Latest
08:47 AM
Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
November 11, 2014
I don’t mind delusions. I like them. In fact I often delude myself into believing I am wealthy, super smart, extremely charming and a few other things we won’t go into right now.
All too often the position we hold or the wealth we have accessed leads us into even a deeper delusion about our role in the great scheme of things. That is when it gets funny. Like I love indispensable people. They make for great laughter and never realize how absurd they sound. It is like how come there are so many such idiots around.
You hear people giving themselves away.
I have to attend the dinner, they’ll be so upset if I don’t fetch up (they won’t even notice, brother).
My boss depends on me, he values my opinion (how can anyone be so unutterably naïve, your boss does not give a spit in the wind about you).
My friends are always asking for my advice, any problem and I get called (yeah, sure).
As usual, I had to save the situation, they were stuck without me (probably created the crisis in the first place and had the solution ready).
Then the acolytes join in:
Sir, you are the greatest, nobody can do it like you, where would we be without you, this company runs because of you (get me a bucket, someone).
And the bosses, they believe this drivel, they absorb it and use it as fuel. They become the glue that keeps things from falling apart.
And it never strikes them that all the evidence points in the opposite direction.
You just flit onto the stage, my friend and then you flit off it and no one gives a toss after the first few days.
I recently met this person and he was talking about the ‘architect’ of the success graph in the company he works for and how he has been dumped by the Board and the company will never be the same again, it is doomed, all downhill from now on.
And since I can’t be silent I say, you are kidding, right, you don’t really mean it.
He says, of course I do, the company can’t pull through without him, he was the best, it will be a shell, no one can fit into his shoes.
No problem, I say, just throw his shoes away and get another pair. I get no laughter. Instead he says, you wouldn’t understand, he was indispensable.
What do you say to people like this? I want to tell him the company will not only pull through it will probably flourish and they will get rid of everything that reminds them of him and a few weeks down the road they won’t even recall he had ever been there let alone been the architect.
(The writer is a Senior Editorial Advisor of Khaleej Times and the paper’s former Editor. He has also been the Editor of Gulf News, Gulf Today, Emirates Today andBahrain Tribune)
If my call is so important to them, why don’t they answer it for 22 minutes?
How come when I want to, but something specific online is the only item out of stock.
When I get into a queue or lane going fast, the moment I get in, it becomes the slowest and refuses to budge.
Read more... | Archives