The Boss from 'Dilbert'

The Boss – A character from Dilbert by Scott Adams

He's every employee's worst nightmare. He wasn't born mean and unscrupulous, he worked hard at it. And succeeded. As for stupidity, well, some things are inborn. His top priorities are the bottom line and looking good in front of his subordinates and superiors (not necessarily in that order). Of absolutely no concern to him is the professional or personal well-being of his employees. The Boss is technologically challenged but he stays current on all the latest business trends, even though he rarely understands them.

This is my blog and I can say whatever I want. This has been my refrain always. And in a way I also felt that it provided a vent to my feelings which otherwise get bottled up. Sometimes issues are dealt humorously as I put it down in the blog, sometimes it pours out as agony. But for me, as a feeling it has got dealt with and that’s what is important.

Despite all this I had been holding myself back talking about a few characters in my ex-employ. Honestly I didn’t know why I had not dealt with my anger about them so far. I could have done that even while I was still working for them. Used euphemistic expressions which only the intelligent guys there understand. But then all those intelligent guys were anyway my friends and they knew what I felt and I also knew that they shared the agony. Bottles after bottles were drowned only on marveling at the stupidity of some creatures that somehow managed to soar up in the hierarchy.

I badly wanted to expose these guys even while I was there. Had a couple of skirmishes and that was about it! And while I was agonizing about letting them go scot-free, I was counseled by one of the rare occurrences like Haley’s comet. The rare occurrence was a man with brains and lots of them. And he told me simply ‘If you wrestle with a pig in the mud, both of you get muddy and the pig loves it’. That sealed my uncertainty of whether to fight or not. Not that I minded getting muddy, his analogy to the pig about the other guy was so very right and I didn’t see myself fighting with a pig, though I may smartly avoiding getting muddy and still win. In Mahabharata, there is a term used for fights amongst equals ( If I am right , it is called Thuvantha Yuddha, my Sanskrit is anyway pretty rusty ). As per agreed norms, a cavalry man fights only the enemy cavalry and so on. Here there was no equal for me to fight, so I just let it go. I was also tempted to have the last laugh and I drafted my resignation mail which was encrypted. The first letter of each word if strung together would have said ‘F*** You …….’ . I was advised against that also by a well-wisher and I just faded away from the scene. After nine years of passion, moved without a whimper and an exit interview!

OK, after two months why am I agitated now? That’s simply because, there had not been a single day in these 2 months where atleast 3 old colleagues had called me to pour their heart out. I am now a declared ‘Agony Uncle’. Stories after stories about the current & ensuing madness! The irony was that even while we were all working together, we managed to make time for ourselves where we discussed stuff that was not about business and company. But now, nothing else they seem to discuss with me. So, the clowns have succeeded in robbing my pleasure time off, which they could not manage while I was working with them.

And, while I was thinking that there is a saturation level for stupidity, these guys prove me wrong everyday by being extremely innovative doing more stupid stuff after stuff. And the worse thing being, not a single guy in the system believes a bit about what he is doing. Seemingly intelligent guys had no recourse but to follow the clown at the top and in the process become laughing stock themselves. The passion in which the second rung leaders try to convince the team to scale to greater heights with no apparent conviction in their voice and body language seems to be the latest fad. A couplet in Thirukkural says that you need to laugh when you face adversity. Very difficult art to practice, but then if there is something to thank these jokers, it is their attempt to induce humor in an otherwise bleak proceedings by being the clowns they are.

Apparently, a guy who is something one day is a different thing another day which he himself is not sure whether he is capable of. I am eagerly awaiting the day when that coffee boy grows into a National Manager. Atleast I like that guy and he is more intelligent than the current crop. They have faced tremendous success in killing the business. And they actually celebrate that. More than half the team has quit and a few of them had the courage to tell the HR guys what they think is messy there. But then HR knows that and they don’t want to or cannot act, hence very little interest for them to know further.

In midst of all this, the top clown and his crony clowns are happy. They feel on the top of the world doing things irrelevant to the business and too far moved away from reality. And they don’t want advice and there aren’t many who can give at this stage. It pains to see your efforts being killed like this, but then it doesn’t matter to me but for the pains I see in my erstwhile colleagues’ faces. People willing to jump out of the ship even if it means that the shore is so far off! Absolutely sickening and creates a terrible rage in me. How that is there could not be one single top guy who cannot bell the cat? How could there be so much apathy from the top management about a business? How could there be so much of gullibility amongst the intelligentsia of the company?

And the persons responsible themselves, how is that there could be so much superciliousness? I have heard of Megalomaniacs from history, never seen one in flesh & blood though. Does he really believe that what he is doing is right? Is he so blind about reality? Or is it just a brave front hoping for a miracle everyday? And what about the sycophants?! Do they really believe the cause or just that they make their living by being ’yea sir’s? There are more questions in mind than answers.

My moral dilemma occurs when I know I could fight and I don’t do. But then life is full of such compromises. Some you choose the right way, some the indifferent way. As long as I am convinced that it is not the wrong way, I guess I will keep finding platforms to vent my spleen.