“May I speak to Manisha please?” asked the deep and polite male voice in my entire history of working here. Man, I thought, transferring the call, who says, “please”? Certainly not callers to Marrkit.

Though designated “Group Brand Head”, am expected to pick up phone calls as we supposedly cannot afford to hire a telephone operator. Special timings are allocated for calls to be picked up in rotation by everyone who works here. The list of timings was taped to my Workstation desktop.

By the way, when I joined, I was designated Brand Executive. Then I was confirmed as Brand Executive. The career path then dictated that I become a Senior Brand Executive, then Brand Manager and then Senior Brand Manager. This was as per the Marrkit Career Path. This was also framed by LL.

However, fate and perhaps my work skills intervened and I received an “accelerated promotion” which meant I became a Brand Manager directly after Brand Executive.

It did make me proud.

At this stage, I was a Group Brand Head. Go figure.