Bad experience at work? I don’t recall one specific memory that lingers in my mind. Work-life is full of challenges anyway, isn’t it? All I can say is that my boss gives us all hell. He is from Patna basically. And he says he belongs to a Thakur family. So his family owns half the town that they live in. But I wonder what that has to do with his profession here. I suppose it’s the mindset that he brings to work. That makes all the difference.
His royal lineage is probably ingrained in his character. Yes, I won’t deny that he has excellent domain knowledge and knows the firm inside out. He’s been working in this firm for a very very long time. But all that does not mean you look down upon women! I think he finds the fact that women too are smart and intelligent quite difficult to digest.
We work as a team on all projects. And whenever we are assigned a new project, we are eager to give our views and put forth our ideas. But Nope. That does not work with him. At all. He never listens to any of us. Never. He will just look up into the air and tell us, this is what you have to do and that is the end of the matter. Boy! That man is so damn difficult to deal with. I mean, so many times, we have better suggestions to offer which are more effective and beneficial for the firm too. But all these thoughts die on our lips and lie buried in our minds. And that can be frustrating, very frustrating – believe me.
Yeah, he is married and has two grown-up children. He does have a daughter too. Yes, I wonder about it too – how does his family put up with him? We, all the team members have to laugh when he laughs even at the lamest of jokes and look at him with a poker face when he is serious. We have to agree with all that he has to say. Just have to. And with a smile too. And he has an extremely bad temper too.
It’s like this. If we have worked for a boss like him, we can work for anyone. Trust me. That’s how difficult a man he is to work with.
And it’s the same with all the other teams too. In fact, other people in my office often wonder how I am able to deal with him. They feel I must get an award because I am able to work on a project with him. But I don’t have a choice about it. So I just have to do the best I can.
I head a team of four. And we spend hours and hours to do the research and come up with a presentation that he approves of. And look how cool this man is. He will not even reveal his thoughts to us. He will present it to the super boss and take all the credit. Forget about appreciation. We don’t want any of it. They pay us to do the work after all. But there is a thing like motivation, isn’t it? And if you do not give a team’s combined efforts the recognition that it deserves, how will we feel like working with zeal?
But he doesn’t understand stuff like that. You know what happened once? He assigned a project to us and gave us the guidelines that the super boss had given him. On reading the guidelines, we knew what the super boss was looking for. He gave us, as usual, crisp and precise instructions about what he was looking for and asked us to go about creating a presentation. We read and reread the guidelines repeatedly and told him that the super boss was not looking for what he was asking us to do.
But who can get through a thick-headed person like him? He just said Nope and asked us to do what he wanted. And when this high and mighty boss of ours presented it to the super boss, he looked at our boss scornfully and said, “I’m amazed – really – that you could not understand a simple set of guidelines. I was looking for this and look at what you have come up with? Is something wrong with you?” And then the super boss ignored him for the rest of the meeting.
He was acutely embarrassed in the meeting and the super boss was looking at what we had suggested to him initially. He was quite red-faced that day. But this is what happens when you think so highly of yourself. Yes, pride does get punctured but I doubt if he will really change his ways or his mindset.
He’s a narcissist actually. He loves himself. A lot. And this is just one incident that I have narrated to you. We face challenges like this every day. And despite the long commute in our company bus, my mind is still buzzing with all that happened in the workspace each day. It is not a friendly or warm work atmosphere. He unduly pressurizes us and ruins the work environment of the entire team.
That’s how tough it is to work for him. But I guess all this is a part of the deal. So I have learnt to work around such people and manage to get my work done. See, the super boss does not care which team does the job. He just brings projects into the firm and wants us to turn them into deals. And this man takes all the credit for our hard work. And that hurts.
But there is nothing we can do about such things. So we just take it in our stride and move on….