Do As I or We or They Say
I have just finished reading the chapter entitled "The Fourth Night". At the end of this chapter of The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, Balram is asked to confess to an act he did not commit. Asked to admit responsibility for driving over a person or animal and killing it, leaving it on the street and not taking any action to help it. The fact is that the wife of his master was driving the car - not him - and that she is responsible for the crime. But, in this story, this kind of behaviour was common. It was accepted by those in control.
Do As I Say
After finishing to read the chapter I got up from my green (some say brown) love seat, walked to the kitchen and emptied the dishwasher (thanks for cleaning the dishes my servant). A moment in my past popped into my head.
I was a newish manager and it was evaluation time. At that point in time the management team was told how many people could receive a one, two or three rating. This did not come from HR in the form of guidance. It was a directive to be followed. The management team's only discretion was in deciding who would get what rating. After deliberation it was all decided and we were about to be given the green light by the human resources team to start letting our employees know the verdicts on their accomplishments over the year gone by. At the last minute I was called into my manager's office and told that a change had been made. Someone who we had all agreed was a two rated employee now had to become a three rated employee. My manager sympathised with me say that he knew it would be hard to give this verdict to the employee but we needed one more three. (A three is worse than a two, if you had not yet figured that out). It had to be done because our unit had not matched the directive of HR precisely.
So I left his office and had to try and convince myself of this new "truth". I never really did. Speaking to this employee was one of the hardest things I ever did in my career because I did not believe in the message I was relaying. I did it though and I am annoyed that I gave in to the stupidity of the system.
Do As I Say
This is one of a few events in my life that have, over the years, taught me to speak my mind, my personal thoughts and to let people know what I think. Because of these experiences I have grown more confident - though I still sometimes go back and forth on speaking my opinion. This story, just recounted, being a case in point. I moved it from a scheduled post to a draft post three times before deciding screw it....isn't the point of the entry to speak your mind?
I have not yet started the next chapter of The White Tiger so I do not yet know whether Balram did as he was told.
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