For the last three years I have been working for one of the premiere public sector banks of India. In two years of probation and one year of confirmed service, I have worked at four different branches, spread over the length and breadth of Kerala.
Entering banking was a watershed event. It brought a paradigm shift in my life. Before that, my world was a small place....family, friends.
Then, my world suddenly got so much bigger. Entering a bank branch is total chaos. So many things are happening, all at the same time, and any small thing can balloon into a crisis.
You have to think on your feet and take spot decisions. Work is divided into sections and you are put in charge of any one of them, be it savings or term deposits or advances or recovery. You have to answer for anything remotely concerned with your section.
You are faced with a torrent of customers who want so many different things. Your superior sitting at head office doesn't care how many customers you dealt with in a day, all they want to know is if you have mustered enough numbers to meet the targets, from business development to NPA reduction to cross selling insurance and mutual funds. Each day is a firefighting exercise with staff shortages and system failures and fuming customers.
Yet, there is a spirit of camaraderie that pervades every branch that makes everything worthwhile. In the beginning I used to be so lost. But, there were always people around to teach me and help out.
Each branch is a team.
When a customer raises a storm, there is always a colleague who will rush to your aid, to assuage hurt feelings, to lend a helping hand. When you feel hungry, a packet of biscuits or cakes pop out of somewhere. Homemade delicacies find their way to your tiffin boxes.
