Its been ages since I blogged and as usual travel to office got the better out of me.
A recent incident which happened with my colleague taught me the most valuable lesson in life (Not that I needed it. Just made me reinforce and hang on tight to certain principles under which I "Operate").
To cut a long story short, there was a shouting match which resulted in lot of tension and change in "People - Dynamics". People were forced to pick sides, tears flowed, glares followed. Phew :-/ Felt like high school all over again. But hello. I am taking about a workplace which is supposed to have matured humans co-existing peacefully and functioning as a single unit. Something tells me this is not a rare event and is quite common in workplace ( Post event people went about minding their own business like nothing ever happened!)
But then what happened to manners and "Team - Work" at workplace?
Really simple. Emotions got the better of people.Or to be precise Anger, Disappointment, Greed, Sorrow got the best behavior out of people.
Its not just one emotion that caused havoc, its a string of emotions which is like a chain reaction or falling dominoes to be blamed.
And this is how it all starts. First there is a mild disagreement between two people. The person who disagrees often ends up either hating the other person or feeling jealous about the other person or straight to being sad about the whole episode. The last category is a rarity unless the person in question is a real angle/saint. Its a 50-50 between hatred and jealous.
The hatred and jealous slowly merge and snowball into anger.
Anger is a very powerful and a rather common emotion these days. People these days are rather "Short Fused".
Anger can result in three things -
1. Shouting match
2. Direct Revenge ( or just plain good old revenge directly when the "affected person" takes his/her anger out by employing common channels like sabotage, whistle blowing and what not!)
3. Smart Revenge ( The situation where you are in deep trouble and you are clueless as to how and who exactly landed you landed there and you really didn't even have the vaguest dream of such a mess !)
*I personally believe in the 3rd way ( Er...this is one of the principles I strive to keep up! )*
And this is how the 3 ways end
1. A shouting match normally ends in tears flowing ( For sure in the case of a women!), glares following, a strained relationship and the obvious cold war ( Something bigger than what happened between USA & USSR!). Specific to work atmosphere - A job search and a Resignation is inevitable!
2. Direct revenge ends in two ways. One, a bad reputation ( for the person who disagreed or the person who was in the receiving end of the revenge AND the person who took revenge).
Two, People taking sides resulting in a cold war. Again specific to work place - Productivity takes a hit owing to poor team spirit and boils down to filing of papers!
3.Smart Revenge. Ends only in one way. The poor guy ( Or girl) who was in the receiving end learns his lesson the hard way! The person who took revenge is a happy human ( Fact! I know it sounds sadistic! )
Being on an emotional overdrive and hollering at people, pouring your eyes out especially in work place is a lousy way to deal with troubles that one faces. Crying and waging a cold war makes people around us go weary of us.
But then bottling up emotions is also harmful due to various obvious health reasons.
Striking a perfect balance between how much you take out ( and in the manner in which you take out) and how much you bottle up is the key to happy living!
Here is to all people who holler and wail like a baby - Get a life folks!
P.S. Don't ask me if i strike that balance. I am a human too ( Particularly a Girl!)
P.P.S. Yes! I've dealt only with anger in this post. Other human emotions are worth separate posts.