Remember your first job?
The nerves before day one. The name tag that still felt like it belonged to someone else.
That quiet, private fear of, will I actually make it here.
And then, one day, the email arrives.
Your probation is over. You’re staying with us longer.
There isn’t really a name for that feeling.
It’s relief. It’s pride.
It’s a little bit like being told you belong somewhere, for the first time, in writing.
And when a feeling is that big, the first thing you want to do is give some of it away.
So a few of our newly-permanent folks from product development wanted to do exactly that. Throw the team a little something. A treat, for getting them here.
The team said no.
Not “no, don’t bother.”
No, you cannot order in. No, you cannot take us out either.
So what do you do?
Well.
You cook.
Actual home kitchens. Actual recipes, some of them the ones you grew up on.
Ishani was one of them. Here’s what she wrote to the whole company about it:
SUB: Built at GreyB!
Ishani Tiwari
Associate Product Manager
Hey Bees,
Ishani here, from PDT! If you’re also juggling tasks, here’s how I juggle as a fresher 🙂
The morning started badly.
A client call. I froze.
Not a small freeze, the kind you shake off in thirty seconds. The kind that follows you through the next call, and the one after that, and the one after that. Three back to back calls. Each one carrying the weight of the first.
The problem was not the first call anymore, it was the scope creep happening inside my head
Then Anmol (my manager) said something.
I can’t quote one line because it was never one line with Anmol and Vishwas. It was small things throughout the day. The kind of words that don’t sound significant when you write them down but feel like solid ground when you’re standing on nothing.
“Don’t overthink things. Pick one thing today and crack it, and think if that was the best use of your time today.”
“You are awesome. Just remember yourself and don’t lose yourself trying to be something else.”
Normal messages.
But when three calls went sideways and you’re feeling clueless, those words are not normal at all. They are the whole day turning around.
Milestone 1 – FTE it is!
Our first salaries arrived on July 7th, and we wanted to celebrate with the team. Since they said, “Don’t spend money,” we opted for the highest operational complexity: cooking and building lunch in-house. Very PDT of us!
Oh god, that was dreadful for me (I once made gajar ka halwa in olive oil and jaggery- and it tasted as weird as it sounds). But we powered through. Each one of us made one dish and brought it to the office the next day- some of us even had to cook twice because, being bachelors we didn’t have big enough utensils.
It took a lot of effort but the moment when everyone sat down and ate together was beyond wholesome. The chatting, enjoying the tasty food, complimenting each other, and laughing like crazy… in that moment, I forgot I was in the office with my colleagues, it felt more personal – like friends and family, and the most valuable thing we shipped was not a feature, but lunch!
Gotta say, the whole experience was worth every drop of sweat and culinary chaos.
With gratitude to Anmol, Vishwas and The Whole Team, for every small thing throughout every difficult day.
Regards,
Ishani