I am quite sure that most people from the “IT background” must be familiar with this term. In fact the saying goes that your life as an IT professional is incomplete if you have not been on the bench once in your career.

The term I am talking about is “The Bench.”

I became familiar or you can say accustomed with the term, immediately after completing my training. At that point the idea of being on seemed to scare the heart out of me. I guess it was the outlook of Non-IT people thinking which scared me, for whom being on bench is equivalent to your inability to do work, but it took me no time to realize that this is the outcome of your “will not do” attitude towards work .

I am not quite sure of the origin of the word and I guess IT people’s saviour “Google “ has no clue from where this word came into being with context to the IT community. But, I guess the word is stuck with this cherished profession from time immemorial. This abundance of time creates two sets of people, one who see this as an opportunity to excel in whatever they want to do and others who just don’t pay any heed to what people say and enjoy this time to the fullest.

In between , we deviated a bit from our discussion about the origin of the word.I, “Greek god of bench.” realized that there is practicality attached in this word.I almost passed everyday through that “passage”( where I think even the gods would be made to sit and wait to meet the HR’s ) and glared at the unknown faces, wondering what are they upto ,sitting here doing nothing ,as if they are in an “interval” of a movie and waiting for the movie to commence again, but ,one fine day I got a chance to sit among them and realised that the place where I was sitting is where this jargon came from and realised how different the passage looked, sitting at the other end. You almost remain lost or barely visible as if the crowd is ignoring you and dejecting you. This “bench “ word at time seemed perfect enough to remain glued from such a long time to such an industry which always insists on “Unlearn old things and relearn new things.”

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