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Today was the most interesting and fun filled day at SIMS. It all started yesterday when our seniors told us that we would be having a business exercise that would need us to work for a day in one of the shops and earn some money. I was really getting anxious to know what exactly the task would be. We all batch 1-d reported to the classroom 8 at around 8:15 AM. At 8:30 AM we all got introduced by Mr. Manohar Kamat.Initailly we had a general discussion on the symbiosis college and the MBA program. Finally at around 9:45 AM we got the briefing on the task that was to be completed by the end of the day. The task started by forming a group of two people with the buddy being from different gender. I formed the group with Rashmi Chauhan. The task was to travel to camp(MG road) without using any monetary help by 11:00 AM , getting a job by 11:30 AM at any of the shops in camp ,working till 5:30 in the evening , get a minimum wage of Rs 150 and finally get assembled at the SGS mall restaurant at the basement by 6:00 PM.
The task started badly .We were not able to get any lift to the camp till 10:40 AM. We walked till e-square .From there we got a lift in an innova which dropped us near Shivaji nagar .From there we got another lift till SGS mall reaching around 11:15 AM. After that we began the search for job starting from the dorabjees.We were rejected everywhere starting from the clover center to the Reebok showroom on the mail MG Road. I was really getting frustrated as it was already noon and there seemed to be no sign of anybody giving any job. Finally I got a job at one of the Garment shop (5th Avenue, The male domain,18/3,M.G Road) just besides the Raymond Showroom on the main MG Road. The shop owner Mr Ashfaque Poonawalla was very helpful and considerate. He listened to me and told me that last year also there were students from management institutes who worked at his shop for a day.
The shop basically had two floors one basement and the first floor. The first floor sold clothing of John Player, Park Avenue and color plus where as the basement had the tailoring and the fabric section. The fabric section had cloths from Raymond, Ried & Taylor and Italian.
There were already four salesmen in the shop Ajit, Rupesh, Ramesh, Chaitanya.I was given some basic understanding of the work by Ramesh. He gave me details as to where all the shirts, pants and t-shirts have been arranged as per the size. I got to know from Mr Poonawalla as how to deal with the customer .He made me understand how customers needs to be convinced to buy a particular cloth.
My first customer came around 1300 hr.She was a lady looking for a half sleeves pure cotton shirt of size 42 for her husband. I showed her all the stock of shirts of size 42 .She was looking for a shirt which would go well with dark brown trousers and was against any blue shades. After around 20 minutes she got convinced by me to take couple of shirt of John player.
My next customer was again a lady looking for a t-shirt for her husband. Myself and Rupesh showed her all the t-shirts we had of size 40.After much consideration and thought she went to select two t-shirts of color plus.
It was already 2:00 PM when the second customer left and it was now time for the lunch. We all got 30 min break for lunch but we all did not go at one time. The time was split between the salesmen. Like I went at 2 pm, Rupesh went at 2:30 PM, Ajit went at 3 PM and so on.
At around 3:00 PM we were approached by another customer. They were a family and looking for fabric for trousers and coat. I showed them various fabrics with colors ranging from dark black, coffee brown to light shades of cream. The cost of the fabric ranged from Rs 700 to 900 per meter. The family found a liking for the coffee brown and dark grey fabric .They had a long discussion among themselves as to whether to go with coffee brown or the dark grey fabric.finaally they decided to go with the coffee brown cloth. A cloth of size 1.4 meters was required for the trousers which Ramesh helped me to cut with the scissors. They then went to see the cloth for coat but did not seem to like any of them.
At around 4:00 PM we had a tea break where of us had a cup of tea and general discussion. My final customer came around 4:30 PM.He was a dark complexion young man .He was looking for a shirt, pant and a t-shirt. we showed him pant with different style like one with plates and one without. He went with dark blue color without plate’s trouser after trying it in a try room. He then looked for a matching shirt for the trousers. He decided to buy a light blue color shirt. He tried the whole combination of shirt and pant in a try room and was convinced with his selection.
Finally it was time to leave .I had a chat with Mr. Poonawalla on my experience in his shop and he complimented me on doing the job satisfactorily. He gave me Rs 300 in an envelope and his business card to keep in touch. I assembled at the SGS mall basement at around 5:45 PM where rests of all my batch mates were having chats on their experience at work.
