

The next day, at 9 am sharp, the four gentlemen were there, smartly dressed, shoes polished, fresh eyed and eager to start work.

“These don’t look like delivery boys to me” I muttered to myself. “They look like sales executives!”. I called the secretary in and asked to see their résumés.

The first was a highly qualified CAD Engineer. He had been (I later found out) earning a princely salary. Then his company stopped paying salaries (a very common occurrence in the Middle East) as it had gone into the red. He finally “agreed” to write off his dues to the extent of US$ 5000 if they would agree to release him and not enforce a work permit ban on his passport. His name is Robin and he is a Filipino. A very nice guy. Always smiling. He has gone through a lot in life and has an exuberant optimistic attitude towards the future. He told me he was flat broke and had therefore taken up this short term assignment where he would earn about US$ 300 working part time for a month. When I asked him where he was staying, he told me that he had a girlfriend in town who had agreed to a “sleep now, pay later” plan. He gave me a knowing wink. He seemed to imply that he was “sleeping” a lot.

The second résumé was that of D’Silva, a Srilankan. Tall, lanky, good looking, he is a qualified accountant and had, till recently, worked as an accounts officer for a 4 star hotel. The hotel went bust, the management changed and D’Silva found himself on the streets sans a job. Sans friends. Sans money. (Life is like that, isn’t it? Especially in Dubai). He had gone from a white collar worker to an illegal almost overnight. He could stay on as long as his visa was valid and would then have to leave. He was maximizing in earnings opportunity in every way as long as he was in the UAE. He was a hard task master, I was soon to learn. He became the leader of the group – the guy who ensured that the other guys were doing what they said they were doing and, more importantly, what we had told them to do, via him. He gave me the reports every day (and he gave my secretary and hourly review via cell phone).

The third guy was an Indian named Sudhir. He was an office boy in his previous company. That company too set him adrift in the choppy seas of unemployment and Sudhir was scrambling to survive. He was the quietest of them all since his communication in English was poor. Or maybe he was naturally taciturn. He had a very strong trait that I noticed much later and which made him stand out in the group.

The fourth was a student named Ankur. Also an Indian and the son of a taxi driver, he wanted to earn some money for himself. Ankur was the smart glib guy of the lot. At age 18 he reminded me a lot of my son and I tended to go easy with him.

The boys turned out to be trustworthy and hard working and work progressed smoothly. Soon phase 1 was completed – the dropping of brochures flat-by-flat in a multi storeyed buildings all over Dubai and Sharjah in targeted localities. This was also the easiest part of their job. Two guys took a lift to the top floor and then started their routine and, helped by gravity, walked their way down 15 to 20 floors. They would complete the target in a few hours and then go home for a well deserved rest. This was OK with me. I didn’t want to over work them in the summer heat.

Soon we went into phase 2. This was the “hand-it-to-the-parent-at-school” phase. It required standing outside the gate of a school, in the scorching mid day heat (48 degrees Celsius) and handing over the brochures to the parents as they came out of the school.

None of the guys could do more than twenty minutes of this at a time.

We had a car standing by with air conditioner continuously on and piles of cold drinks for them to consume. They would dive in for a ten minute R & R session before D’Silva ordered them back on the job.

It was in this phase that we noticed Sudhir’s strength. He could just stand there, bare headed in the sun, and hand the leaflets out without taking a break. He came from a very tough stock.

Since I was almost all the time with them we became friends. I go to know them all well. They told me their sorrows, their ambitions, their hopes, their aspirations.

They had one thing in common. They all begged for a job with my company.

If I could have given them a job I would have done it without a moment’s hesitation. But I couldn’t.

The month ended. Their task was completed. It was time for them to leave.

We promised to keep in touch, but in turbulent times such promises are never kept.

About three months after they had left I came across their telephone numbers in my address book. On an impulse I called Robin’s cell phone. A female voice answered. Sounded like a Filipina. Sounded very suspicious. “Why you want to know where Robin is?” (sic) she demanded repeatedly. After I had explained at length she told me that he was back in the Philippines. It seems he got a good job with a multinational at Jebel Ali Free Zone and was about to be sent by them to Japan for a CAD training program when it was discovered that he had some missing documentation. So he went back home to set his papers in order presumably to return to the job. “We will have a drink together” he had told me when the assignment ended. I was still hoping that he would call when I left Dubai. Now that I have permanently left the UAE I will never see him again. He is a very nice guy.

D’Silvas phone yielded a “this number has been disconnected message”. My only link with him was that of a phone number and that link had got cut.

I used to keep meeting Ankur off and on. He used to drop in now and again, unannounced, to the office and we met. We talked about his studies; his plans to return to India for higher education.

Sudhir had no contact number to start with. “I will keep in touch” he said. But he never did.

All that I have left are warm memories and a prayer in my heart that they are doing well wherever they are.

Copyright Prakash Subbarao 2003