Certain torturing forwards

I have two e-mail ids and three fourth of the mails that get filled in my inboxes are the usual boring forwarded mails, which I delete straight away even without looking at the title. I don’t forward it to any of my friends as most of the forwarded e-mails generally contain weird stuffs and odd introductions like ‘I am going to die soon. Please help me!’ The most important fact that I have noticed in these mails is that most of them will have a virus complimentary, for the people who open them.

It’s very difficult to know the nature of these forwarded emails or to differentiate between problematic and harmless messages. Witty distractions like jokes and articles emails are often harmless. Certain others like lottery wins, PayPal and eBay offers, job alerts, alerts about a missing child, requests to join an online petition should be verified for authenticity, before forwarding. But people hardly bother to check the sender details, and just forward the emails to others.

The recent one I got was in the name of a recruitment firm in Delhi, offering me a job in a university, in the Kingdom of Saudi. There was an attachment along with mail and I was asked to open it to see the details. When I tried to scan the e-mail using the antivirus software an alert popped up saying that the attachment should not be opened, as it contained a malicious program. I deleted the mail immediately. To be frank, I am tired of deleting all these forwards. Wish if I had an option to stop receiving this!

It's still a puzzle

I had a narrow escape from a job offer. Are you shocked? Please read on

A week back...

I was really happy to see that I was short listed for the post of writers, in one of the sub offices of a famous Australian firm. As usual I had submitted my CV, long back, after seeing their ad in one of the leading dailies. I got a reply from the Australian office, via mail, that I was short listed, and will be contacted soon from the sub office to intimate about the interview. The e-mail also had a long PDF document about the company; rather a little hyped I should say.

Later I got an email from the so called sub office regarding the interview, which was to be held in a convention centre in the city. I was also told that the ‘executive chairman’ of the parent company would be leading the interview board.
I was wondering about the reason of choosing such a venue, as the most of the companies choose their corporate office as the venue of interview.

The strangest thing that I noticed in both the e-mails was that they had only the details of the parent company in their websites, and absolutely nothing about the sub office or the so called ‘executive chairman’, who was going to conduct the ‘interview drama’.

Fortunately the second mail had a mobile number in it. When I dialed that number a lady answered, introducing her as the TL of the sub office. I asked her about the roots of the sub office connecting the parent company and the lack of any information about the ‘executive chairman’ in the websites that I was given. She replied that Australian companies usually don’t give the name of the people behind it; like ‘executive chairman’, in their websites. I was stunned to hear that odd sentence . I have been dealing with websites for for a long time, and have never heard that a company would leave their 'executive chairman’s' name from their website.

A line from Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ immediately came in to my mind.

‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.’

When I asked about the details and location of the sub office, she started literally stuttering and said that they don’t have a sub office now, and is working from her home far away from the city. Before I could ask her anything more she disconnected the call saying that she was busy.

What more to say…

I didn’t attend the interview.

The whole episode seems like a puzzle to me now as I still don’t know if such a sub office exists or not.