The Unseen Battles
The first of all such Incidents #1
It’s been more than a decade now that I’ve been into the Information Technology (IT) industry. To be honest, I believe this would be the case in any industry. Companies are trying to align policies to address such unfriendly behaviors, but I feel they are only successful in certain cases. The fact that I am writing this blog is proof that those policies did not work in my case.
My first such experience happened when I just started my career as a Techie. It was during my training period. After the in-house, school-type training, I was deployed to an actual team to work as a trainee. There were stories about the manager of this team being a typical strict manager who wanted things done in his style. On my first day in his team, it was 6:35 PM, and I asked the manager if I could leave for the day. Guess what his reply was? “In my team, we do not leave until at least 7:30 PM. Even if there is no work, we stay to keep the team motivated.” That was when I realized those stories were true.
On my second day in the team, he gave me some documents to read and some SQL commands, which the team said was all we needed to work. I am a person who needs to first understand why I am doing something in the first place. While browsing through those documents and commands, I asked one of my colleagues to help me understand the logic behind them. As the person started explaining, the manager popped up, and he held my hand (which was on the mouse). I felt a little weird. I tried to remove my hand, but his grip was strong, and he mentioned, “Don’t look behind the WHYs, just understand where to use it.” The way he held my hand made me very uncomfortable. Finally, he lifted his hand and went back to his seat after giving me some project lessons. I didn’t like what had just happened, and as soon as I found an opportunity to leave, I did so.
I already had a childhood trauma, in case you missed reading it. This incident triggered an agitation in me that I had never felt before. So far, I had hardly spoken about it, but after this, I could not hold it in any longer. For my sake, I do not want to mention the details of what happened next, but I preferred not to raise the complaint and let it go (like always) and gradually tried my best to recover from it.
I left that team and joined another one. A few people helped me keep quiet and move on. I joined this new team during my traumatic times, and although it wasn’t a good decision, it was a temporary fix (at least for me). I was a developer and a good one. I chose the path of a Trainee Trainer. Yeah, that was a thing. So, I was getting training to train other new joiners. I didn’t like that job at all, but I did it because I wanted to stay as far away from that man as possible.
Eventually, I started feeling a little better and began to miss the mainstream job. I gathered the courage, which took some time thought & went straight to my manager to ask for a change (if possible), which he did not like. He called me unstable, and threatened to ruin my career, saying that I would not be able to work anywhere in that company because he had sources.
I felt the same anxiety again, most women can relate to this feeling. This is what society has given us the most. I went straight to washroom, it was an unbearable feeling inside me. I cried my heart out. I wanted an escape, I just wanted to leave. So I went to my desk, packed my things and went home (I am little stronger now to handle such situations, but back then, I was not). I decided never to go back.
I had taken very less leaves while I worked, so I applied for those leaves for my missing days, but that manager never approved my leaves, and I faced a loss of pay for that month. I was able to quit the company on medical grounds. It took some time to get back on track with a fine job.
