First time I met him there was not a bad impression, just a warning in my mind about him being different. Nowadays several articles have been written about how dangerous stereotypes like P.'s are, but I was not aware of that, just concentrated in my work , which I thought was enough. P. was going to convince me, later on, that it wasn't. P. was absolute.
So we meet the first time in an informal meeting, a one on one, and everything goes well.
Let's go to the second meeting, the one that really makes the difference. It was a very subtle, very subtle, and the same time, very powerful way of singling out a person and make a point of his views, so let us see what he did.
Here is P. with me and four more people, all of them but one knowing what he wants. He wants to send me a message. The end of the message is what spoils everything. If he had been subtle or direct it would have been better. But he chose humiliation and I could not accept it. He said that I would take a broom and sweep the floor if somebody said so. Our contract did not say anything in that direction, and I did not see myself any different than the rest of the others - in fact I was not different from some of them, but very similar, but he thought the other way.
From that moment on I made another note in my mind and I started to analyze "P". Not enough, as you will see later. At that moment I thought that P. was still a fair player, strange, but fair. In fact he was a different person. He was known by "his methods". I always wondered what the people meant by "methods". Weren't we working only in "technology"?
Later on I understood - maybe too late - that the concept of business for P. was much wider. In his world the human beings were puppets or less, and they had specific values that he assigned according to his special viewpoints of the life. Very special. Absent in his mind were concepts like 'mind your business', 'avoid the drama ...'. Oh no, he felt like one of the servants of the invisible chords that rule the world. Consequently the rests of the human beings, well, they were etceteras. Be careful P. is not the only one.
One important thing is to take into account this: " P. had power and he enjoyed using it. And he also found pleasure in distributing it to his followers for them to be able to do anything he wanted". This is not a comment, it is a statement.
How is that he considered "his business"?
Power abuse is part of history, and there are certain people ready to use their power against others that they consider inferior or weaker. It has happened at all times in history. And many times one of the last ones to understand the consequences of this kind of behavior are the victims. At the time that these events took place, several people passed by my side and commented , almost explicitly, that I could - and should - take some kind of action. I looked at them and thought that they were exaggerating. How would things be so terrible with respect to those people that they were mentioning. After all, weren't we coworkers?
But there were times that I really felt that something was going on in the wrong direction. Those were the times in which, implicitly, without even wanting it, I tried to establish a comparison between what acted on me and how happy I felt in New York. One of such moments took place when, all of the sudden, in one of the meetings at group level in which I saw P. with a baseball bat, warning people with veiled comments. Not so veiled that I were not asked, a little after his words, what I was gathering of his comments. So I gave a candid answer, too technical perhaps. The one who was asking wanted something more related to humankind perhaps. Something that allowed him to understand that I knew the kind of people I was dealing with it. But I was too happy at that time. I did not know well the people I was dealing with.
Despite all the kindness and good heart that I put in all what was happening, there were events going on that raised my alarm up to certain point. For example: "At working hours, before going to lunch and entering the car, the lights were on" - this was what one could consider an impossible event, given how secure was the place where the car was. But with the time, it has come to my mind that I can associate this kind of situation to the moments that, while living in Palm Beach, I entered the apartment and found sections of the room with the light on - despite having made sure they were off before living the premises.
Another unusual symptom of something going out of place was the pleasure that some of his associates found in letting know that they knew what was happening with me when I was out the job place. At least at lunch time and before arriving to the job. For example: One day I was running late and I was had a ticket at the highway. As soon as I arrived to the job place one of his friends let the rest of the people know that he knew about it.
It was always something that almost looked like "impossible" to me. Probably because the only thought of somebody committing some sort of invasion of privacy was an impossible event to me. It should be understood that I lived in places where those actions were out of the mind of the normal people. Later on, when one person started to make comments and act histrionically through the cubicles at lunch time, was the moment that I received some of the above mentioned warnings - like exhorting me to do something. When things went to an extreme point. I was practically forced to complain about it. That is when I went to O. and mentioned it almost at the same tone of voice that the person in charge of harassing me was using through the cubicles. So instead of stopping, now the events got a higher intensity at lunch time. A few weeks later, this person was sent to work in a project in another place. <strong>Temporarily</strong>. The word temporarily is important in this context.
But lets go back to P., I just wanted to make sure that you understood what was the meaning of "full authority" in his mind.
When was the first time that I heard that expression? When the meeting where I was asked about what I gathered from it took place. There was a special emphasis is his voice when he was talking.
Another important feature was his way to assign "rights". I came across with his curious expression about this when I was attending a meeting with a few members of the technical team. Referring to an exchange between T. and me, he said, "he told him which his rights were". And then he added something that for some reason I do not want to mention here. I thought to myself, is he trying to be funny? Does he really think that he has the power to assign "rights" over his subordinates in a technical matter? Is he dreaming of power ? Life was going to demonstrate me that he was really serious and that he thought that he had the right to do whatever he wanted with his subordinates. After all, "didn't he have 'connections'?". Didn't he know about "time setting"?.
And it is precisely at moments like this that I think of the second meeting with P., the one with selected people of other teams, and I try to find a reason why I think of that meeting so recursively. Perhaps because I tie what happened little after the meeting with what happened the rest of my life after that. Maybe because it was the first time that after getting together with a person something happened that let me think that perhaps I was not in the right place to be happy. Maybe because terrible things happened in my life as a result of the actions of the "time setters". One of the participants in the meeting had to do with the internet. He was supposed to be a specialist.
By the time that I was going this meeting there was an ambiguous thinking in my mind about who he thought he was. And who he really was. It looked to me like somebody really ambitious who had been given power. Was he a Scarpia? Had he read Doctorow? Did he believe in Turandot? Which was his favorite music? What was the use that he really associated with the Internet. What did he "really" know about "rights" and up to which point was ready to acknowledge or ignore that concept. Those thought were like in layers of my mind but, at the same time, I had to work. And at the same time, those were other times, when fear was something unknown to most of the people, when we trusted each other much more and when there were procedures set in place to avoid that somebody, whoever the somebody was, abused of his or her powers. They could attempt to do so anyways. Didn't them know how to time set? I should confess, that I should have kept it very simple. If somebody enters in your room when you are not there, raise your alert to the maximum, do not trust only in reports that you make and try to know about who did as if it were a matter of do or die. Because at the moment that something like this happens you are under attack, may be subtly at the moment that you perceive it. Certainly blunt when the attack develops.
But, curiously, I realize that the main responsible for what has happened is me. I should have taken P. seriously since the very beginning. There was no poetry in that man. And what is more important, he did not want any poetry associated with those who surrounded him. Was it hate the predominant feeling in his mind. I am not quite sure. But certainly the procedures that he followed were not very orthodox. When the people mentioned "his methods", there was a significant silence after these two words, something that let you thinking for a long time. What the heck were they trying to say? Again, my mistake, after listening to statements like this one should stay at home and think for at least three days - without leaving the room - then one would see like a little piece of ice on the sea, and that piece of ice would be the top of the iceberg. But you cannot think in those terms when you are happy, you like music and you think that knowing about Oracle and Microsoft is going to resolve everything in this world.
A little digression here. It was precisely my love for being efficient with products from Microsoft and Oracle what kept me apart of the realities associated with P.
Remember this, even though you could be happy in an environment where people who work with this products, there is a strong likelihood that at some point people like Pl. appear, they will be surrounded by elements who might not be so concern about technical issues.
If you find that kind of environment you only have two choices: Either leave the place immediately or divide your mind and time in two and dedicate part of your time to study how to deal with them. Otherwise you are an easy prey of the non-technical ones. Their values are different. And for them, remember, you are nothing but a competitor, somebody who can be substituted. Nothing else.
But let us review the hate issuers. Wasn't it one of his associates, T. the one who came to my workplace and let me know - and the cubicles around - that I was going to commit suicide? Oh, oh, those were serious statements. And should be carefully analyzed. At that moment I did not know how T. loved other kind of technology. It had nothing to do with client/server for business - that is what we were supposed to be doing together - though.
In the beginning, I must confess, I thought that I was dreaming - a bad nightmare - or that he was joking. Suicide?. I just had bought my synthesizer and was trying to get in touch with as many DJ's as possible to see how I promoted my music. I could not be happier. And I did it after working at the very least 10 hrs for the company. Wasn't it a good reason for everybody to be happy?. The guys that saw me going out of the company late in the evening looked serious and nice people. Everything had to be perfect.
No wonder , I was not so completely stupid, the statement was to be taken into account. I let some people - out and in the company - know about his comments. What the heck?, you do not have such an exchange everyday. In fact, some people have had a whole working life period without having such a comment made in front of them. In particular, I am the kind of person who thinks that if you say something is because you are thinking of it. So something inside of me, despite my inner happiness, said "be careful".
But well, this was T., not P. Why do I mention this here?
Well, because the power came from him, not from T., at least in that specific environment.
Comments