Heartless management

Corporate in India is undoubtedly toxic. Each story indicates how one can find ways to torture the employees. This torture is pure assault on the feelings, responsibilities, and morality. The management expects that once you have joined a company, you completely belong to them. Your time is bought by them with the salary. I have seen a vile incident right in front of me.

It was October, one of the busiest months. Clients were gearing up for their Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. They wanted to finish their tasks before heading to the holiday season. The workload was tremendous. We had no time to breathe. Most of us used to have lunch at our desks while working. Staying back after the official work hours was normal. One incident took place that shattered us to our core.

A guy was in our team. He was not from the city. His family was back in his native village. One day he received a call that his father is unwell. He left immediately to his village. His father got hospitalized and later died. It was a sad day for all of us. I had met his family on the family day event. His dad was very gentle and friendly. We all remembered how amazing his dad was.

He had taken leave for a few days to complete the last rites of his dad. The demise was sudden and his entire family was shocked. We spoke to him but he was too devastated to speak to us. This is where the corporate started their conspiracy.

Our manager would call him everyday to ask him when he would return to work. Our friend had already sent an email stating the start and end date of his absence. Asking him the same question everyday was unnecessary. Then the calls started from HR that does not have sufficient leaves in his bucket. This was completely untrue. He had a lot of leaves pending still this lies were spread by the HR. Everyday he would receive call from the management as well as HR to tell him to cut down his leaves and return to office at soon as possible. He had all the require documentation for his leaves. Till this was the behaviour.

Then the management and the HR collaboratively raised a disciplinary action against him which stated that the leave of absence is unreported, the employee is not tresable, and he possibly is absconding. All of these allegations was false. There were sufficient evidences that he is leaves were reported, he was tresable, he was definitely not absconding. He was taking care of personal matter.

A week later he returned to the office. He asked the manageri and the HR about the Communications that were happening during his week of absence. He confronted them with the documentation. He was hurt and angry. The manager and the HR head no response to this. He did not stop there. He went directly to the ethics committee. He reported the misconduct of the manager and the HR to the ethics committee with all the evidences that he had. He had emails, text messages, and the phone call logs. He reported to the ethics committee that this misconduct was going on when he was on a leave to attend to a family emergency. The ethics committee had taken a note of this and they enquired the manager and the HR.

During the enquiry we came to know that the manager said that he himself had reported to the work when his own father died. He expected everybody to give the importance to the work more than anything else. That was the venomous statement said by the manager. We all were furious when we got to know about this.

Our friend shortly resigned from the organisation because the toxicity and the mental harassment was too much for him to handle. He was already going through a rough patch and he did not want any further toxicity in his life. He had reported this to the ethics committee as well. Unfortunately the ethics committee did not take much of an action. The manager and the HR remained in the organisation despite of their unruly behaviour.

This is how things run in the corporate. Toxic behaviour gets rewarded. Good behaviour gets ignored. Good employees are made to leave the organisation by all possible ways of torture. Bootlickers remain in the organisation and grow there. This is how Indian corporate is. Unless there is a Revolution I doubt it would ever change.