Some corporate lessons

My husband and I, the other day, were attending the parent-teacher meeting at my son’s school. My son was not allowed into the room where we were discussing about his progress.

We were also told not to ever open his diary in which he evaluates himself every week. There are a few set of questions in his diary like how was my week, did I help anyone this week, did I keep my cupboard clean etc and he can also record his thoughts and feelings. The teacher herself never opens the diary before the children nor discusses about it. It is an exercise to evaluate oneself honestly.

Never open it before him or ask him why he wrote so in the diary, else he will feel bad about it, we were told. This reminded me of my own school days. None of our teachers ever cared about whether we could ever feel bad about anything.

I did my schooling in one of those top ‘result-oriented’ schools in my native town. I remember one incident when the geography teacher flipped through my notebook and found out the scribbling done my little cousin. He did not even ask who did that, instead publically displayed what he called was a ‘masterpiece’. The class broke into peals of laughter and the teacher took pride in his accomplishment of entertaining everyone at my expense.

That is what our school system does, trains children how to lose self-esteem and survive humiliations. Further, the teacher also will demonstrate how effectively you can humiliate others when you are in a position to do that. During our parent-teacher meetings, we would be summoned to the teacher’s room and were made to stand through the entire exercise as muted sufferers. The teacher will happily recollect all our wrongdoings ever since the last meeting. (Hats off to his memory!) Once out of the school, we should have come in terms to the fact that being humiliated, with or without reason, was quite normal and becoming fit for life was getting tough enough to survive them.

And certainly this is one big quality that will come handy in a corporate set-up. You might be a good worker or not, the boss has all rights to publically yell at you without even enquiring what you did was a mistake or not. You are not supposed to utter a word till the boss triumphantly walks away after showing off his ‘administrative’ skills.

But, in an office, one would have a few ways to get the humiliation out of the way. Dole out to your subordinates their share if you have any or booze over it till you get drunk. You can bitch about him among your colleagues or if you are not that type, simply swallow it.

Whatever way you choose, the next day when your boss behaves as if nothing happened the previous day, you are expected to be a better actor.

Now if you try to make your point clear to your boss during his tirade, be prepared to be looked upon as the rebel in the lot. If you don’t want to suffer this ‘torture’ anymore and decide to quit job, you will be stamped as the ‘loser’, coz if you have to climb the corporate ladder you need to have the right attitude and the right attitude is – keep your self-respect at home before coming to office.