EMPTY CHAIRS

It was 9:00 A.M. and a rather cold and pleasant day (quite unlikely to happen in Kolkata, maybe it
was because of the rain). Nonetheless, a boy named Kushaditya, was getting ready to join his new
office (Zomato) a sales and marketing intern, a profile he had no idea about. However, it was a food
delivery start-up and that was quite the motivation he was looking for to join the office. As he
reached the office, he was greeted by the City Head, Mr. Akash Bhattacharya, and few other
employees. The first day went as expected, explanation about what Zomato is, how the company
functioned throughout the day, etc. The real work started from the second day, when Kushaditya
was sent to look after the marketing drive which included BTL drives, going to different newspaper
vendors to make sure they put in the pamphlets (containing details about various Zomato offers)
properly and handling the promoters to make sure they hand the pamphlets to different customers
properly. During the day, Kushaditya learnt that the promoters had no idea of what they had to do,
they were just like him, inexperienced, on the verge of completing their graduation, and all of them
wanted to do some part timer job that they could earn some pocket money. The subsequent days
involved a lot of interaction between him and these promoters and the employees of Zomato.
During such interactions, he found a huge contrast between the low-level workers and the high-level
employees. The low-level workers were somewhat facilitating the smooth functioning of an entity
they didn’t even know of. What he realised was that, without the help of these promoters,
newspaper vendors and other such people, are the real reason as to why such start-ups and other
organizations earn revenues. Without these peoples, the corporates were nothing but “empty
chairs”.