Wednesday, August 8, 2012

The Punctual Authoritarian


People have different points of view and people stand to defend their points of view. As obvious as it may seem but someone rightly pointed, “If you want to know me, give me power”. Sorry for the corny title but if some power is given to already an authoritarian; it is multiplied in its enforcement and execution. An authoritarian is what I am mentioning about. I happened to cross over that very authoritarian who is kind of wacky by almost all features of a decent human being. Our personality metamorphoses from a timid bud into a confident bloom as and when ‘office politics’ goes from bad to worse and when one is given ‘power’.
At least in its conventional sense, the thought of being equal and treated fairly makes the day. But as troubles pour in, this egalitarian thinking takes the form of a violent beast almost at the verge of locking horns. Why are people in power harsh? Is it some kind of magic potion they drink when they take office? Are they told to be rigid and harsh on the vulnerable ones? Or did someone ask them to be soft and polite on the juniors that share the same ethnic background? The questions are manifold and endless.
Many in a typical office are ‘regularly irregular’ and this authoritarian talk about the philosophy of punctuality, whenever opportunity creeps in. Well sticking to punctuality is gentle and nice but what if a regularly punctual employee is not on a day? Does this mean that this one gray thing of a day will define the person he/she is? Whereas for the ones who are favored and savored for that matter need not even have to complete the formalities of such official excuses. If this is not ‘office politics’ then please drop in some suggestive phrases. I would be glad to pen down my thoughts in this blog.
Average workers built mostly of words to impress are negligible but those who choose to think and act differently are the mice under constant surveillance. This is what happens in typical ‘holy office’. I too became a red light in the managers’ radar. They are built for the kill. It is tyranny at work. On one such occasion I was there at the right place in the wrong time, not that others were not doing so but that particular day meant D-Day for me. When all things are going wrong but fine with people, why is that this wrong is caught with you? It is this moment when humans become devils. An inferno of all the bad boils in one to be devoured to another.
Punctuality, when humanity conceived this lofty philosophy, they forgot to define the punctual being. That’s why humans with all their flaws cannot be punctual even at the personal level. Always a punctual is controversial, as human beings have strings and chores attached while maintaining a very thin line between person and profession, at least in the service working scenario.
Don’t people have kids? Don’t humans fall ill? Don’t they have personal matters at home making them a little late at office? Don’t human beings have problems of whatever degree? To attend to all these with some degree of flexibility, is what I think will maintain harmony in a miniature office society. Otherwise, tyranny will work its way from top-down. When this happens, imagine an authoritarian regime of a ruthless military dictator-Hitlership!
Generally, the term punctual refers to, ‘arriving, doing something or happening at the expected, correct time, not late’. It doesn’t say anything about generalizing people with one act of not being punctual or not doing something at the expected time once. Then who is a punctual person in an office set up? Yes, you guessed it; it’s the Punctual Authoritarian, because nobody questions his/her punctuality. 
The debate between an egalitarian worker and a tyrant authoritarian over punctuality is………… (You are advised to draw your own conclusion)

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