we all had a one hour "training session" today, where randomly selected people were forced to wake up an hour before normal and get together in the cafeteria. we were thrown sleepily together in a batch on ten. the CEO was there, as sleepy as the rest of us. the finance controller, the new girl, the new guy, the HR head, the HR organizer, the contract chick who just got permanant and a couple people i knew and a couple of people i didn't.
we were told one thing: talk about yourself

a little annoyed, a little harrassed about the time and the presentations and the deadlines, we all furrowed our brows and looked to the end of the table to the oldish guy i didn't know sitting at the end.
he introduced himself. i realized i'd spoken to him several times on the phone. he arranged all the transport for my trips back and forth within karachi. i had no idea who he was.
he started working the year i was born. he talked about the company, what it was, what it had become, and the people that had come and gone and the way the culture had changed. i bit my lip and remembered how i had practically treated him like a peon. someone asked him what it was like to listen to so many complaints in a day. he smiled, and said "thats my job". the HR head, wide eyed, asked him about the two Mergers, what it must have been like to live through them. he smiled "the first thought everyone has is: i'm going to get fired. but you put your head down and continue to do your best, because in the end, thats all you have, that you tried your best".
i found out the contract chick who likes cats was actually from Australia. i had no idea. the chick i said hi to everyday was a chartered accountant. the man i thought was from marketing was actually a CA in finance too. the HR head started her career as an airhostess in the years that pilots were the rockstars of the new generation. the CEO thought he would lose his job too when the merger happened. the girls i thought i knew, the ones i see and work with every day had lives and pasts and aspirations i had no idea about.

the session went on for two hours. we all knew we learnt more from it than we had in the collective 150 years of work experience. and we all walked away wondering how we had managed to forget it in the first place