And yet again, this little pocket of the Internet I call “my blog” will be my undoing.
At the risk of disaffecting future employers, I am going to do a very public (if you can call my 3 readers that) break-down of why I disliked two of the many workspaces I’ve been, over this decade. Not that I’ve worked in the decade previous to that. I have never worked at a sweatshop that employs minors. The sweatshops I worked at were for adults only. Still sweatshops.
“People leave managers, not companies” is such terrible, misleading oversimplification that completely discounts the role of the overall culture of the workplace that dictates your manager’s mode of operation. That’s right, managers are people too. (Next: HR is human afterall). Digression averted, back to why “some” (and by that I mean nearly all) Indian workplaces fail the ‘safe space’ test. I say ‘safe space’ because that is the absolute minimum requirement for me – that when I walk in here, I feel ‘safe’. I do not ask for happiness, I do not ask for peace (“peace of mind is overrated” is an actual thing Hustle-core Gen-X-ers believe). I do not even ask for minimum industry standard wage (which, I believe, is a collective lie workspaces in the “content” department tend to propagate in order to keep their main source of product – the writers – compliant). I simply ask that it be declared ‘safe’ for me to express ideas and concerns pertaining to my work. And sometimes, those ideas may not be related to my work, but it shouldn’t be “unsafe” for me to ask and check. For instance, expressing my personal distrust of Akshay Kumar might just help my coworkers understand why I would not want him to be the face of Google Pay. As a Creative, being dispassionately rational is not an option. It’s your personal biases and anecdotal evidence that you bring to the table and cross-check with the research to finally craft a piece of work that moves people into feeling something for an inanimate <insert product here>. And if it does not move me, I won’t write it well enough to move people. And what is the point of us as Creative if we create something that doesn’t move people. You can’t move product unless your story moves people. So you can tell that it is extremely important for me to live and breathe in a space where it’s safe to dislike Akshay Kumar.
That, I learnt the hard way, is apparently, too much to ask for.
I’ve had good managers. Great managers, in fact. I’d just say that they’re victims of abuse that flows from the top. And it’s not because they do not own the business. There is an ecosystem that dictates heirarchy and just like the conscious observer to the Big Bang, there is indeed an originator of this chain of disgruntlement that flows from manager to managee, even if your manager is the business owner. I am pretty sure some junior copywriter or art executive somewhere is posting that ‘people leave bad managers’ meme-quote-moye-moye, alluding to me.
My least favourite place to work at was the one where Akshay Kumar was sacred. Just replace Akshay Kumar with a certain triple Amazon Comedy Special star and that would be an accurate description of that workspace. I always steer back to professional comedy writing as the gold standard of poorly paid abusive gigs. Sorry for the reiteration but it really is. “Always punch up” says the comedy star on stage as he mentally strikes his junior offenders off the sketchwriting team – without investigation or room for protest. And he is not your manager, he is the star right at the top of the psychosphere. He currently holds the subconscious of an entire subcontinent hostage. And there will be no end to his reign because he is just the prototype. There are more like him, incubating at the open mics. Bros and bhais of the mediocrity that is the average comedy-sketch audience. There used to be a time someone wrote elaborate jokes on nailcutters and pomegranate and introduced craft to stagecraft. It was good while it lasted.
That’s not the only contendor for ‘worst workplaces in my career’. But the other one wasn’t Creative so it doesn’t feel personal. I’ll tell you about it anyway.
Safety includes caffeine. As Switchgear Design engineers, contracting and expanding 3D visuals on Pro-E and CATIA all day long, we were subject to the draconian law of Caffeine Restricted To Twice A Day. Because it was cheaper to have people not at their optimal best during office hours than to just keep the coffee machine running. Now, I am not saying this was the Gulag. But is that normal for you? To feel safe in a place because at least it’s not labour camp? I overshot my 750 words. Goodbye.
I spin yarns 