I am sitting the Marathons

Things get tricky sometimes. A few days back, most of the last week, our HOD was busy; too busy to remember that we exist. So there was no review meeting, no assessment, no communication at all for that matter. People were irritated to varying levels of indignation. Don’t count us among those workaholic fanatics. But then you expect your boss, if not to pat your back with a praise, at least to go through what you have done with some sincere effort. Well, apparently, as I mentioned earlier, he was damn busy to manage to do that. We believe him, the boss is always right.

As if to demonstrate the other extreme situation or may be to impress upon us the fact that he cares, he devoted a huge amount of time for us this week; too huge to cope with. The marathon meetings followed, some stretching over three hours at a stretch; some even more with a modest break of half an hour in between. As far the indication until now, the predicament is not going to be over soon.

It always starts with a call from his secretary asking all of us to assemble in the conference room. There is always some sort of urgency as all (barring one or two at the most) try to reach the room first just to secure a seat away from the chair of the meeting; the closer you are the more you are prone to get attacked. Hope you see the point. The meeting starts. People start discussing what they have done or what they plan to do. The boss pays full attention. You can never blame him of lending only half an ear to your story. Suddenly people realize that the process is getting boring and order some tea & coffee along with biscuits and chips for a change. No need to say that it is the best part of the game.

The eatables disappearing slowly (fast if the boss goes out for some time) and the drinks being sipped in a slower rate (since it is not in a public offering as the eatables are), people get finished with almost whatever they had to say. Now comes the turn of the big boss. Just as we are letting ourselves have a sigh of relief that this part of the work is over, the boss uses his ‘veto power’ (as we generally refer to it) to dismiss all of it (if you are lucky, you might manage a “partly right” status). So begin from scratch. However you can’t blame our boss to be harsh either.
“Well, XYZ, I think you have worked quite a bit in this regard but your model requires a few changes” – that is how he starts and goes on to change the whole of it in the name of giving a few tweaks and turns. By the time you leave the meeting, you realize that you have been given a turn of 540 degrees.

(PS – I must mention that our boss is quite smart in his suggestions. He does change our models a lot but those are not just for the sake of making changes to show off that he is the boss. The changes are quite appropriate.)

Moral of the story – Whenever you write something about your boss in a public blog, write something good, at least at the end, if you can’t place it in the main content.