Skip to main content

Boss


An anecdote and an afterthought

Every Monday the staff had to stay back for an hour after office for the Weekly Assessment Meeting.  Boss would speak out his Scrutiny Report.  He blamed each member of the staff for one failure or another. 

“Sir,” one of the staff dared to ask one day, “don’t you ever find anything good in any of us?  We complete all the tasks in time, bring in huge profits, and the company is running well.”

“Whoever said the company is not running well?” thundered Boss.  “This is your problem.  You are a thoroughly negative person and hence you see everything negatively.”

The staff responded with a positive silence.  After Boss had taken charge, over a dozen staff had lost their jobs for crimes far less serious than questioning Boss.

Afterthought


A docile worker who does as ordered without question is the ideal worker in the corporate world.  Famous French intellectual, Foucault, said that.  The perfect fodder for the Capitalist factory is an automaton, not a human being.  Don’t think, just do your work.  Don’t ask questions.  The corporate firm is a Panopticon with detailed hierarchies, a complex chain of authority and training.  Each level of the hierarchy keeps watch over the lower ranks.  Every behaviour that is seen by the authority as deviant will be punished.  There is only one standard behaviour.  Boss decides the standard.  If you can’t accept that standard, you quit the firm.  Or else, you will be removed.  As simple as that.  
Labels:

Comments

  1. PallaviDecember 10, 2013 at 7:51 PM

    So true.. unfair.. but that's how the corporate world works. Well written Tomichan :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 10, 2013 at 9:07 PM

      Dickens could have written a still better "Hard Times" were he alive now.
      Thanks for the compliment, Pallavi.

      Delete
  2. Poonam KhandujaDecember 10, 2013 at 7:59 PM

    The nuances of the corporate world, well captured, Tomichan. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 10, 2013 at 9:07 PM

      Thank you, Poonam. Happiness in the corporate world is not an easy pursuit.

      Delete
  3. IndraniDecember 10, 2013 at 10:13 PM

    True picture of corporate world!
    Very concisely and correctly put forward.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 10, 2013 at 10:27 PM

      It's consoling to see that there are many people who feel the same way about the corporate sector!

      Delete
  4. AnonymousDecember 11, 2013 at 2:07 PM

    Hi,

    This is in regarding the Bloggers Meet by the Akshaya Patra Foundation the largest NGO known for its mid-day meal program is striving to achieve a hunger free and educated society and is organizing a bloggers meet for all aspiring bloggers and photographers.

    Each blogger can interact with the children and in the process also click photographs of them.

    . For further Information, you can contact me on deepa@pepperpr.in

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownDecember 11, 2013 at 3:14 PM

    I would die of suffocation in such a job!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 11, 2013 at 8:57 PM

      Many are condemned to tolerate such jobs out of helplessness, Pankti.

      Delete
  6. Rajeev MoothedathDecember 14, 2013 at 6:55 AM

    Nice to see the corporate situation discussed.it is only through discussion & introspection that corporates can move forward & get out of deep entrenched traps. Thanks for the post

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 14, 2013 at 10:05 AM

      Discussion and introspection are drowned beneath profit heaps, if not massive egos.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

From a Teacher’s Diary

Henry B Adams, American historian and writer, is believed to have said that “one never knows where a teacher’s influence ends.” As a teacher, I have always striven to keep that maxim in mind while dealing with students. Even if I couldn’t wield any positive influence, I never wished to leave a scar on the psyche of any student of mine. Best of intentions notwithstanding, we make human errors and there may be students who were not quite happy with me especially since I never possessed even the lightest shade of diplomacy. Tactless though I was, I have been fortunate, as a teacher, to have a lot of good memories returning with affection from former students. Let me share the most recent experience. A former student’s WhatsApp message yesterday carried two PDF attachments. One was the dissertation she wrote for her graduation. The other was a screenshot of the Acknowledgement. “A special mention goes to Mr Tomichan Matheikal, my English teacher in higher secondary school, whose moti...
10 comments
Read more

Waiting for the Mahatma

Book Review I read this book purely by chance. R K Narayan is not a writer whom I would choose for any reason whatever. He is too simple, simplistic. I was at school on Saturday last and I suddenly found myself without anything to do though I was on duty. Some duties are like that: like a traffic policeman’s duty on a road without any traffic! So I went up to the school library and picked up a book which looked clean. It happened to be Waiting for the Mahatma by R K Narayan. A small book of 200 pages which I almost finished reading on the same day. The novel was originally published in 1955, written probably as a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and India’s struggle for independence. The edition that I read is a later reprint by Penguin Classics. Twenty-year-old Sriram is the protagonist though Gandhi towers above everybody else in the novel just as he did in India of the independence-struggle years. Sriram who lives with his grandmother inherits significant wealth when he turns 20. Hi...
9 comments
Read more

Water as Weapon

A scene from Kerala The theme chosen for their monthly blog hop by friends Manali Desai and Sukaina Majeed is water, particularly because March 22 is World Water Day. It is of vital importance to discuss the global water crisis because as the motto of Delhi Jal Board says: Jal hi Jeevan hai , Water is Life . The crisis is only going to become more and more acute as we move on. With a global population clocking 8.5 billion by 2030, the demand for fresh water will rise sharply, especially in urban areas. The climate change, particularly rising temperatures, prolonged droughts, and erratic rainfall patterns, will add significantly to the problem. Ground water is getting depleted in many countries. Consequently, water is likely to be a strategic asset in the near future. Powerful individuals, corporations, and nations may use it as a weapon in several ways. Rivers can be blocked with dams and water supply to neighbouring nations can be manipulated. Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam o...
9 comments
Read more

The Pope and a Prostitute

I started reading the autobiography of Pope Francis a few days back as mentioned in an earlier post that was inspired by chapter 2 of the book. I’m reading the book slowly, taking my own sweet time, because I want to savour every line of this book which carries so much superhuman tenderness. The book ennobles the reader. The fifth chapter describes a few people of his barrio that the Pope knew as a young man. Two of them are young “girls” who worked as prostitutes. “But these were high-class,” the Pope adds. “They made their appointments by telephone, arranged to be collected by automobile.” La Ciche and La Porota – that’s what they were called. “Years went by,” the Pope writes, “and one day when I was now auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires, the telephone rang in the bishop’s palace. It was la Porota who was looking for me.” Pope Francis was meeting her after many years. “Hey, don’t you remember me? I heard they’ve made you a bishop.” She was a river in full flow, says the Pope....
8 comments
Read more

Love Affair of Pearl Spot

AI-generated I am not fond of fish. Fish doesn’t taste like fish, that’s the reason. We get adulterated fish most of the time. In Kerala, my state, traders are reported to use formalin for preserving the freshness of fish. Formalin is used for preserving dead bodies by embalming. You will find me in a fish stall once in a while, though. My cats want fish occasionally, that’s why. Not that they are particularly fond of it. For a change from the regular pellets and packaged wet foods, all delivered promptly by Amazon. Even cats love a change. Most of the time, the entire fish that I buy is consumed by my cats. So much so, Maggie and I have come to think that fish is cat food, not human food. People may have different reasons for not eating any particular food. One of the most endearing reasons I heard recently is that fish is a symbol of the voiceless. People commit atrocities on fish, this person said [I forget who – I read it a couple of weeks back on Magzter]. They suffocate it ...
11 comments
Read more