Collateral Damage!
Routine activities were going on since
the uneventful morning of that normal work-day like it had been going on for ages.
Files moving into the desks of the senior executives and moving out in due
course; the steaming cups of teas coming into various desks of the two floors with
some hungry or greedy souls asking for the hot snacks available outside at
cheap prices and the empty crockery being cleared away in due course; and of
course, some visitors on business or time-pass had been moving in and out of
various rooms or chambers. It was absolutely a normal day with no indication
for any trouble.
In a routine exercise one junior executive
came into the chamber of a senior executive around noon with some important
files for approval. The two were always on friendly terms and the junior,
ignoring the gloomy face that the senior wore at that particular moment,
greeted him warmly and sat down in one of the chairs lined up in front. The senior
who seemed to be immersed in a bunch of documents looked up abruptly and nearly
shouted out, “Who asked you to sit down? Keep standing till I say otherwise!”
The shocked junior stood up jerkily, just
managing to stammer out, “Anything’s the matter Sir?” although he normally didn’t
use the ‘sir’ and addressed him often by name which, incidentally was, say
Ramesh.
“Mind your business... Now! Give me the
damn files!” Ramesh was glaring up at him like a demon.
The junior decided to remain silent till
the job was over; however, he failed to prevent an equally gloomy countenance
from taking full control of his face. Ramesh never asked him to sit and kept on
shouting, unnecessarily as the junior reasoned silently, for about fifteen
minutes at the end of which he finally signed the approval with a sullen face. The
junior felt sufficiently insulted and humiliated, and was relieved nobody came
in during the storm. He almost ran to his room and sat down heavily in his
chair—his face contorting as if with terrible indigestion.
At that very moment the jovial ever-smiling
accountant came in with some more files to get his remarks noted before
forwarding the same to the higher authority. Now, the junior stared at him
demonically not even asking him to sit and kept on finding errors in the
accountant’s notes on the files, absolutely unnecessarily as the shaken
accountant reasoned silently, and kept on shouting dismissing him in quick
fury. The accountant almost ran to the staff room, sat down gloomily in his
chair and rested his distorted face in his folded hands over the desk avoiding looking
at the other members of staff around in the large room filled with cubicles.
One assistant noticed the black mood
overpowering his immediate boss, the accountant, and jokingly asked as to if a
ghost had possessed him suddenly. The accountant almost shrieked at the poor
assistant to shut up, and the large room became instantly noisy and nastier
with more queries bursting out of other members making the accountant a kind of
full-grown devil. At that moment a peon came smilingly in holding up a tray of tea
in paper cups. He had to face the unholy chorus that took him aback, “To hell
with your bloody tea!” The peon plonked the tray noisily in an empty table
nearby and escaped in a single piece.
The gloom accumulated and spread like a
virus infecting the whole of the two floors of the office. In a passage in the
upper floor a lady executive was found crying inconsolably to her colleagues,
complaining hoarsely about something. Only the supreme boss sat unaffected and
benevolently in his revolving chair in the rather oversized chamber, enjoying
his lunch with unusual relish.
The peons always had their lunch
together in the lounge of the lower floor, near the chambers of all the
important executives. On that lunch hour some of them were seen offended while
some others proceeded calmly. However, the usual casual chat was missing and it
was pin-drop silence all around. One of the calmer peons broke the silence as
if he thought it was his holy duty to do so.
“Guys! I think I know why our office has
suddenly become so gloomy with all the shouting and the outbursts of temper!”
They all looked up expectantly at him. He
narrated, as our intelligent readers must have guessed long back, that when he
entered the chamber of the supreme boss with the customary morning cup of tea
he found Ramesh standing in front the boss’s desk shell-shocked and shaking all
over uncontrollably as the boss kept on firing him for the delay in clearing an
important file. The firing had been going on unabated till the peon did his job
and left. “Obviously, Ramesh sir felt all the more insulted because I came in
that moment!” the peon added, smiling now.
All of them started giggling and
laughing aloud, finding a reason now to enjoy the lunch, the usual casual
chatting taking over. The news spread throughout the office like wildfire in the
post-lunch hour and the laughter virus began to infect most of the members of
staff and the executives, but, obviously, for Ramesh and perhaps a handful
other officers who still remained uninfected. Normalcy would be restored fully
the next day, although the hierarchy percolation chain would still be there never
breaking since eternity; the enlightened ones hoped.
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