A 'Campus Placement'

On some of my visits to the north wing toilet in our institute I noticed a man sitting in a makeshift closet beside it. I wondered how a person could continue sitting there for the whole day every day. The toilet had just been renovated and so it did not stink. However the thought of having to sit beside a toilet without anything to look at except bare walls convinced me that this job was a highly depressing one.

During the ongoing process of campus placement in our institute, I have had to visit that particular toilet quite often. (Not very surprising, that.) I kept bumping into that fellow a number of times. I noticed, to my surprise, that there was always a smile on his face. On asking him I also found out that his job was to regularly clean the toilet. He had to do it a number of times in the day and saw to it that the toilet was spick and span. True to his words, the toilet was always superbly maintained.

I observed that that when this fellow told me of his duty, there was an unmistakable sense of pride in him. I tried later to rationalise that he was mentally unstable and that people had given him this 'lowly' job out of charity. And assuming him having retarded faculties to be true, he was thus happy with even such a job.

I recently applied for a position in a company that sells cigarettes. (No prizes for guessing the company correctly.) While preparing for the interview I was wondering how it would feel to sell cigarettes and be totally against their consumption at the same time. I wonder now that if I had got the job, would I be able to speak as proudly about it as that fellow in the toilet.

It is surprising how one can be totally content with one's job while another cannot. The crux of the matter lies in the fact that one must be happy with what he does. And that one must do his job to the utmost perfection

I hope that when I get a job, I shall not have to envy that fellow in the toilet.