The harrowing account of a fresh graduate who took up a job in a sweatshop ... and lived to tell the tale
A fresh graduate with an MBA from a coveted institute, I was brimming with the confidence of getting a good job, making a brilliant career out of it, be successful and all that goes with it. But fate took me on a rollercoaster ride in a seth-owned company that was harrowing, funny and enlightening all at the same time.
Here I want to share my experiences with fresh graduates who should be looking out for the warning signs when working at a place like I did. It isn’t wise at times to get into just about any place for work. The outward signs of profits and clientele may not reveal the murky details inside.
The culture in this particular company was to call the CEO and his brother (who happened to be my boss) sahibs. There’s nothing wrong with that, so I started calling everyone senior enough in age and designation the same. But it dawned on me that the prefix was strictly reserved for only the two patriarchs! Sometimes it seemed like we were little minions keeping track of the daily routines of the two sahibs — who had called for sahib, where is sahib, etc.
My boss was a very interesting person in a very odd sort of way. He would often order his subordinates to follow what he said down to the very last word because he ‘knew’ best. Did they have more experience than him? Could they possibly come up with a better idea? An affirmative response could be an invitation for his wrath. While he would spend his free time massaging his cellphone and talking on the phone for eons (specially if the CEO was out of the city), it was a strict no-no for the employees. The CEO would constantly lament the lack of creativity in Pakistani ads as compared to those churned out by India, and the fact that their visualizers were given the freedom to experiment. A few hours later, the very chap would reject a visualizer’s experimental attempt, giving him his own stale idea to follow!
The amount of supervision was awesome at times. Once I remembered working on the computer to make a report. The boss came asking why I had so many files open on the computer and if I was browsing through the internet. I had not been, since I knew it was company policy not to browse unless some important project required it. But I was asked to open each file to show whether I was saying the truth or not. As none of them had anything to do with the internet, I was told in a huff not to keep too many files open while working on the computer.
The turnover the company experienced was nothing short of being phenomenal (a sure-shot sign of trouble within the ranks). Within three months, I personally saw eleven people quit and walk out in a huff, not counting the peons, receptionists and secretaries, including whom the figure jumped to a staggering 16-plus! According to the sahibs, it was an industry norm: “We always find replacements easily, so it is not an issue. Turnover has never been an issue with advertising firms in any case.”
The attitude towards employees was starkly different from that with clients, many of which were multinational firms. Since the clients were the bread and butter for the sahibs, there was a considerable effort to keep them happy. The bosses would turn into little replicas of the clients they catered to. If the clients were polite and suave, the sahibs were too. If they were the swearing kind, the sahibs did the same. However, the employees would be in trouble by being nice to those the sahibs weren’t happy with.
Office etiquette required the employees to vacate the only washroom in the entire company (gender and designation equality was practised perhaps only here) whenever the CEO wanted to use it. A disgruntled colleague once asked the CEO’s secretary, banging the washroom door, if he should leave the toilet in the state he was in!
The environment fostered sycophancy as a natural outcome. A colleague bought the boss a latest mobile phone set. I say it with no exaggeration whatsoever (as my ex-colleagues would vouch) that even the gestures and mannerism of the boss were copied consciously and unconsciously; the way he walked, laughed, gasped and sighed. Another would leave fresh, hand-picked flowers every day at the CEO’s desk. They, of course, got rewards in quick progression. While the sahibs were happy that they were the inspirations in the lives of their minions, little did they know that these minions were the very people who ridiculed them behind their backs.
Though the time I spent at this company was wonderful in terms of the friends I made (who have left the company as well), it was a blow to my confidence. Often thrown at the deep end with barely any instructions on how to go about working, I would be yelled at for not being ‘alert enough’. I wasn’t given an orientation regarding the procedures, like I was told I would be, at the time of my appointment. I was told when I said so: “Nobody trains anyone here, everyone learns on their own.” And when I would be completing my tasks with minimum instructions, they were called “routine work that anyone can do, you didn’t do anything to make my life easier!”
I was often at my wit’s end as to what was wrong. Maybe it was something to do with my own temperament. However, I made my decision to resign after a series of unwarranted yelling from the boss for no valid reason. The day I resigned I felt like a free person and spoke my mind. The boss pointed out I hadn’t done anything during the time I was there, as it was him working all the time anyway, and then asked me to brief him before going where each file was and what extent of work was pending where! In the job market today, few have the courage to leave a job that helps them support their families. But I felt it better to work in a place that had a professional environment than to suffer in a sycophantic one.
Today, I can look back and feel that I made the right decision. I am doing fine in a multinational organization that is professional and progressive. With the same capability that I had in the previous firm, I am managing my work perfectly. The head of this company has no qualms about treating everyone politely and equally. The culture fosters independence and productivity simultaneously.
The success of a firm in getting to the top is not in its being a multinational or a local firm; but in the management’s ability to keep checking its track, and to keep improving wherever and whenever it can, and, perhaps most importantly, to treat its employees as the principal stakeholders of the business. What seems like irrelevant mumbo-jumbo from the teacher on business policy in school, is actually the first thing a young graduate looking for a job should know.
The harrowing account of a fresh graduate who took up a job in a sweatshop ... and lived to tell the tale 
