The level of Right & Wrong

This story is about a mentor and his student. Its about two individuals who respect each other. This story is about Marcus and Hamid.

Hamid had recently joined a BPO and was getting into a new world which was not known to him. He was a reserved person who would take his time to make friends. He was very short tempered but would control his anger most of the time. After the initial training period he successfully completed his OJT. He had to then progress into a new team on the production floor. On the last day of the OJT he found his friend congratulating him to be lucky since he was getting into the team of Marcus.

Marcus was the most respected Team Leader on the floor. People would envy his team as he had some of the best performers in his team. He was known to be a cool and supportive team leader and someone who was very approachable. Soon, Hamid found himself in the company of some of the best agents on the floor and started enjoying his work as he was learning something new everyday.

However, Hamid was a slow learner. He was more of a hard worker then a smart worker. He would always be in a tense situation thinking that his performance should not bring down his team scores. Moreover, the competitive environment was something which he always liked. Marcus could notice that Hamid would always be putting more then 100% but was still an average performer with regards to score. However, he had faith in Hamid’s ability and had trust in him that he would never do anything to go up which is unethical.

As time went Hamid found that Marcus was a person with the same values which he follows and would not agree to anything which is wrong. Hamid and Marcus started becoming good friends where they shared a lot of professional and personal issues.

Hamid grew in confidence under Marcus leadership and was started getting reckoned among the top performers on the floor. With this he also started becoming vocal about his opinions and about things which he would not agree with. He found on more than one occasion that Marcus would succumb to pressure from the management and the team had to compromise. Slowly these discussions between Marcus and Hamid became debates and then fights.

Marcus found Hamid at times too interfering and felt that Hamid was expecting too much from the company and from him also. Hamid on the other hand felt that Marcus was in a position which he could utilize to raise concerns which affected most of the people at the bottom level who ever actually contributing the most to the growth of the company.

Although certain members of the team agreed to Hamid’s point of view but they respected Marcus a lot and did not want to go against him. However, they would not dare to also tell Hamid much as they knew that he in his way was correct.

Strangely enough while all this was happening both of them started respecting each other more as they knew each others strengths and weakness. Hamid’s consistent good performance was something which was driving Marcus’s team. Hamid would take a lot of responsibility in training new guys joining the team and his performance and hard work finally paid off and he was promoted.

Hamid moved into a higher role and soon with his performance gained the respect of everyone working with him. Marcus and Hamid by then were good friends and would support each other whenever needed.

Hamid started considering Marcus his guru even though he would not agree to all his view points. He found Marcus always approachable. Like Hamid, others in his company too respected Marcus for being what he was. With time Marucs, also grew in the organization.

However, Hamid soon had a terrible accident and had to leave the organization. It took him a lot of mental and physical effort to recover from his illness. After 6 months when Hamid wanted to join back his company the first person he contacted was Marcus. Marcus spoke to the AVP and soon had Hamid back in the company. With this Marcus became the most important person for Hamid in the company. He would go ahead and do anything for him.

He got back to work with the same zeal and enthusiasm and soon was in the reckoning again. But faith, had something in store for him. He soon became part of a team of trainers who started considering him as a threat to their position. Hamid was subjected to some well planned office politics and soon found himself working harder but not getting the due recognition for it. He was not sure about his future in the organization. During this phase Marcus again came as a ray of hope for him. He assured him that he would be rewarded for his honesty and performance and gave him lot of confidence. For Hamid he had become an elder brother who would always be there to protect him from any dangers. People in the company too were aware of the growing friendship between Hamid and Marcus and the ones close to Marcus would envy Hamid for getting so much attention from Marcus.

By this time Marcus had already moved into the role of a Manager and soon Hamid found himself in the role of a Team Leader. Hamid and Marcus were associated with different work groups and would have in general interactions.

After getting in the role of a team leader Hamid was enjoying his working and exercising his rights to the fullest. Suddenly people working with him found that Hamid was too strict and a disciplinarian. This resulted in some friction in his team. However, they soon found that he was just being non biased and would stand up for his guys.

On the other hand Marcus also took over some bigger responsibilities. He was given the responsibility of starting a new queue. It was something on which his future growth was dependent. The bigger challenge lied in convincing the existing people to join the new queue as no guidelines were laid down and people were not sure about their growth prospects. Everyone was sure the Marcus would take Hamid along with him in this new venture. However, to everyone’s surprise Hamid was not part of Marcus team. When people would tell Hamid earlier that Marcus would definitely take him in his team he would just smile and say that he was sure that Marcus would not do so as he knows Hamid very well.

Hamid being more popular among the agents at the bottom level found a lot of them approaching him when they were given the opportunity to move to the new queue headed by Marcus. He analyzed every detail and to everyone’s surprise advised them not to join in. When Marcus found this he had an interaction with Hamid and convinced him that all his concerns regarding the growth and future of the agents would be taken care of. Hamid was satisfied and would advise people then to go ahead and join since he had complete faith in Marcus.

By this time the management had found that Hamid was most of the time against the decisions take by the management and a mindset was created that he cannot proceed ahead. Hamid was not aware that there were bigger setbacks on his way.

The first setback was when he found Marcus moving away from the promises he had made to all the new guys who joined his queue. However, he decided to give Marcus some more time with it. Later, Hamid was given a lower rating in his appraisals because he had exposed certain wrong doings by a certain person of the management who was also closely associated with Marcus but Marcus turned a deaf ear to it.

This really broke down Hamid and he was mentally very depressed. He never expected Marcus to do so. He found Marcus to be a person who for his personal growth compromised on his values. Everyone close to him realized that something was wrong with him. But only the ones really close knew about this. Hamid finally decided to leave the job. However, to his surprise Marcus was of the opinion that Hamid has been a head strong person and its better if he leaves. This completely broke Hamid.

However, during this phase also Hamid’s performer was good and his Manager relied on him heavily. To everyone’s surprise Hamid’s performance was improving more and he was able to motivate a big group of people by his leadership. His manager did his best to convince him to change his decision of leaving the job but Hamid just assured him that he wont let his performance down till the time he is there.

Marcus on the other hand soon found that people were not respecting him like before. He was still popular but the respect factor was missing. It was a phase where Marcus found that people would give him respects for his position rather then for the person he was. By this time Hamid was serving his notice period and was not interacting at all with Marcus. Marcus knew that he had done wrong and wanted to reconcile with Hamid, but Hamid was not ready for it. Hamid during this period found more such facts of Marcus breaking the faith of lot of other people who looked up to him. People close to Hamid and Marcus tried their level best to sort things out between them. Marcus knew the problem but wanted to hear it from Hamid and Hamid’s total ignoring attitude frustrated him sometimes.

During this period Hamid realized something more. Hearing that he was leaving the company there were a lot of people who came and spoke with Hamid. These were people who would not normally interact with Hamid knowing the kind of reserved guy he was but they just wanted to let him know what they felt about him. To his surprise Hamid found that people who he had trained and to whom he had literally blasted during his training session approached him more during this period.

Hamid got a job and moved out of his company but was not able to settle down mentally. The fact that his mentor and his guru who turned to be a person who for his own personal benefits compromised on his values was a big setback for him. People close to him tried to put across things like that was a phase and Marcus was back to normal but Hamid was not ready to give Marcus a second chance. He was not able to take up any job for quite some time and took a long time to recover from this emotional setback. This affected his career and his family in a big way.
Today Hamid is working at another place and Marcus is still with the old company. Off and on Marcus does gives a call to Hamid and keeps trying to settle things between them. Hamid is subjected to some similar things at his new place but due to his past experiences he is not trusting anyone anymore. He is not creating any emotional bonding with anyone at work now. On the other hand Marcus, is getting the company of less of friends and more of drinking partners.

But there is one thing which is common between both of them. Hamid still considers Marcus to be his best Guru and Marcus considers Hamid to his best student.

Hamid and Marcus made their respective choices. Its simple to define your values but difficult to persistently and continuously follow them.