Story of a mess secretary!

Well first things first. If you have a look at my previous post, I made a 3-point PoA. Whats the status? Damn, I haven't started even one leave alone correct my plan.

Let me straight get to the subject of my post. I was the mess secretary of my hostel at IIMC and had quite an experience. The following is my post in the Student's Board:

******* Being a Mess Secretary *******
"Mess Secretary???".."Is Haldiram coming for placements in slot 0?" This comical though intense statement was pointed out sometime back. True to the words, this is a post which is hardly up for grabs for reasons quite known. When I decided to take this up, many told me "This is not a great CV point..Infact nothing at all" to which I replied "Is it just about that?" Well, not bragging myself I wanted to take this up and see why people said so. Faced some flak, got some praises, whatever it might be it was a path well trodden and gave me an opportunity to face a GBM which I had never anticipated but actually enjoyed.

And when I took stock of the situation after taking over last year, I found a huge deficit and was quite dismayed at the poor handling by students who are supposed to be the crema-de-le-creme of the country.

I faced many issues like quality problems, the famous "cockroach incident", complaints galore from mess workers, old contractor refusing to budge saying "pay my money and I shall leave", running around in search of contractors (ranging from searching the net to going to their hotels to discuss) and ethical dilemmas. The biggest problem being the huge deficit upwards of Rs 3 lakhs getting a new contractor by convincing him to pay up that amount was an uphill task which somehow saw some success.

And then started the actual tussle between the old contractor (jiske lambe haath Diro tak pahunch gaye the) and me. Convincing each of them, then being a pain in the *** of all NHites by putting up mess bills so much so that my wingies would see me coming to their room only to be shooed away saying "kitna paise khayega yaar, chain se khane de mess mein".

At the end of it all, I am happy to see that a new contractor is in place. Have realised how difficult it is to shake an age-old existing setup. I feel a great sense of satisfaction to pass on a deficit-free mess committee (technically in Aug 2008) to the new batch.

Things will take sometime to settle down. Dont expect drastic changes right from day 0. New cook(s) is/are being brought in a couple of days. There is a union of mess workers which needs to be handled carefully. Hopefully in a week or so things should sail smoothly. Please cooperate with the mess secy with suggestions and by being more proactive. We can make things better!

~Thanks to Mahesh, Dhamija and Deepak Pant for helping me out resolve issues with Admin
~Thanks to Srikar for putting globe ;-) and advising me in times of need
~Thanks to my wingies (Ba-Stud Farm) for listening to my frustration many a times and validating my so-called strategic planning
~Thanks to Prof Ash Bhatt and Mr Vinod Kothari for teaching me amortization and deal structuring!!
~Phew, this was my longest post on BB. Its time to move on....