When I was almost duped in the name of job

Unemployment is the biggest curse for everyone who wants a job and there comes a time when even the most seasoned person faces a situation when the circumstances cloud his better judgement. This is a small incident in my life when I also faced the same situation but got saved in the nick of time. 

It was the December 2015 when there was an advertisement in the employment news about a marketing positin in a Lucknow company. For those who have lived in Lucknow, they would vouch for the fact that getting a job in Lucknow is like gold dust. So I was excited but one thing which put me off and in suspicion was the fact that the company location was of a residential colony. Well, Lucknow is no East of Kailash New Delhi that there canbe company offices in residential areas ( well now that’s been sealed in Delhi too). So I went to see the location and the first signs of alarm bells rang the moment I saw the house. 

There was no company board outside the house, I presumed it to be the destination just by the exact house number it had been mentioned in the ad. Like the spidy senses of Spiderman, I knew it was all wrong from the very beginning but decided to proceed with caution because I needed a job and unemployment can push you to any lengths. The only thing in the red zone was a DD of 400/- which needed to be given alongwith the documents on the day of submission. So I got the DD made and studied the company profile on the internet. 

My last job in delhi had taught me how to look up the company profile on the Indian government website. The 1st shot of danger was when the incorporation date of the company was just 1.5 years back and the capital of the company was shown to be just few lakhs between 3 directors. Just to be safe, I called up the company and the lady there assured me that nothing except the documents and the DD would be taken on the submission date. Miracles happen and any small company can make it big so you cant say from the outset that its all wrong. The day on which it was supposed to be the submission date, I found the house all quite as I could not find any crowd at all. When I was about to ring the bell to the house, I found a notice pasted on the side of the gate that the submission date has been extended for a week and the same has been informed to the police and the press. I had heard about anticipatory bail, here I was reading about anticipatory notice. 

Now I was damn sure that it was all fishy and after a week on the specified date when I went there, I found all hell broken loose as I had anticipated. All candidates had created a ruckus in the colony outside the house. The girls were crying while the boys had taken the furniture out on the road. Turned out that the company had wound up and was not in a position to offer the said numerous posts it was offering in the ad. Boys and girls from the adjoining cities of Lucknow had also applied in the hope of a job but it all amounted to nothing. It was a waste of time, money and anticipation on every candidate`s part. 

I enjoyed the spectacle for a considerable amount of time before I laughed it off and retuned home.. The DD was safely returned to the bank and after deduction of some charges, it was cancelled. Although I trusted my investigative nature and warning signs when applying to the company, the situation is more dangerous for others who are unable to research so much about a company when they are unemployed. Don’t know that it might have been a last hope for how many people. Unemployment is a curse…