he announcement was made during the weekly Monday morning meeting. Jeff Scott was going to be the Assistant Officer for Business Development helping attract software and technology companies to use the services of the bank. To make the matters worse for me, I would work for him. It almost felt as if the company had identified me specifically to rub salt into my wounds.

What struck me as odd was the respect that he respected me - treating me as I if was his peer. In the beginning, I thought that it was because he was new to the organization, but when he did that almost regularly I was convinced that it was just his personality. While we had a few American friends, I had never really worked with an American. Occasionally we would have a contractor or a consultant help us out, but it was usually short-term. Plus, I would be acting more as a coordinator rather than working directly with them. Jeff worked diligently and I was impressed by his intelligence. The new perspective that he brought to problems, the access that he had to corporate executives, and his charming personality made me rethink about myself and how incompetent I was for that job. When I compared myself to him, I realized that I was not even half as good as him and would not have done such a good job. While my disappointment with my situation did not go away, I was happy that I got to work with a competent manager. I was also hopeful that we will produce good results and that would make not only Jeff look good but me as well.

Most of my colleagues still kept their distance from Jeff. I also had to join them in their jokes about Jeff when all the Indians would get together and make fun of almost everyone who was not in the group. They would often ask me for any spicy details about Jeff and I would occasionally share a harmless detail about his struggle to make the antique fax machine, which we had, to work or his miserable attempts at speaking Hindi.  The longer I worked with Jeff, the more respect I developed for him. I had never been treated so well by any of my previous Indian managers. He would consult me before any major decision and will always delegate fairly important tasks to me.  In every single meeting that we had in our office, he would force me to attend it even if I had little to contribute. I was always introduced as the coordinator for affairs in India and that made my work sound far more important than it really was. When he would travel to Silicon Valley, Seattle, Boston, and Austin, I would get to run the office on my own though he would constantly be in touch with me. I was enjoying my new responsibility, and more than that, my new boss. I think Jeff somewhat alleviated my pain of not getting my promotion.  Jeff also started to invite us out for lunches more often and that made him popular among many other colleagues.  While many of the senior people were initially hesitant to join junior people at lunchtime, after they saw Jeff doing it, they started to join as well. Everyone was charmed by Jeff's pleasant personality, and of course, his relatively quick success in convincing several high-profile technology companies to relocate their call centers in Pune area.

Continued: Starting to love the American boss

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