Make My Termination Letter Story !

Incidental Report .

16th December - Termination - Deepak Singh Rathore.
Reason On Paper - Unsatisfactory Performance.


PRELUDE - Was just walking to the cafeteria for the birthday celebration of Minal and Himanshu . Got a call from Venky -"come to ground floor Board Room urgently ". Stirred my mind a little ,then just started walking towards the Board Room. As soon as I entered into the room I saw Chetan ,Venky ,Rohit and Ashish in the room sitting as if some bomb had been dropped. I sensed the seriousness and sat in one of the chairs.

THE MOMENT - Chetan broke the silence over what it was all about . It was regarding my termination . I was zapped inside but showed composure . Something was killed inside -don't know what , they all looked like "Others".The bomb was dropped now and the damage was done.

POST DAMAGE TALKS - People were raising points over my performance and I was point-wise honestly handling the questions . I think I was doing good enough until I realized that it was all a futile act . This meeting was just for informing me that the company didn't need me anymore. I wish, I had been smarter at that moment and not giving them the answers- so that I could have saved myself from looking like a fool. This was the other realization that bombed me , but it was solely my fault (I need to become more mature about these kind of situations). Post that moment I tried to objectively discuss the possibility and some questions I thought worth asking. I can distinctively remember the moment when Venky said that he was co-operative with me .I could have taken anything but that statement and that too coming from Venky. May be my impaired perception about him but it would take tons of hard facts which went beyond my eyes and a new human perception model to make me feel otherwise .To support my perception he also sidelined the talks about me giving him real incidents where he was non co-operative and he giving me my failure points as an employee. After the damage , this happened so quickly for me that I couldn't help but feel that way for me . May be in some higher perspective he can be justified but will come to it later.

THE CHOICE - I was offered my resignation letter to sign . I said -"But it says I want to leave the company ,which is not true ". They said -"the other option is termination". In the pulse of the moment I said to myself -'Come on -Lets Bring the second one on'. But after giving second thought to it - I asked for some time to consider . Rohit was quite adamant over having my word then and there only , he even said we will wait for as long as you will take . I don't know what was so paranormal he was thinking a lightening-struck man could have done .It was Chetan who gave me couple of hours to think over it. I sincerely feel thankful to him for understanding me for that moment. Before moving out to take the decision I managed to put forward my preference to finish off with the current project (Flights Jar Project) , which in time had gained more than job value to me. It was a point to be proven to myself that I can manage to make my work remain unaffected when everything around was not seeming right. I had mentioned this preference to them earlier as well. Chetan took a moment and said he will let me know once I come back with what I wanted - Resignation/Termination.

THE ADVICE :- Dheeraj aka POG(pissed off guy) helped me with analysis of the situation from my perspective ,Chetan's perspective ,Company's perspective and Future perspective. The discussion was just amazing .We managed to post-mortem the situation into Right/Wrong and Profit/Loss perspective .Such a highly complex problem was resolved to 2 choices that I was to offer to them . Following are the choices with the respective rational behind each of them .

1. Let me complete the project with my resignation.

@basis -Self Perspective
a. Profit/Loss - Profit.
Strengthening of my confidence to hail the sail in more hard times ahead if I was to successfully complete the project ,which I surely would have.
b. Right/Wrong - Wrong.
It ain't right according to my sense of righteousness for I was to accept a letter saying that it was me who wants to quit. I ain't no quitter .

@basis -Company Perspective
a. Profit/Loss - Profit.
The company is getting man-works effort over the project from the person who knows the system well and is more than willing to work over getting it done because its very important for him . Post completion he will resign which is the best answer for any post-disengagement question - "He left of his will".

b. Right/Wrong -

2. Accept termination.
@basis - Self Perspective.
a. Profit/Loss mode - Loss.
Total loss to me as I might find it real hard to find the next job for the world around don't hire the terminated one's .
b. Right/Wrong mode - Right.
I know that this was the right thing to do because that what on the face of it was . These people want to get rid of me with total inconsideration of my willingness to overlook the shortcoming of their system philosophy and just focus on my deliverables . And For sure its definitely going to strengthen the metal in me . Most people don't care but I mostly care about this .
@basis - Company Perspective.
a. Profit/Loss mode - Loss
These guys are firing an IIT Delhi Computer-Science graduate over performance issues in a Software-Development job. Just ask the floor people -"Raise your hand who thinks deepak was an under performer ". It would be a self-disappointment to see numbers more than 5 . If any, I can bet would be the ones who haven't worked with me. So the question then arises What sort of signals are you sending out ?? Is worship more important than work ?
b. Right/Wrong mode -
Sorry ! Righteousness is a helpless cow in a capitalistic setup . I personally feel that the definition of righteousness needs to be redefined for applicability in capitalistic setup.Once I have the definition I definitely will revisit this point to ensure that I am re-visiting the not so concrete bits of my learning .

THE FINAL CHOICE :-They said that they can't let me work on project. This time i didn't take long to respond because the thinking part was done in my discussion with POG. The answer that came out of my mouth was -
"I want to get terminated ."

THE CONCERNS :- Everyone was kind of taken back by what I opted for . Some said I wasn't practical , others said I was hurting my future . One said they have seen more of the world than me and I was just acting childish . I for that moment felt a bit emotional for I perceived their responses to be coming out of genuine care (my perception could have been wrong ,but i went with it). I had a feeling that atleast these guys are acting human for that one moment . I felt respect for them against that perceived sense of care and justified them all for whatsoever they were implementing . Thinking abut it now its quite strange to notice the fact that Human emotions can do some tinkling magic which human logic can't do.

AFTER-MATHS :- Man I was jobless and was already running a bit over in debt . I traded off my financial security over my sense of righteousness. Earlier I thought these guys would terminate me off with the months salary but then Rohit made it clear that I would be paid till 16th of December only. I surely wanted to look at what section 7 of my joining letter said. It kind of left me broke for the coming month.
There was this one another perspective that went open in front of my eyes.Come on man I can't be that weak to rethink my decision of self-righteousness over some petty amount.LONC spirit I think was one of the good take aways from MMT . I can just try to memorize upon Deep's words over one of his speeches which went something like - "Its only during the tough times that you realize your true potential ".So probably it was time for me to start my self-realization .




Nonetheless I somehow feel ki koi na koi job to mil hi jaayegi . As Miki says -"Aisi bhi kay baat ho gayi". I really liked his spirit .



TIME TO MOVE OUT :- I was required to submit the laptop and the access card . Man I was now worried about my songs collection and the two documentaries that helped me gain better perspective towards life . To mention one is - "The Secret" and the other one is "How the bleep do we know about the rabbit hole". Must watch for everybody.
I asked them that I wanted to take my personal data which earlier looked to them as a difficult exercise . Chetan sensed that it was important to me so allowed me to bring some removable hardware and take my stuff . I said to myself at that moment I will take that as a parting gift from Chetan ,for it was important to me.
Back to my seat looking at everyone it was very difficult for me to control my emotions but then I can't be unprofessional .Without anybody sensing what has happened I did what was left to do. Submit the laptop and the access card and just simply move out.


------------------End Of Incidental Story -------------------------------

Man what an experience it was --Swooooooosh !! Complete Saturday night thriller except that it came on tuesday. I think I will come back to this page whenever I will relate to a difficult situation to handle . This page should surely energize and elevate my spirit to realize some self-worth for me if not more.





------------The bigger picture ------------------------
May be company is laying off people and just finding reasons to get them off.
@Justifying Perspective.
When there are 100 hungry stomachs you need to fill and you just have food for 50 .The best you can opt for is fill 50 stomachs and say NO to the remaining 50.
Saying NO is art , handling NO is strength and accepting time/situation as it comes is maturity .
So probably if I was asked to take this hard decision of laying off - I also would have said NO as well but what I can't justify is the basis of those 50 picks. An appropriate compromise between righteousness and profitability should be made. I just time and again fail to see any move over righteousness.

------------The Corporate Picture ------------------------
Now here is the thing which I just came to know about while discussing with some of the industry mates. Pretty Interesting stuff - Some companies use recession as a good play-spot to cut over jobs and save over employees salaries. Mostly these are the companies who are running over funding and are desperate towards break-even to survive the competition and the tough market scenario ahead.
Now how do they manage this ?Logistics are simple and that's how it goes . Just get rid of relatively expensive workforce in terms of ease of removal and how a resource is eyed upon in the longer run. But now the question arises - won't that disrupt the work-resource equilibrium ? Well it would -but there is a neat way to beat that as well. Since job-market conditions outside aren't that very good so people are very much apprehensive towards finding a new job . So the company can leverage this fear and extend the working hours by creating a pressure situation and thereby maintaining the work-resource equilibrium.
Man what a game-plan , pretty new to me but a standard thing for the upper management . Pretty neat way and in the capitalistic lingo - Bingo ,we did it !




Hope to learn more and better over bitter !