Fudging bills, gossiping - of course they'll kick you out

Dubai - Wondering why you got sacked? Or why you might soon enough? Because slack and mediocrity won't fly forever, friend. Yes, you...

It is a sobering thought that in 10 years, 90 per cent of us will be in jobs we never even considered. That is how skewed careers are. But, we make the most of it, we clamber on to the treadmill to eternity and claw our way through the 9-to-5 rut not because we love it but because the bills have to be paid and food has to be placed on the table.
The glue that keeps us going is sincerity and most of us are exactly that. We do not goof off, we just live day-to-day and do our best.
Why then, do we discover we are in the first lot to be retrenched, dumped, let go, thank-you very much but the party is over, on your bike.
Never mind the reason given about there being market fluctuations, the company is reworking its manpower allocations, we are reorganising and you are redundant, blah blah blah, the fact is, we have something somewhere, that marked us as expendable.
In one of the many talks I give to various forums, the 'survival' one gets a lot of attention. It shares with the audience very valid reasons why your ribbon is cut.
A friend of mine dismissed two of his staff, one for being hugely overweight and the other for smoking. Argument: if they cannot take care of themselves, why would they care for my company? The heavy one has no congenital problem - he just eats all day. The other spends half the day going out to smoke and then reel in the slack, which markedly reduces his productivity, don't need him.
A family business owner removed a staffer seen as being a fast tracker, because he was moonlighting and using company data and information to make a quick buck. Think you are smart - don't think the boss is stupid.
Badmouthing the company gets you black marks. It is incredible how office politicians try to whip up sentiment and then it becomes you who is quoted. Toilets, the office café or lunch-room, the water cooler, these are toxic places for in-house gossip and you may be sure your superiors will come to know. Why would I keep a troublemaker in the company?
The day we are sacked, we are so terribly indignant. How could they do this to me, the dirty, knife-stabbing bunch after all I did for them?
Yes, like sending out your CVs on the sly and thinking no one knows.
Being caught in a lie because you needed to cover your sloth. Plagiarising other people's work. Firing the gun off other people's shoulders. Snitching on the team to score points for yourself. You may actually think you are establishing rapport. A good boss will listen - why shouldn't he - all information is relevant, but he may do nothing about it except see you for the weasel you are. Sycophancy only works so far, and there is a huge price to pay in terms of lost self-respect when you spend your life on your knees.
Very often, people lie about why they are resigning and then fetch up with the competition, having brought over clients or custom or confidential information. That lie follows them forever. The new boss who has taken them is paying more and he will squeeze them like a towel but he will never trust them fully. "If they could do it to the first guy, they can do it to me."
One of my classmates from school, who runs a large textile company, sacked two of his good people after they had an affair in office and broke up. The acrimony, the lowering of morale and the tension in the staff called for the surgical strike. "No office romance," he says. "You want to find love, go find Cupid. Here you come to work, no debate. I don't discourage it, I forbid it."
Fudging your vouchers might sound like a mini-indiscretion but it adds up as much as it will indict you for being dishonest. Maybe, when it reaches your boss, he will put it away in a corner of his mind but he hasn't forgotten what sort of person you are. By this token, staff who are in deep financial debt and begin to borrow money from colleagues with sob stories, become a company nuisance and are earmarked for departure. Section heads who take money from their juniors, go that much faster.
One of India's most famous tycoons whom I will not identify, told me during an interview that the most difficult person to remove was the sincere worker who was mediocre. He tried and he tried but it did not matter;
he did not have it in him to do more. How do you ask people
to give you what they do not have and yet, they are the weakest link.
letters@khaleejtimes.com
Bikram is a former editor of KT. Everyday humour is his forte

• Dubai