Day 1

Company I work for announced merger with another company couple of months back.
Very frequently we got merger update mails. From one month along with merger update we were seeing about "Day 1" a new entry in the merger update mail.
Since New Year was nearing we thought (at least I thought) “Day 1” is Jan 1st.

Last week we got a mail mentioning December 1st is day 1 and stay tuned for more updates. One after the other mails floated and looked to be a big day. 29th November got a mail requesting all employees to vacate the office on 30th November by 6.30pm for them to make arrangements.
I was thinking what arrangements they will do? They also notified that higher management would welcome the employees after 8.30am on December 1st.

I am an early bird to office, but didn’t wanted to miss higher management welcoming me, so reached office at 8.45am. New logo was at the gate that gave a feeling of loosing the old identity of the company. As they say change is the only constant thing life I accepted the change in logo. I entered the gate and came to the entrance of office. Was surprised with the arrangements they made. We were welcomed with a beautiful rose, day 1 agenda and also a chocolate.

Elevator door opened and guess what even elevator was decorated with beautiful roses. Entered our floor and couldn’t believe it’s the same office were I was working. Whole look gave a festive mood, and we Indians get holidays on almost all festivals and so didn’t get mood to work in a festive mood. We few discussed about new logo, decoration, agenda for the day. Can say did everything other than work. Around 10.30am or 11am started to work. Around 12noon managers came to everyone at desk and congratulated for the new company and also welcomed to the new company.

12.45pm is our lunchtime and being in festive mood decided to go out for lunch. But one colleague asked us to have lunch in our own cafeteria as the food is good that day. We had lunch in cafeteria and really food was wonderful. After lunch again back to work. Around 3.30pm managers asked us to gather, this usually happens in our team to celebrate Birthdays and Anniversary’s in that month. But this time it was to celebrate Day 1 of the new company. We all got bouquet of roses and a seasonal greeting card. Manager mentioned that roses and card was not for employee alone but was for the family as without the support of family we probably wouldn’t be what we are now.

Then it was time for cake cutting. We all gathered in cafeteria had the nice pastry. Agenda had program till 9.30pm, due to some personal work I had to end my involvement for the Day 1 function and had to take care of personal work.
This was the first merger I was part of and we were apprehensive about the merger, but it was un-avoidable and hope it’s for better. Have to thank the management to make it a wonderful day.