Wine and dine at the office cafeteria or alfresco with like-minded office folks, but never let your guard down at the workspace. Being careless at work is a strict no-no. Work matters the most, but so is your dignity and self-respect. Work the hours and speak in their lingo to support your work as a team member, so they—especially your manager, good or not, GG was never good anyway—understand you better as a professional.
Sometimes, you never know when your boss might say something hurtful that you won't find acceptable because they (like some office co-workers), like the bulbous-faced GG, are wont to think they're a distinct species who get to manage and supervise everything. As a result, the sheer gauntness of their ilk boosts bigger and bigger egos unrestrained. So, say upfront to him (or they) what you don't like being talked down to in a condescending tone, directly in the first instance and in the first sentence itself. (GG was the sole foul-mouther in Satyam.) There's nothing for later to tell; it's now or never. Unfortunately, I learned that much later in my professional life, not at that time.
Who's the boss!
GG was an Old-Schooler dynamo, a Teflon man, a crass World-on-his-shoulders sort, and a Dictator of some managerial ilk who joined Satyam as a measly Consultant, not even a Vice President to throw his weight around the way he used to during those days in Satyam.
GG was the same shit, different day — a corporate badass boss unapologetically visible as a fly in the ointment, a Bio-hazard! Try pronouncing his name aloud: G G; it sounds like you're gnashing your front teeth to make a couple of single-letter vowels: GG. That's the word (a couple of letters only) he insisted we address him by. Sadly, this stingy, U.S.-educated boulevardier, of all people, was bossing our division.
He typically wore khaki pants and a white shirt, with a red tie occasionally dangling down, setting his shirt collars in a tight noose, giving off an "I mean business" or something like "I will throw you out of my office" vibe. The excessive verbosity of his language and working too ambitiously, even rigidly, about living his life on his terms outside the family line had, we believe, allowed him to look threateningly unapproachable to almost anyone who interacted with this allegedly self-made man, prompting Devi to once quip, "Idiot!". That's why, perhaps, he always appeared to be a hardass brutish. Carrying a cup of coffee, he prowled heavily into the East Wing through the green-marbled front office staffed by his favourite maiden, who was practically a loyal protégé in all of Satyam's branches, head offices, and headquarters combined, the perked-up front desk administrator of the office branch on the 5th-floor.
His beer-bellied paunch would protrude out like a gaunt prospector of grosser worlds he inhabits in his mind without much to care beyond his way in the world. This Colin Powell lookalike had a dome of a head that must have constantly groaned with ghosts and ghouls from the past days he spent somewhere out of the country westwards that came to haunt him like an implacable scourge when he returned to the Indian subcontinent: the return of the prodigal son with a misguided understanding of corporate culture. A fake sardonic smile that his gaunt face could contort (some long-hardened facial muscles twitching, that's all) and a barrage of inquiries and allegations he devised managed the trick for him to "come out of any situation unscathed." GG was a person whom we always saw as angry, impolite, and rude, words that define his professional conduct as disrespectful, inconsiderate, and inappropriate. In a nutshell, he was determined to show us who's boss.
Balaji was far off in his cubicle, ideating, brainstorming, calling clients, and assuring them he might turn up in the following week to discuss a few outstanding issues relating to roaming operations or financial settlement. GG would have given the 'green signal' to Balaji, the thinking man, to dash off to Delhi, Chennai, or Kolkata. If it is to Kolkata (Lord) Balaji is travelling to, why doesn't he get some Rasgullas from K C Das? A large tin box filled up to the brim with the juicy doughs! "Yes, GG!" Balaji would reassure GG. “Tin cans are convenient to carry and manageable to pack. So why not." Onward Balaji would go, flying to his destinations in two hours, per the long-drawn itinerary prepared ahead of his routine trips.
(Yet, everything was perfect in our life at Satyam because we made it that way. Making a deliberate effort to keep our vile manager at the farthest periphery possible and confining ourselves from his debasing influence was something we did every day. We loved our job because that keeping-away tactic worked in our favour. Yes, we all loved Satyam Computers and the work we accomplished there, despite having to report to a nasty, temperamental, miserly boor.)
GG was an Old-Schooler dynamo, a Teflon man, a crass World-on-his-shoulders sort, and a Dictator of some managerial ilk who joined Satyam as a measly Consultant, not even a Vice President to throw his weight around the way he used to during those days in Satyam.
GG was the same shit, different day — a corporate badass boss unapologetically visible as a fly in the ointment, a Bio-hazard! Try pronouncing his name aloud: G G; it sounds like you're gnashing your front teeth to make a couple of single-letter vowels: GG. That's the word (a couple of letters only) he insisted we address him by. Sadly, this stingy, U.S.-educated boulevardier, of all people, was bossing our division.
He typically wore khaki pants and a white shirt, with a red tie occasionally dangling down, setting his shirt collars in a tight noose, giving off an "I mean business" or something like "I will throw you out of my office" vibe. The excessive verbosity of his language and working too ambitiously, even rigidly, about living his life on his terms outside the family line had, we believe, allowed him to look threateningly unapproachable to almost anyone who interacted with this allegedly self-made man, prompting Devi to once quip, "Idiot!". That's why, perhaps, he always appeared to be a hardass brutish. Carrying a cup of coffee, he prowled heavily into the East Wing through the green-marbled front office staffed by his favourite maiden, who was practically a loyal protégé in all of Satyam's branches, head offices, and headquarters combined, the perked-up front desk administrator of the office branch on the 5th-floor.
His beer-bellied paunch would protrude out like a gaunt prospector of grosser worlds he inhabits in his mind without much to care beyond his way in the world. This Colin Powell lookalike had a dome of a head that must have constantly groaned with ghosts and ghouls from the past days he spent somewhere out of the country westwards that came to haunt him like an implacable scourge when he returned to the Indian subcontinent: the return of the prodigal son with a misguided understanding of corporate culture. A fake sardonic smile that his gaunt face could contort (some long-hardened facial muscles twitching, that's all) and a barrage of inquiries and allegations he devised managed the trick for him to "come out of any situation unscathed." GG was a person whom we always saw as angry, impolite, and rude, words that define his professional conduct as disrespectful, inconsiderate, and inappropriate. In a nutshell, he was determined to show us who's boss.
Balaji was far off in his cubicle, ideating, brainstorming, calling clients, and assuring them he might turn up in the following week to discuss a few outstanding issues relating to roaming operations or financial settlement. GG would have given the 'green signal' to Balaji, the thinking man, to dash off to Delhi, Chennai, or Kolkata. If it is to Kolkata (Lord) Balaji is travelling to, why doesn't he get some Rasgullas from K C Das? A large tin box filled up to the brim with the juicy doughs! "Yes, GG!" Balaji would reassure GG. “Tin cans are convenient to carry and manageable to pack. So why not." Onward Balaji would go, flying to his destinations in two hours, per the long-drawn itinerary prepared ahead of his routine trips.
(Yet, everything was perfect in our life at Satyam because we made it that way. Making a deliberate effort to keep our vile manager at the farthest periphery possible and confining ourselves from his debasing influence was something we did every day. We loved our job because that keeping-away tactic worked in our favour. Yes, we all loved Satyam Computers and the work we accomplished there, despite having to report to a nasty, temperamental, miserly boor.)
One is bound to say this: With the knowledge and experience that GG gained from a dog-eat-dog, high-tech delusion of corporate covetousness and a misplaced delusion of some info-tech hinterland westwards of India, this absolutist controller of his own GG-iceberg set atop his atoll: our senior manager flipped into a misguided blokey character, hand-in-glove with Bingo Capitalism moments of the late 1990s and coming to hold a job position at Satyam!
Thanks to his convenient closeness to the super-managers of the so-called strategic business unit, the senior position worked in his favour, making it possible for him to head the business entity like a clipped phoenix ascending from the trashes... err... rashes... err... ashes of his earlier years of IT background! After nearly two and a half years (or more, who knows!) of unchecked whodunnit jiggery-pokery, he hauled the money-making business entity away to another company, hurriedly set up to accommodate this one, leaving Satyam's human resources unit high and dry in its wake, not to mention us: as we were put on, what they say as, bench, looking for internal job postings.
Yes, exactly the kind of HARI SADU you can spot from a mile away; that's right. Sometimes it's best not to tolerate that frigid nonsense and move on, leaving your stormy manager to his own devices, his dark materials. Live today to fight another day. That is a wiser reasoning you can give yourself as you try to focus on your work and drive home, hard done by the day. HARI SADUs of the world can come again tomorrow. It’s a professional hazard, I’m afraid.
(To be continued…)
By Arindam Moulick
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