It’s
tempting to start with an abstract, followed by an introduction, a section on
literature survey and make a pointless conclusion about how our method is
0.002% more efficient than the neighboring researcher’s method. But disruptive
outcomes deserve better treatment and hence this post on one of the most
“productive” meetings that I have attended. Wait, did I tell a “productive
meeting”? Wasn’t that phrase universally accepted as an oxymoron now?
If
productivity is measure in rupees, then 11 lakhs saved in 2 and hours has to be
one of the most productive hours. As a part of a tech fest in office our
department had to set up a stall and we were promised 5 lakhs to do it. As is
our wont, we drew elaborate drawings in our mind, scribbled a few of them on
the board and went to the contractor. And said, Boss kitna chahiye?
2 days
later in a hurriedly convened meeting, the contractor meets us and demands 18
Lakhs! 18 Bloody Lakhs for a stall we thought in unison. And the castles in air
or rather our stalls in air came crashing down. Were it to be our friendly
National market, it would have been easy to bring down the cost through the
standard Indian method of bargaining. The standard Indian method I hope you are
all aware of and I shall reiterate it for the convenience of the disadvantaged.
Fix up the price you think the product is worth, say X. Let the quoted price by
the shopkeeper is Y. Y would obviously be >> than X. Start demanding the
product at a rate (X-(Y-X)). After n rounds of iteration, the shopkeeper
eventually gets rid of the item to you with curses muttered so that it would
fail in a day or two.
However,
the comparatively posh environment of JFWTC and the august company of our
co-workers was restraint enough to avoid an exhibition of the above mentioned
method to bargain. This proved to be the “pathfinder” to a novel attempt at
bargaining. In this method, each component of the sum total is separated out
such that no item is a combination of two or more primary components. This is
important as every component in our bill has to undergo a GRC* transformation
which reduces its price non linearly.
Back to
the bill. The contractor opened a very professional looking excel sheet to show
us the bill. Somehow, I have begun believing that the word “Microsoft” brings a
lot of monetary luck. Gates became the richest man. Wielders of Microsoft
powerpoint and Excel always seem more blessed with their bank accounts than the
poor ones who see more numbers regularly in their Matlab screen. The first item was ostensibly titled
“creative charges”. And it costed us a whopping 35k. Inspite of our protests
that most of the design being provided by us, contractor seemed in no mood to
relent. Our complaints were dismissed off with little reason but good English
and we moved forward to the next item. To the walls of the stall. Off went the
fancy material and in came the flex. A few lakhs chopped and yet, we were
unsure if that could make any difference. The molten cabin was replaced by their
more humble cousins. Bar chairs were thrown out. Every table debated. Some of the ideas were ridiculous. Of course,
I must admit that the the higher the degree of ridiculoulessness the more you
could be sure they belonged to me. Like doing away with the platform! Finding
the colour which would cost the least.
And after finally after nearly removing everything, we arrived at the
magic number 7.7! From 18 to 7.7 at the end of two hours. Ofcourse, we got
complimentary headphones at the end of the ordeal. But the best bit of bargain
had to be not letting the contractor not buying drawing paper. We promised to
get them from the stationary store in office who is obviously going to throw a
very curious (but hopefully not a dirty) glance when we order 500 drawing
papers in a single shot. And the lovely catch by Sudhanya in not letting the
games to be bought by the contractor to avoid 22% of taxes.
In my next visit to National market, hopefully this
experience will embolden me to scare the wits of the shopkeer!
