The closest I had been brought to tears or anything short of an embarrassing emotional episode at work was when a totally unexpected message ā dare I say dedication? ā from a colleague arrived in my inbox in the afternoon of my very last day, addressed not only to me but to a good number of colleagues in the office, including my bosses and former boss. As a tribute to its author and as a blogged memento of sorts I reproduce it here unashamedly, removing some parts that are best censored off lest there lurk readers who lack the brand of humour necessary for an appreciation of its contents and the situations they allude to:
ā¦ ā¦ As one who loved being out in the field and who did not particularly favour being deskbound, the job was a challenge for this young officer who was an advocate and academic at heart. Nevertheless, she did her job well and took as many opportunities as possible to join the motley crew from across the lobby in their terrestrial escapades.
Often mistaken for a āxiao mei meiā (little girl), her calm demeanour and youthful looks belie a passion for the natural world and a mature outlook and awareness of environmental issues. Naturally, her aptitude and skills did not escape the scrutinizing eyes of HR and management, resulting in a raining down of arrows from the powers that be to undertake projects such asā¦ Fortunately, some of these arrows did manage to pique her interest, such as the more recentā¦
Still, her more well-known projects and activitiesā¦ include Diego the misnamed mantid (who laid a few egg cases), the lacquered waxworm moth-infested honeycomb (which had reached the if-we-donāt-throw-it-away-today-weāll-have-a-moth-infestation-in-this-room-tomorrow stage), searching for oh-so-cool luminous mushrooms during periods of high rainfall, photographing and identifying random creatures for peopleā¦ burying (and subsequently digging up) dead critters in the animal cemetery in our backyard, and capturing the most awesome photographs of the natural world.
As a result of her captive mantid breeding programme (in which she managed to save the male from inadvertent death after mating as is so often observed in mantids in captivity), she has considered authoring a paper on the life cycle of this particular mantid sp. However, that seems to have been put on hold for the time being as her upcoming professional academic interests fall more within the field of social science than entomologyā¦ ā¦
As she eventually heads over to the land ofā¦ and Monty Python, she will leave behindā¦ ā¦ However, much more than that, she will be leaving an office of colleagues ā nay, friends ā who will miss her very very very very very very very very very much. *sob* *sniff*
All that being said, we wish her all the best in her future studies, and perhaps more importantly, in life as well.ā
All very sweet. I cannot imagine what I had done to deserve this and the good-bye-good-luck-you-were-great emails that I received (to be fair, many of those were simply obligatory replies to the farewell message that I sent out). I was bland, bold and and mostly minimalistic in my conduct both professionally and casually. I was uninterested in office politics, although that was not to say that I was unaware of them, but I refused to get dragged into them. Animal affairs aside, Iād be one of the last to show any emotion or excitement over any new developments concerningā¦ well, the social or infrastructural aspects of office life. I kept my head low and did my work. Concentrated might be the word. Life goes on, no matter may happen, and you just have to make the best of it. Why the fuss? At times I came to be uncomfortably aware of the gulfs ā cultural, educational, intellectual, emotional, adversity, whatever-quotient-able ā that existed between um, the different parties, myself included. Trying to bridge the gap proved exhausting, and in time I just numbed down.
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I hope I did not come across as being too pompous in my exit interview. The HR executive conducting the meeting nearly fell out of his chair when he saw the mini-essays I had typed out for the pre-interview questionnaire. Worried that something was amiss, I gestured apologetically that I wasnāt sure if the length of what I wrote, or indeed what I wrote, was appropriate. āNo, itās ok,ā he assured me. āItās just that this is the first time anybody wrote so much,ā he flipped through the pages, āI thinkā¦ most donāt dare toā¦ā Was that a hint of if onlyā¦ that I detected in the sigh behind his smile?
The Likert-scaled items didnāt leave much room for creativity, but I let loose on the open-ended questions. In deciding the level of detail and candour of my responses, I had consulted a number of business and career websites, which unsurprisingly reinforced my conviction that restraint and grace were the way to go. āBurn no bridges!ā they cried, and I was determined not to burn any. But I was also stubbornly resolved to take this opportunity to say what I had always felt compelled to say. So, taking great care in ensuring that what I wrote would offend no-one (and adding in sprinkles of gratitudinal language here and there), I built on the themes of staff motivation, training, organisational culture, systems and processes. I painted what I hoped was an accurate and true depiction of the difficulties faced by me and my peers in our work, and where possible I gave our suggestions. I say āourā, because I felt that the conditions I wrote of were universal enough to pertain not only to me, but to my colleagues as well, and in a way I felt obliged by virtue of my situation to speak on behalf of my co-workers. Later, in an informal discussion with my supervisor on how it all went, he nodded approvingly. āGood. I know you were going to say those.ā
I was told that my comments would be forwarded to senior management to read, and would that be all right? Well ā that was the whole point of this exercise, wasnāt it? So yes, of course. But there was also a part of me that surrendered itself to the awareness of the likely possibility that theyād take this and toss it aside as the ramblings of a young, naĆÆve and presumptuous (ex-)employee who doesnāt know her place, good riddance to her. At least, I did what I could, and said what I had to. There was closure.
Yes, the work culture leaves much to be desired, as expected of a government outfit, and my sense of attachment to the organisation is no stronger or weaker than it was when I was (and still am) a volunteer with them. It would however be a lie if I said that I felt no fondness whatsoever for the people I worked with. A rare few I admire, a handful I acknowledge as deserving better. I respect them, all of them, if only for the reason that they are persisting their practice of a profession in a place that had very early seen the expiration of my motivation, and with it, my promise of performance. I still gave it my best, given the circumstances. But I knew, and I wished, that I could have given it much more; I could have given it the sum and the bonuses that came from a synergy of all my alls, had I been allowed to tap into, and expand, my pools of skills and knowledge, and encouraged to think as laterally and creatively as Iād have liked. But I couldnāt; there is so much that I can say that I donāt know where to start. Perhaps itās better that I donāt. Iām already a tad uncomfortable at having shared this much.
To this day, which is not all that long since that milestone, I am still trying to figure out if I had failed at doing my job well (I am uncertain of the extent to which I myself contributed to this inability to find meaning and growth in what I did) or if my job failed me. If it was the former, I doubt if I would be given the early exposure and chances at āupward mobilityā, as they call it. I did not compete for it, or fight for it. It just came. There is nothing more aggravating to someone of my personality than to feel that you have performed poorly at something, yet be rewarded for it. Itās like a novelist who knows he has written a story with the suckiest plot and the most shallow, unconvincing characters and being awarded the Man Booker Prize for it. He cannot fathom what good others can see in his work and feels totally undeserving of the Prize. He feels as if he has cheated, or that he has been cheated on. It would have been much better if critics could just rip his work to shreds as he thinks it rightly should be, so that he can get on with life and set about working on something that he feels would genuinely warrant top recognition, according to his standards. Maybe the standards he has set for himself are unconventionally high ā but how else to stretch himself and develop his prowess? He finds reward and satisfaction from within, and not from putting himself in comparison with his contemporaries.
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A nifty graph, courtesy of one of my new-found favourite blogs, Indexed:
This is of course not the real and immediate reason why I left, although it does, in good jest, poke painfully at a truth that many of us may be loath to admit.
I just felt that it was time I moved on.
