Perceptions

Is it worth trying to change perceptions that people create in their minds about you? Normally my answer would be “no”. There are 6 billion people in the world and each of those 6 billion is entitled to their opinions about everything – including you. But what made me write about this topic was perceptions which have been created about me in my workplace. I’ve been with my current organization exactly for 4 years today and very much to my surprise, I haven’t hated it enough to quit. Infact I have quite enjoyed most parts of it. For the last one and a half years I’ve pretty much been home bound – pregnancy and child birth have kept me home… Though I’m not naive and I had some inkling of my general perception within my peer group, I was still taken aback at the severity of the negative perceptions that my colleagues have developed against me. I was thought of as a prolific “ass-licker” – some one who leaves no stone unturned in licking my bosses ass to get up the corporate ladder. There were some nasty comments around my absence on maternity, my workload when I was back from maternity, questions around my actual work – both quality and quantity etc.. What shocked me – and I thought I was impervious to such gossip – was a comment by an unnamed co-worker “ Did she think she was doing a favour by taking calls when she was pregnant – if getting pregnant earns better ratings, then we could all go that way”. A lot of these negative vibes were generated after I got an unexpectedly good rating at office for my mid year performance. Even I was shocked with the rating as I was out of action for almost 2 months of the 6 and even when I was in action, I was working limited hours. So I would be justified in attributing most of these comments to pure professional jealousy. But then given that this is human nature and that I need to continue working here and work with these same people, should I actually have a go at trying to mend my reputation. If yes, how do I go about this onerous and self demeaning task? I guess I have my answer – if I think of the task as self demeaning – something which I think if I engage in will make me lose respect for myself, then it’s not worth it. I’m no Mother Teresa or Aung San Suu Kyi – I don’t stand for ideals or higher causes, in fact am quite an inward focused person who pays little heed to ongoings around me, except in case they actually impact my immediate life and family. But I do have an enormous amount of self respect which many a times is misconstrued as arrogance… but I’ve always been proud of myself. Should I quit while I’m ahead, start afresh in a new place with a clean slate – where I always have the risk of my past reputation catching up with me or should I stay put, fight it out and have these same people reverse their opinions of me? Come to think of it – do I actually care what they think of me? Obviously I do and apparently enough to have me write about it – so I’m disturbed by it. So should my focus be to try and not be perturbed by such shoptalk or should it be to take these as “developmental feedback” and work upon them? I still can’t figure out what to do… so I have decided that the simple course of action is to do nothing.. let life take it’s natural course – let me take one day, one person, one comment at a time as it comes at me and deal with the way the circumstances play themselves out and hope that I can do right without losing too much of myself in the bargain.

Back in Circuit

It’s been a long time since I travelled internationally… 18 months to be exact. A lot’s transpired in life since the last time I set foot back in India from Erie, which had become almost a second home, thanks to me spending 3 months in the sleepy town and actually loving most of my stay there.

So when I decided to go back to Erie for a couple of days with a trip to Boston thrown in, I expected it to be tiring – whatever else it may turn out to be – tiring was one thing it surely would be.. 3 days spent in flights and airports for meetings which were cumulatively around 3-4 hours at the max. But then that was the nature of the job and it had to be done. So, no regrets.

I went to office the first day and met an old acquaintance who got up from his seat, came ahead and gathered me in a bear hug – my heart warmed. We asked about each others’ families, kids – we knew that business had to be discussed and dealt with – but that could wait. In today’s day and age where everything is to the point – even conversations with your spouse are limited to stuff that need to get done.. in such a world, the fact that a guy that I was meeting after a year and a half of which almost a year had gone by without much communication, was genuinely happy to see me was evidence enough to attest that human touch was still alive and throbbing….

After a couple of days in Erie, I moved onto Boston where I had to meet another acquaintance, who again was out of sight and out of mind for a long time…. He greeted me with and of course – a hug it was. Over a “business lunch” where more lunch was had and more Boston was discussed than business, we spoke as old friends would, bantering and bickering, laughing and joking and the jet lag, the fact that I was struck in the middle of nowhere and completely snowed in…. all that was suddenly forgotten and the trip was worth it… even if I didn’t get him to sign a dotted line and give me business – it was worth it. When I gave him something I had picked up for me at Mumbai airport (the fact that I picked it up at the airport shows how much thought went into it), there was genuine affection in his eyes.

This trip was turning out to be a huge morale booster for me, in more ways than I could imagine.

The feather to the cap was my trip around Boston. The day I decided to see Boston was the day that it started snowing at 7 am and predictions were that the snowing would continue till around 5 pm. So I called a cabbie who had chauffeured me a couple of days back from Boston Airport to Billerica to drop me back at the airport. He ended up giving me a round trip of downtown Boston – he showed me whatever he could, given the weather, kept up a constant commentary of the sights and people and peculiarities. A 26 year old Jordanian by birth – looking much elder than that, the youngest of 15 kids, with a nephew who was 1 and a half years elder than him, his family ran a convenience store in downtown Boston and he had been driving a cab for 4months.

What made me trust this stranger enough to trust 3-4 hours of my life with him, I don’t know. He could have easily cheated me, harmed me, done a lot of unthinkable stuff…. But instead I ended up having a really good ride and engaging conversation with a stranger whom I would most probably never meet again in my life.. very much like my driver in Venezuela who showed me around and managed to have a conversation with me without him knowing English and me speaking no Spanish.


I have time and again been reminded by life that humanity and decency still inhabit our lives… we just have to open our hearts and arms to welcome it.