When Tyrants Are Proud...

I still remember my on-boarding session at my first job (first job, first love, first pani-puri etc. are not easily forgotten) There was this lady who started off the session by saying, “I am gonna give you a clear picture of what this company is. I will not bullshit you. I will speak only what is true, whether it is good or bad.” Now she was from the HR team; there was no way in hell that she would badmouth the company. Even if there was something “bad” as she had put it, she would sell it in such a way that we would actually find ways to justify it. Diplomacy, after all, is the first rule of the HR! So in the course of incidents that she narrated (the usual – someone stealing mobiles, a couple making out in company-provided cabs, forwarding mails to personal IDs etc etc) there was this one incident she narrated with complete ruthlessness. There was this lady from the security team, whose job was to frisk the employees as they came in. Apparently this one employee carried a USB device successfully into his restricted bay, despite being frisked. Sometime later, the guy was caught with the device and was instantly thrown out. The frisking lady was asked to leave as well. The HR lady told us, in the most dramatic way possible, that the lady was a widow who had two children to take care of. And yet, the company did not think twice about throwing her out. While she narrated this, drama aside, I noticed there was not the slightest tone of compassion in her voice. If I may say so, she sounded almost proud of her company kicking out someone for not doing their job properly. Now, from her perspective, she may have had the right to be working for a company with such high principles of integrity (*snort!*). But what was the need to mention the personal circumstances of the lady who was fired? In showing the company as a ruthless, uncaring monster, what was she trying to do? Instil fear in us? As I mentioned earlier, she packaged her speech in such a way, that no one present in the hall with me felt any sort of compassion for the frisking lady (or so I think). But it brought this question to my mind – is there arrogance in being projected as ruthless? If yes, that’s a sad and petty kind of arrogance… hopefully the frisking lady found a job with a more humane company. Copyright Petrichor and Clouds 2013 at petrichorandclouds.blogspot.com Please do not reproduce the material published here.