Just another day?

Whew!! What a way to start a new week? Nothing like your boss bawling at you to make an interesting start of the day....except maybe the customer doing the same to you. But thankfully the chances of the latter happening are remote in view of my ability to distance myself from any customer interfacing roles. I successfully pass them onto to more deserving candidates...or so I convince them. Though I must say that carrying a tag of manager does need occasional contact with the customer.

I expected today to be just like any other Monday..you know the kind of day that feels it shouldn't exist, a day when you are carrying the lethargy of Sunday..a day that you can do nothing more than just read the mails that have accumulated over the weekend sent by people who seem to enjoy working on weekends(a wicked part of me says that these people only work on weekends)....a day that.. okay you got the point..right?

So here was I expecting a routine Monday when I get a call from my manager who without beating around the bush asked me what did I think I was doing? I am sure that everybody would agree that bosses the world over aren't logical when they are angry. Though some ungrateful souls claim that bosses are never logical, I for one never make that claim. So when I was faced with this question, I tried to play safe and asked was something the matter. I should have stayed quiet. That set him off and he went ahead to give me a beating that eventually made me forget what it was meant for in the first place. I suppose it was something to do with forgetting to do something important. The likelihood of me forgetting something important is very remote as I don't do anything important in the first place..he..he..he

Anyway, the point is that the start of the first day of the week left much to be desired. So I returned to the apparent safety of reading and responding to mails. After sometime I made some headway in tackling the mails, when my day was again shaken for second time. I was reading a mail with the title "Resignation Letter". I groaned and started reading through it. Nothing very unique, just the usual thanks and request to be relieved from the services at the earliest. Only the person happened to be a senior team member on whom we had a lot of dependency on for a short but very critical period time. I know that nobody is irreplaceable, but we managers find a perverse joy in placing ourselves in a position that makes a reasonably successful attempt in proving this adage incorrect. We simply don't learn from our mistakes. We do a root cause analysis of why the situation happened and then setup a process and then...then forget about it. So sometime down the line the cycle repeats itself. So in the current case I followed what the tradition dictated and that is discuss with the resource, try to find his reasons for resignation and reason with him not to take such an extreme case. The discussion went on for nearly 3 hours with various issues being discussed. In end I succeeded...only in convincing myself that he had the right reasons for resigning. I was now faced with the question of what was I to do next? Finally, I gave up and sent the mail onwards to my boss with my comments.

By now I had started wondering which side of the bed did I get out of. I tried to get on with my work which is depressive enough on any given Monday, but today the depression assumed mammoth proportions. Things were quiet for the next few hours and the day was drawing to a close. Suddenly the phone rang. I prayed that it should not be my boss out to ruin of what remains of the day. It was not...infact it was my customer. And my cup of woes was now full. In his typically understated way he proceeded to tell me of things not going as per his expectation. He went on to ask what was I going to do about it. He threatened that if the issues were not sorted out soon he will have to escalate to my seniors. I started wondering whether this was a dream after all and I will wake up to a routine Monday morning. Guess that was too much to wish for...

To round of such a exciting day my laptop decided to quit. I supposed it was indignant that I was continuing to work after such a inglorious day. So I just gave up and closed shop for the day. What do I say...it was one of those days. Just another day...