Tiger! Tiger!

B*d

Published Sunday, November 13, 2005 by suresh | E-mail this post

My boss was an ass.

(In all probability he might still be an ass. He is no longer my boss)

Mr. B appeared as a stone in my shoe the day I joined the Trivandrum branch of the private firm, Mayur pvt ltd (U silent). This pristine firm had in those days, a fair amount of branches, twigs, brushwood and boughs all over the world; and it was the pride and joy of Technopark Tower in small town Trivandrum. Before I joined hands with Pride 'n' Joy, I was engaged in Mayur's production support center in Madras, where I sat in a corner bench without any major work, where I got bored, applied for a transfer, which in turn got approved, and I reported to Mr.B in Trivandrum, who promptly assigned a major role for me in the crucial MYR project

Now, this Mr.B, he is the Ass. As managers go, he is motivating and encouraging, a natural leader, displays leadership qualities, acts as a mentor, makes right decisions at the right time, takes bottom-line responsibility, gives credit where it is due, is fair in his dealings and an extremely good sport.

Or so he said. The rest of us just thought he was an ass.

He could talk gibberish, baloney and nonsense for hours, and could not lend his ears to reason even for a minute. When the fancy seizes him, he would take it upon himself to motivate his us with his Standard Motivating Speech version 2.63 ('I am proud to be a Mayuron'). He would regularly send out inspiring mails, news updates about Mayur's Siberian development center and crossword puzzles to everyone. He was also supposedly looking after the office recreation club and the library. This left little time for him to carry out his own actual duties for which the company was paying him.

Direct result - we ended up doing all his work for him, in addition of our own load. He turned out to be a delegating wolf in sheep’s clothing (the goatee was for effect)

So this was how I started taking weekly presentations at the top floor conference room, in front of a sleepy crowd representing the stalwart companies in Technopark Towers and also Mayur's own idle hands, on behalf of my boss who couldn't take time off from his busy schedule for these weekly rituals. But whenever my boss could find a little time off his demanding schedule, he would walk past and throw in some of his high-intelligent queries towards the end of these presentations (‘Any questions?' 'Yeah, what do you make out of design patterns for reusable systems in enhanced project re-design module? Are you for them or against them?')

In one of the more interesting presentations, I was explaining the finer details of Blah-Blah in Software Testing. I was doing good too (who am I kidding? I was going great!).. Well at least until He joined in an hour later with a murmur-of-a-non-existent-apology and sat himself in the front row (Enter the Donkey - part deux). This time he didn't wait for the Q & A session, to begin firing his stream of non-sensical questions. I dodged a few, tried to make sense out of some with elaborate explanations and threw the rest right back at him with point blank I-don't-knows. The game went to extra time and the end result was that my presentation was ruined. I grew livid. I quit doing any more of his presentations, he didn’t like the idea, and he went and ruined my appraisal. At the end of the quarter, my salary hike turned out to be imaginary. My paycheck was still as light. (Big punch right on face)

Will continue...