Wednesday 20 September 2017

An anecdote - IKEA employee takes me for a ride

After a short gap I sit down to pen down a few lines to my blog. I start this with an anecdote which took place with me today.
One of my extremely popular posts 'Empowerment of women in India' posted in 2013 received a comment from one Trishna (pseudonym) - it said I appreciate your post and can you reveal contact details - I have a project in mind for you concerning women empowerment and a trip involved with it - As a matter of good gesture I replied on the mail giving my mail address -
Immediately I got a reply that this lady in question was from Ikea India. They were conducting a guided tour for a media team to study the life story of women workers of a factory outlet in Mirzapur working for IKEA and would I be interested to accompany them - Obviously since this was a topic after my heart I said yes - I would be more than happy to go there - thereafter she enquired which city I was based in and on my telling her that it was Delhi NCR she said okay we will connect in the morning.
Next morning, that is today, I get a mail from her that could you please forward a recent post from my blog  - obviously I thought she was referring to my post on 'women's empowerment' so I forwarded that - Pat came the reply that this was a post from 2013 and could I send a recent one- Now I don't know what this was all leading up to - A lady from IKEA reads my post on 'women empowerment' - appreciates it and invites me for an all expenses paid trip to Mirzapur to study the life stories of women working in the factory outlet there.
Suddenly for no rhyme or reason she does a volte face and starts demanding recent blog posts from me. I call her up to convince her that this was a topic after my heart and obviously after my interaction with these women my post would be straight from the heart and would definitely highlight the conditions through which these women had gone through. The lady now tries to convince me that unless I send a recent post to her there's no way she can take me for this trip - I send her some more links but deep down, what a disappointment this whole incident has been - if this lady was only enamored by my post on 'women empowerment' what was the occasion to keep insisting for a newer post -
Thanks to all of you my blog has a page view of 1,17,183 and my live feed will confirm this.
Anyway I am posting this in great detail so that people in similar positions may be wary of such attempts - praise and dump in one go.
It did one good thing though - It prompted me to immediately post this for you - I'm not bitter - it's just that trust is so very important - and once dented it leaves behind its scars
Good luck to this trip which commences on 25th September and ends the next day - only one regret - a good opportunity missed to interact with rural women who work for IKEA - thanks to ingenuity of one of its staff in Delhi - Gurgaon - but as they say - Cheers! Move on life 

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