Manish came to his desk, gasping for breath. It was almost 2:20 in the afternoon. He had missed the last bus, so had to take the auto to make sure he reached in time to attend the scrum call.
The phone was ringing on his desk. He hastily picked that up, “Hello, Manish”,” where have you been Manish?”, beaming voice of Rashmi echoed in his ears. “Ohh, sorry, I missed the bus today, yesterday, I was not feeling well. I had asked Ravi to set an out of office for me.”, “Yeah, I know, so how are you feeling today?” “Feeling better.”, “Ok, there are lots of issues today, what are you going to answer Rob?”, “Hmm, let me see, I have just arrived, will quickly go through mails and see”, “Ok, fine , see you on the call”
At 2:30 , Manish dialed the UK Meet me- Manish – has joined the conference- an announcement was made in a sweet voice.
“Hi there, hi Manish.”
“Hi Rob”, rather grudgingly said Manish.
“So, how are you feeling today?”
(To Himself – having a delivery manager like you is sufficient to make someone feel sick) “Yeah, fine, much better than yesterday”
“What was it actually?”
(Angrily to Himself –it was limfosocomma of intestine, why do you want to know?)”Ohh, nothing much, a throat infection.”
Laughing loudly, Rob said, “Hope you are not spreading any germs through telephone line.”
(To Himself – What’s so funny in this, you fool) Manish laughed even louder, “Be careful then Rob”
“Anyway, back to business. I saw an e-mail from testing team; they have raised a defect on us regarding one validation check failure, what’s that about?”
(And then, suddenly, communicator blinked, it was Rashmi,”dat ws our mistake” with a scared smiley, “Hmm”, Manish quickly replied”)
“Let me check Rob( Pretending to think), yeah, got it. This doesn’t seem to be an issue to me, I guess, it has already been delivered by us in recent code fix, I am not sure which deployment took place on testing environment”
(Again communicator blinked, Rashmi was surprised, “Wat r u sayin?”, “Get dat fixed ASAP and send 2 testin team.It’s quite easy, nd nt 2 say keep it offline”, he hastily replied).
Rob was furious by now.
“Does that mean this is some mistake by testing deployment team, I must reply to them for seeking clarification.”
(To Himself – Hold on Mr. Perfectionist, don’t get us into trouble)
“Rob, may be some new joiners have carried out the deployment. This may have happened due to some human error. Sometimes, we have to accept that. Anyway, I will talk to them and get this sorted out, no need to start a mail chain for this.”
“OK, that’s fine then. Just make sure this doesn’t happen in future.”
“OK, moving on, I have got a request from Titanic ASG for their weekend test environment deployment, can we provide that?”
(To Himself – This is the limit, how can they ask for a test deployment support from our team on weekends??And this dumb too is ready for that)
“Give me a moment Rob.”
(Communicator blinked, It was Rashmi again , “I won’t be here on weekends, goin out wid my hubby” A smiley. Manish replied, “ ohh, is it?Even me goin out wid my 4 GFs - poverty, failure, frustration and depression” A wicked smiley followed.)
Manish brought a forced smile on his face and tried to be as polite as possible, “Rob, I am not too sure what kind of support they would need from us because as far as I know, this release of theirs had no impact on us.”
“Ohh, is it? Ok, I will once again confirm from them.”
(To Himself – Thank God, now you god damn fool, go and talk to them)”Thanks Rob, that’s great of you.”
(Communicator was blinking again, this time it was Nishant, “dude, u hav pink floyd’s songs”, “who’s dat?”, Manish wrote with a smiley. “stop kidding dude, I need those 2day”, “k, in a call will check”, “k, thx”)
And he suddenly felt like hearing to Rob’s hoarse voice “Manish, are you there?Manish?”
Manish came to senses again, “Rob, I am sorry, I accidently went on mute, just didn’t get you, can you please repeat?”
“That’s all right, I have forwarded you one mail from Vighnesh wherein he is asking something.”
Manish found it really hard to control his laugh at the way Rob pronounced Vighnesh, “Okay, let me check…yup, he is asking whether the new code has been performance tested or not.”
“Yes, would you mind replying to that?”
(To Himself – yeah, why not? I am your father’s paid servant. Even if it’s all delivery mangers’ mail, I can still reply to that. What the hell are you doing as Deliery manager then?)
“Of course, I will reply to that.”
“Ok, thanks for that. Anyway, I guess we have discussed everything by now. If there is nothing else to highlight, your team can drop off. Does anyone have any issues to talk about?”
(To Himself – Attending this daily torture is a big issue in its own.)
“Hmm…(A short pause) ..No.”
“OK then cheers bye.”
“Thanks Rob, bye,” Few frill voices echoed.
Manish breathed a sigh of relief, went to E drive of his machine, looked for songs folder and started searching for Pink Floyd.
Chaitanya Kulkarni
