The cool dude

Imagine that you made a person who is popular among all your friends or colleagues. Everybody praises them a lot. You meet this person for the first time. You really wanted to like that person but after meeting them something feels off. Does that this sound relatable to you? Here is my experience.

While working with one of my organisations I was transferred from my old project to a new pilot project. Along with me my friend Kira had joined the new project. In this new project there were a few friends who belonged to other project. It was really a relieving experience because most people in the project where known to me. Our training for the new project started.

During the training period a lot of senior trainer is where introduced to us. One day our lead trainer informed us that Mohit will be conducting a training session with us. After hearing mohit's name the crowd got excited. I had never heard about Mohit so I asked one of my other friends. My friend Ajay told me, "I know Mohit. He was with my previous project. He is a very cool guy. Friendly and easy going. We all used to lije working with him. Just wait till you meet him and you will get the hype".

I believe that time excluding me everybody was looking forward to Mohit's session. I had no good or ill feelings towards Mohit session. It was afternoon when Mohit came to the conference room where all of us had been seated for our training. As Mohit endowed most people started clapping for him. I could not understand the reason for that. I thought maybe it was the inside joke of their project. Mohit saw the people clapping and he gave a mighty laugh. He raised his hands as if he was a celebrity and he was telling the crowd to lower down the noise. Mohit started of with his training session which was about how to fake American accent. In my opinion it was not needed because we wear a part of a non wise project and we did not have to interact with customers. Our communication was limited to the clients point of contact and that too was mainly via emails. I felt that his session was arranged only to fill up the spare time. Anyway he continued with his session which went on for around 1 hour. I felt that there was nothing meaningful out of that session. He interacted with each one of us and then he left while weaving at his friends. Everyone liked him but my instincts were telling me otherwise. I sensed that something was not right with Mohit but I could not point that out. My mind was telling me that I should stay away from him.

After the session Ajay came to me and he asked me, "so what do you think about Mohit? Are you excited to work with him?" I did not want to disappoint Ajay. I said yes to end the conversation there. I had light so that I do not have to disclose my true instincts about Mohit.

We started working in the new project. Everything was going smooth. Mohit had no role in our project, that made me happy and relieved. Never I had to interact with him.

Everything was going on smoothly. However I had noted for a few days that Mohit was not around. One day double speaking with Ajay I casually asked him, "where is your buddy Mohit?" Not that I cared about him.

"Do you not know? He got fired" Ajay said with surprise and disappointment.

"No. What happened?" I havd no clue.

"Mohit had faked his degree and work experience. In the periodic background verification it came out. When he was called to discuss this discrepancy with HR they found that he had consumed 'something'. He was fired on the spot. I cannot believe I was a blind follower of such a con man" Ajay said in disbelief.

I had been listening to Ajay. This confirmed my suspicion about Mohit. Also I thanked my instincts for warning me.