Prasenjeet Kumar - An Introverts Guide to Rising in Career & Life: Quiet Phoenix, #1

Let Me Tell You A Story.........

T HIS STORY IS OF A bird.

She was no ordinary bird.

As the legend goes, this bird was a fire spirit with a colourful plumage and a tail of gold.

She lived a life of five or six centuries.

This was not the only unusual thing about this bird.

After the near end of her life-cycle, she would build a nest of twigs and immolate herself thereon, turning to ashes.

This was not, however, the end of the bird.

From the ashes, her offspring could arise to begin a new cycle of life.

This bird became an emblem of immortality or of reborn idealism or hope.

She came to be associated with a person or thing that has been restored after suffering calamity or apparent annihilation.

The bird was called Phoenix .

Now Let Me Tell You Another Story.........

T HE STORY IS ABOUT a young, idealistic, wide eyed trainee corporate lawyer.

Lets call him PK.

One day, PK was assigned by the HR of the firm to assist a Senior Associate, who went by the name Mr. Late Nightaholic.

A slightly balding guy of medium height with rimmed glasses and a small paunch, Mr. Late Nightaholic in his previous stints with other law firms had picked up a neat little trick. This was that if you pretended to your bosses that you were putting in more hours than your peers, you were likely to be well received.

This meant that Mr. Late Nightaholic would stay in office for long hours even when there was NO work.

Not only that, to show that he was important, he would also make his juniors sit late at night regardless of their workload. When in a generous mood, he would allow his subordinates to leave office early, which meant after 7 p.m.

Mr. Late Nightaholic used to assert that this was the unstated principle on which most corporates operated.

Havent you heard about the phrase going the extra mile, he would ask.

For a busy senior, it simply means the number of hours you put in, BEYOND the normal office hours, he would explain when in an expansive mood.

Nobody says it but this is how you get noticed in the long run, he claimed.

Plus all your bonuses and promotions depend upon the hours you have spent in office.

Mr. Late Nightaholic was the centre of the office gossip, which he knew and enjoyed.

Surprisingly, even though he was staying up late, he was constantly goofing up.

Deadlines were missed which made the clients furious. Wrong documents were sent once which caused a major embarrassment. But Mr. Late Nightaholic was incorrigible. He continued to impose false deadlines.

He would cry wolf and make something look like it is absolutely urgent whereas the matter would very much be dead or no longer important.

With PK, it was the same routine.

He would keep PK without work till 6:30 in the evening and when it would be time to wrap up and call it a day, he would suddenly come up with some assignment making it look absolutely urgent.

PK tried to bargain with him regarding working from home, but to no avail. In fact, this so annoyed Mr. Late Nightaholic that he threatened to spoil PKs appraisal.

Some of PKs colleagues advised him to take this all in stride, as an inevitable part of the rites of passage that all junior associates have to go through.

Others advised him to meet the Managing Partner in person and explain.

But the Managing Partner appeared to be very busy and didnt have the time to meet anyone.

PK was himself a little uncomfortable speaking to the Managing Partner face-to-face especially when he knew that even if he gets an opportunity to talk, it would be for less than 20 seconds to explain his problems. PK apprehended that in such a short time he may come across as someone who needlessly whines, and that too against his seniors.

So Mr. Late Nightaholic continued to bully and PK being not exactly the most vocal person around, just lumped it.

Till the day came when PK couldnt take it anymore.

PK came back home late in the night, troubled and depressed and decided to speak to his father about all this.

PKs father heard him out patiently and then asked him to write down all this in some kind of a diary of events; with date, timing, event and why he considered it all so unreasonable.

So PK started maintaining a record of all the events that happened between him and Mr. Late Nightaholic.

He just typed these events down in a word document and did nothing further. A sample page of the diary went like this:

21 June 2010 : I was done with my job regarding the IPO matter and left office at 6.30 p.m. [Mr. Late Nightaholic] called me up at 6.45 p.m. and asked me to come back urgently as he wanted me to review an Amendment Agreement.

I asked him if he could e-mail the document to me so that I could review the document at my home, make track changes and e-mail back to [Mr. Late Nightaholic]. [He] told me that he did not have a soft copy of the Amendment Agreement but only a hard copy which was 500 pages long. I acted as if I was not able to hear him clearly because of disturbances on the line and decided not to go back.

22 June 2010 : I asked [Mr. Late Nightaholic] about the document that I was supposed to review the previous day. To my surprise, [Mr. Late Nightaholic] first couldnt recall what exactly was the urgency and then remembered and readily e-mailed me the same document which he claimed he did not have a soft copy of, the previous evening. Also the document was not 500 but only ten pages long.

This is sheer harassment!

PK was becoming tired of Mr. Late Nightaholics antics. The latter would always cry wolf and would not let PK work from home or even leave for home at any decent hour.

One day, PK and Mr. Late Nightaholic went for a client meeting in the afternoon and came back to office at around 7:30 p.m.

PK was having a splitting headache. So, he left office without seeking Mr. Late Nightaholics permission, which PK knew wouldnt be forthcoming in any case.

PK also kept his mobile phone in silent mode; and when Mr. Late Nightaholic did call, he didnt answer.