Auto Thief

On the first and second days of my stay at Bangalore, I was traveling by Auto to and from office to my guesthouse. And the scary part was that, I was paying anything between Rs. 100/- to Rs. 150/- in either direction.
Obviously, I saw the economic unfeasibility of this and I thought that I would rather use the company bus service to commute to and from office. Please take into consideration that – I knew that this meant that I would have to stand for 1+ hours’ as the Bangalore Diapro busses were packed to the brim with employees.

With this in mind, the first thing I did on reaching office - on Day # 3 - is send a mail to the the Pividus team. For those who’re wondering who they are – they’re the financial ops team @ Diapro.

The mail was as below:


Hi Pividus Team,

My name is Sharath Kumar R (Emp # 111500), and I am currently on relocation to Bangalore. Since the referral guesthouse provided to me is at a distance of 12 kms from the office where I work, I am forced to rely on autos for travel to and from office. This is causing me an expense of Rs. 100/- to Rs 150/-, in one direction, every day.
To avoid this overhead in relocation expenses, I would be happy to use the company bus facility for commuting to and fro office, provided that the same is reimbursed under the relocation policy.

Kindly provide the necessary approvals for the same.


With Best Regards,
Sharath Kumar R



And this is mail I got in response from them by the end of the day:


Sharath,

Please go ahead and raise a requisition for using the company bus facility in Bangalore. But, please keep in mind that, for all purposes, it will be treating as an employee’s personal expense. Hence, we will not be reimbursing the costs toward the same.

Hope this clarifies!



With Warm Regards,
Pividus Team


I don’t know what to call it. Was it surprise? Was it humiliation? Was it a feeling of being extorted?
I don’t know!!!

Here I was. Trying to be a good employee and help the organization cut its cost. And there the organization was. Trying to pull a fast one on me by saying – “You can travel by the bus – But we aren’t going to reimburse you the cost incurred for the same!”

All I know is that I knew I wasn’t going to try and do the company any more favors.


So, for the next 2 days I continued using autos to commute. That’s when an idea struck me. “Why don’t I use the company bus anyways? That way I can save up on the cost of autos – but in the end I can claim for the same!”

I know – It wasn’t the most ethical of things to do. But hey, I never said I was a Gandhiji. Diapro was a fuck all pay master. And I could do with every other penny I could wrangle or wry out of Kemzi’s fat pocket.

But, there was a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig problem. Since I used to commute via the company bus in Chennai, I knew that there were often checking squads that boarded the bus to see which employees were traveling for free. Ok … Lets give you a little bit of background into why this was/is being done.

At the time of joining Diapro, I was paying Rs. 800/- towards using the company bus service. Within 3 months - it rose to Rs. 1150/-. Another 3 months later – it went to Rs. 1350/-. As most of you would’ve guessed by now, our salaries were still the same as it was 6 months back. So, obviously every one was pissed off. I mean who wouldn’t be? In effect, we were paying nearly double the amount for commute. And that too in less than 6 months!
When we raised this question to the Diapro management, this is what we were told - “Since the cost of Petrol had gone up, the travel contractors had raised the request to hike prices. Since Diapro is a stern believer is moral practices we couldn’t be oblivious to their requisition. Hence we decided to hike the costs.”
This infuriated the employees even more. As Diapro management were trying to “not be oblivious” to the agony of the contractors, but were “completely oblivious” to the agonies of their employees who were equally badly hit by the increase in petrol costs and inflation in general.

As a general effect of this unhappiness amongst the employees, some of them had decided to beat Diapro at their own game. In other words, they decided to dupe Diapro and their contractors.

What these people did were – they unregistered themselves from using the company bus services, but still used it to travel everyday to work. What they did in effect was - they were saving themselves Rs. 1350/- every month.

All of a sudden there was a mass cancellation of subscriptions to the bus service. But, the busses were still running at maximum capacity. It took a couple of months for Diapro to realize what was going on. And to counter this, Diapro got its employees in the travel department to “raid” the bus and check whether everyone onboard had a valid bus pass. Although, people reading this might feel that Diapro beat the employees in our game – you’re mistaken. There were a million loop holes these Smart Alec employees exploited and got away scot-free, the simplest of which was – “I forgot my Bus pass at home!”
:D

And just a disclaimer – I was one of the employees who continued to pay for the company bus service, but regret – to this day – that I didn’t pull a fast one on Diapro by following in their footsteps.

Ok … Now that you have a background of the same, let’s get back to my story.


So, one of the first things I wanted to do is to find out how often there were “raids” on the route I took. To ascertain this, I gave Srivatsan a call and, after the initial chit-chat, I got straight to the point.

Me: “Dae Machi … Do you have “raids” here often on your busses?”
Srivatu: “Raid??? What do you mean raids?”

I proceeded to explain the entire thing I explained above to him.

Srivatu: “Nothing of that sort happens here machi … the busses are way too crowded to permit anything of that sort to happen!”
Me: “Hmmmmm … Interesting …”

I went to tell him what had happened earlier in the day with the Pividus team and what I had in mind. Srivatsan was a near and dear friend. In short – he was my confidant.

Srivatu: “Sure thing machi … You should do that. I mean – what else can I say. You tried to save the company some money, and in return they tried to stick a rusted rod in your arse and give it a twist as well. They deserve it man!”
Me: “You sure I won’t get into trouble – RIGHT?”
Srivatu: “101% sure. There is no such thing as raids in Bangalore. That much I guarantee you!”

I was happy. “Easiest 2500 bucks I ever made!” was what was going on in my mind.

But oh boy – was I in for a nasty surprise!!!
(More on that later)


And, with that, I started using the company’s bus service for the rest of my stay at Bangalore.


In my defense I only have this to say - I'm morally grey !!!