Our First Days at Tesco HSC

Entrance to Tesco HSC Main Campus

It was exhausting but we survived our first two days at the office.  We were far more relaxed on the drive there, probably because we expected the honking and packed roads.  There are large cattle meandering in the middle of the road, and they obviously pay no attention to the honking, so our driver had to carefully go around them on the narrow, unpaved road.  It is only a 15 minute drive to the Tesco HSC (Hindustan Service Centre) campus – a large complex of offices supporting the 13 countries where Tesco operates retail locations.  On our first day, we were warmly greeted by the staff of approximately twenty, some of whom we had previously seen during videoconference calls and of course, talked to over the telephone and via email.  They are kind and wonderful people.  The chocolate bars survived and arrived at the office unmelted.  Today we felt a nice evening breeze during the dinner break at 9:00pm when we went to, what they call, their "food court" - imagine a very large, white permanent covering in the courtyard where they serve free dinner to those on the evening shift because there are no places nearby the Tesco campus to purchase food.  The food, which tonight was an Indian dish not recognizable to us, is described by many of the staff as "okay."  By 10:00pm (or sooner), we all began to feel rather sleepy as we checked our watch to see what time it is: 4 1/2 hours to go.  At the end of the day at 2:30am, the entire HSC team leaves the building together to take a van to another building to catch their cabs home.  We learned that some have commutes for 1 hour or longer.