High on a bench !

             

                     Everyone of us may have enjoyed the on-bench period some time or the other in our professional lives. Unlike the class room on-bench which usually reminds us of the punishment – ‘stand up on the bench’, the corporate on-bench experience will be totally cool, where you will be paid for doing nothing. You don’t learn technical things as you assume this period is your reward after studying technical things for almost 15 plus years in your life & it makes sense that you relax & unwind a bit coz later in life company expects a whole lot of things from you & you will become busy with all sort of things in professional & also personal life.

     Usually IT giants are supposed to maintain certain percentage of resources i.e people (resources & people are synonyms when it comes to software industry, monitor, mouse, keyboard, C resource, C++ resource, java resource are all one & the same) in free pool or popularly known as the on-bench. After graduating from college & going through perhaps a regressive training process & exams finally the wait is over to start enjoying life on a new level with your income. When I was placed on–bench in my first job after training for couple of months, I recall sometimes the moments & seriously miss the same. We were a huge batch of fresher’s from various colleges from all corners of India, about to be allocated to upcoming projects. Well people from all states come together in training, the sessions & exams binds us well, cursing or perhaps appreciating the trainers sometimes as well. So we feel like birds with same feathers, flocking well. Sometimes the library, canteen benches became full & we had to roam around the campus wondering some manager may call us, just like the king calls his army in the time of war. Apparently all the project managers were busy in their work & no one bothered to ask us for more than a month. When you get paid for doing nothing, you feel the bliss of life. Its really amazing how various kinds of personalities come together to spend the free time together. There was a guy who had abundant knowledge in all things: we called encyclopedia. He used to tell a lot of stories, then another told about his big family business of chain of shops they owned back in their hometown. He treated me like Forrest Gump & apparently I acquired all the knowledge to start my own shop like his & really felt like doing this at later stage in life. There was this guy who was studying already for entrance exams for higher studies. He offered tips for higher studies & concluded that all software jobs are the same, Apparently he would join a bit more sophisticated software job after his higher education. There was a girl who used to ask the silliest questions in training & well as later on–bench in the most sophisticated English. Couple of people even fell in love finding their soul mates since they had so much time for each other talking about even the smallest things, smallest likes & dislikes etc, probably never again in life would they have so much time for each other. Then there was this girl who once started talking never stopped talking without giving even a chance for others to speak...people would just get up & go away...she didn’t mind just following them to finish her never ending stories.
    There are so many things that people can do when on-bench like play Antakshari repeatedly, celebrate friend’s birthday at nearby hotels frequently, try out all the eateries in & around campus, sleep in dormitory. This is actually a whole lot of fun which you definitely deserve actually after studying many years. Unlike the normal movie story ends : Then the project allocation happens & all work happily ever after, we departed with the promise that we shall assemble at the same canteen bench regularly, but we knew that time would never come as we have moved quite far in our own directions, in life.