A Glimpse of My Professional Life: A Dignified Exit from a Trapped Situation

It was winter of year 1997 when I had joined a new organization as a department head of the Electrical section. I was really excited to face new people, new organizational culture and a new job responsibility. I was quite satisfied with the salary package and position offered. These were perhaps the chief reasons for my excitement on this new venture. The most important part of this assignment was to having the challenging nature of job. I was in my early thirties, full of youth, passionate enough to take risks, and was fond of doing the challenging jobs. I had always a wish to live life the way I desire and wanted to have a total control in my personal interests. I had also a dream to earn money, as much as I can, to achieve my financial freedom, and to set myself free to do what I like most in life. I had always high thoughts in life, so, was putting steadily my best efforts to achieve the same. My life had been filled with full of enjoyment, not for being a newly married but also for having an interesting and challenging nature of job in hand. I used to go often on long drives with my wife in the weekends and was visiting new places. My wife had equally enjoyed those particular moments of life so much so she even today often recalls those events of life.

I had been provided a fully furnished family accommodation by the company in a close vicinity of the factory. The factory was located alongside the Arabian Seashore in the western part of India, and it was 7 KM far from the Jamnagar City of Gujarat state. I was hired by the company especially to complete the electrical project of a salt refinery process plant having the designed production capacity of 450 MT per day. Unaware about the top leadership’s philosophy concerning to this organization’s work culture and employees’ relations, I realized that, to carry out entrusted responsibilities, I would have to first evolve the electrical department on my own. So my job started from recruiting the new technical hands, mostly fresher, for the department. My initial prime challenge was to recruit fresher and to train them so that they could contribute effectively in project activities. The recruitment of fresher was the part of company’s policy to save on the labor cost. Soon, I became completely busy with my responsibilities and was doing 12 hours duty almost daily against the 08 hours normal, although my superior never insisted me to do the extra hours duty. It was all my sheer passion to complete the project well before the given scheduled period.

I had been constantly receiving pats and lip services from my superiors for the good performance, and also, for the project progress being on scheduled time. And such encouragement and appreciation were continued throughout the project execution stage. Finally, the most awaited day arrived when project had reached to its final stage of completion. The Project was completed in 14 months, 04 months ahead of its original schedule. After completion of erection and installation work of Plant, all the efforts had been focused towards the preparation of plant’s commissioning and within two weeks, entire plant’s equipments and machineries were successfully commissioned. In the very next week, the plant was put into the operation and had been brought into its full production capacity, with the parallel running of its normal trial and error activities on product quality control front.

Now it was time for celebrations by the entire project team of approximately 80 people who had faced the long ordeal of almost one and half year, to see this day of success. But soon after this, contrary to the expectations, unaware about the other members of the project team, I realized that my superiors, instead of congratulating me for the contribution made in the project success, they started ignoring and acted towards clipping my powers / authorization / privileges which I had been enjoying throughout the project stage. Looking to such sudden change in their behaviors, I guessed, they sensed my expectations for pay raise and promotion which I was actually deserved. The other staff members, who were recruited for production department, had no significant roles in contributing to project activities, got hefty hikes in their pay packets across the board. The exclusion of my name from the salary increment list had made me completely off and then- I had virtually left my interest to work with the company.

I had a strong feeling that I was badly used and cheated. Although, I had protested for injustice made to me with the Vice president who was then the factory head and final authority of the company. But my all arguments were proved to be futile and could not yield any positive outcome in my favor.

Looking to this adamant attitude of management, I had decided to quit the job and search for other job. But it was not an easy affair, particularly, for this group of companies. As I had seen personally, in various instances in the past, that many employees who, when left or even planned to left this company, were harassed in numerous ways like to stop their monthly salary, not to sanction their leave requests, to prune their given privileges, unnecessary firing them by superiors on silly reasons, asking them to stay on duty on overtime in odd hours, to curtail their facilities offered in the company’s township etc.
All the credits for good work had fallen into the laps of Plant Manager and he got immediate promotion to the position of senior Plant Manager and a raise of 25% in pay packets at one go; Despite the fact that Plant Manager was absent from his duty for a quite long period, for about 06 months, during the crucial stage of project due to his illness.
The Factory Head was keeping track and was monitoring on all personal activities of employees who were living in the company’s township. For this, he had developed a culture over the period of time by roping close links with the old, loyal and lower level employees, such that they would feed him the information regularly. The Company had a leasehold coastal land of about 2000 acres of area being used for the natural salt production, and the township of company was built in a small stretch, located on this land. The most of township residents especially the newly joined employees had the odd feelings about this isolated location, and often they termed it as “an open prison”. As the road leading to main city from this location was extremely dilapidated, rough and full of ditches, and city was 07 km far. So to access city environment was not easy. Employees were used to visit the city mostly in weekends for needed domestic purchases.

In this way the majority of employees residing at the company’s township had a strong feeling that they are living a captive and slave life due to conservative attitude of factory head. Since my financial standing was not sound enough, so my relocation to city was not possible. I had always a fear running in mind about the consequences if caught in any such personal activity which was against to the company’s wish, like trying to get the job in other company or attending the job interviews. Despite this I desperately wanted to quit the job to join the other company. So, to overcome from this trapped situation, I planned a personal project of 06 months duration and pursued its each step decisively and effectively.

And following steps had been planned to realize the successful completion of the personal project.
1. The relocation from company’s residence near factory to a private residence at city.
2. To arrange for extra financial resources to meet the city living expenses.
3. To arrange for new conveyance facility to commute reliably to attend duty.

To meet the necessary requirements stated above, first I applied for a personal loan from a private bank for INR 100000. Since the company had categorically refused to entertain any type of my loan requests. Fortunately, my loan request in the bank went through and it had got sanctioned within 02 weeks of the application date. On hearing this, for a moment, it felt me like that my dream of getting free from this company was inching closer to the reality. This way I had crossed my first hurdle and shifted quickly to city in a rented house. After relocating at city residence, I was able to completely shield-off myself from leaking information about my personal activities to the township employees who were the main source for passing the information to factory head. Now the township employees-especially those who were informers, were completely isolated and they had no clues about my personal moves. I was truly feeling a sigh of relief by this favorable development.

Soon after I started applying for the job in a big way, approximately 30-40 applications in a month, and was frequently making outstation visits for the job interviews. My fortune finally favored, within the span of 03 months, I got three lucrative offers; all with the almost double pay packets compared to what was my then salary package in this company. However, by this time, company authority had sensed about my intentions, consequently, they had triggered initial cold actions against me like not to sanction my leave requests, holding the payments citing unjustified reasons, scrutinizing my past work related activities and criticizing etc. Having spent close to 05 years in this company, I was fully prepared and aware about possible repercussions of such nature. Since during this time I had gone on leave for 03 days and had resumed my duty on 5th day. The leave extension of 02 days was not approved. Although, the Production manager of the company had tried to contact me on my mobile phone during this leave extension period but I had not picked up the phone intentionally. This way, I had given the enough reasons to the company to be called by the factory head for reprimanding me in the name of discussion. Since, I had been just waiting for an opportune time to put in my papers. Incidentally, the flashing situation to confront face to face was ready.

On the 5th day when I resumed my duty, the moment factory head entered his office, first phone call on that day he made to me and asked politely in a controlled way, could you please come to my office?. I said; yes sir, “I was just waiting for you, I am coming”. And I had swiftly reached to his office with my full preparation. He began his talk slowly and within a minute, his voice changed in to a full shouting mode. By the time, the senior plant manager, Accounts manager and other senior staff members of the company had gathered at the office of factory head. And before factory head would utter anything further, I stopped him, and said; “why are you wasting your precious time and energy? I don’t need you and your company. I am resigning from my position and this is my resignation letter,” and swiftly had put in my papers on his table. On saying this; all of sudden, the whole full charged and heightened atmosphere of the office had dramatically changed in to a pin drop silence. All executives were taken aback by my surprise move. Soon the situation was brought down to the normal by an effective and timely intervention of the other executives present there.

And as expected, at the end of 30days notice period, company relieved me amicably from the services and then- I joined another new job in new location happily. And that new job is the same where I am working today.

On the whole, moral of the story is; I had faced the problem independently, lived with it, searched the solution and got the solution ultimately. Finally I relieved from the bad situation all with upholding my personal dignity. Otherwise I had been 1500 miles away from my native place; no one was there who knew me. I was a stranger for this new location and there were no hopes of any kind of help, financial or others, to deal with such a difficult situation. Interestingly, I, neither then nor even today, discussed this matter with my parents who were living at my native place.

Even today when I recall this entire episode, it gives me a great sense of satisfaction for being successful on overcoming such an odd situation in my life independently.