Fare thee well

Time was when one used to be wedded to one’s job, spending decades in it, cruising through its crests and troughs with a peeve here and praise there, yet never quitting in search of a better prospect. Those were days of professional matrimony when allegiances couldn’t be shifted or questioned, unlike the new times where all work relations are mere marriages of conveniences — here now, can’t-say-where tomorrow — where employees are commodities bargained, bought and bailed out. It all boils down to the economics these days; equations are temporary and lasting loyalties an antiquated idea.

In terms of monetary returns and advancement, modern day employment may be notches higher, but the emotional perks of staying at a job for decades is unrivalled when one considers the heart elements that are invested in an organisation during the long tenure. The boss assumes the role of a mentor and patriarch, colleagues become friends forever, subordinates become extended family and the work premises a place that one returns to religiously every day till the day of retirement. Superannuation used to mean more than an end to income and resources, and evoke a lot more sentiments than not having a place to go every day.

A recent Indian advertisement for a telecommunications company brings out this curious paradox of our times in a very poignant manner. An old employee is collecting his things in a cardboard box on his last day and a young female colleague checks if he is changing desks. While it came across as a gentle gesture from the young lady, it made me wonder if people working under the same roof of a small organisation were so distanced that one did not know the retirement of another. What the lady does later to give the elderly gentleman a warm send off might be great advertisement for technology and the swift manner in which our gizmos spread the word and get people around for an occasion, but it rankled that interpersonal connections at work these days have become so irrelevant that retirement is not anything more than a quiet retreat from the portals of employment with little impact on those in whose midst one had spent the final years of labour.

Farewell parties are less heard of these days, for people are constantly flitting in and out of companies. Attrition and replacement have become commonplace, bosses are seldom revered and colleagues are just tolerated. The attachment that once made the heart sag on one’s last day of employment has frayed. There are rare instances where the day of parting is marked with a celebration of one’s glorious tenure and at the same time with deep regret at his or her departure from their everyday scheme of things. Neither do people stick around for so long nor are they doing enough to build enduring post retirement relationships like it used to in an earlier era.

To put the major years of one’s life into a single organisation is a great personal accomplishment. To do it in a manner that will be cherished by posterity when one finally bows out is what differentiates a mercurial department head from an ordinary boss, a good-natured colleague from an indifferent co-worker and an organisation that was pivotal to your life from a company that provided a livelihood. When decades have been spent in fair camaraderie one cannot depart its precincts without leaving a part of him behind, and taking huge chunks from the past to embellish his future. There will always be a little bit of each in both. Beyond the titles and portfolios held, an employee leaves behind a legacy and a legion of supporters who made his stint complete and whose stints he complimented. In being described by them as irreplaceable, he or she finds the ultimate fulfillment of having served well, both as an exemplary employee and an admirable human being. 

Asha Iyer Kumar’s new collection of poems ‘Hymns from the Heart’ is now available on Amazon.com