Email from ex-colleague

I learnt in school that volcanoes usually stay calm but when they erupt, they explode and throw rocks at people near them. As a person I am a volcano. I usually stay calm but when I explode my words are as good as big hot rocks. Once they hit a person he/she tries to avoid me as much as possible.

Today I received an email from a person who had quit our organization last week. The email was of the regular type that one sends to friends after he/she changes the organization. The email is marked like a forward to 10-15 people and says that I missing you guys, this is my new email id and stay in touch. The email I received followed the standard pattern with one digression. It ended with I am enjoying work.

As I soon as I read the last line I felt a seismal shift take place in my mood. The volcano that was silent since morning had exploded. I wanted to pull my keyboard out of my drawer and smash it on my table. This action might have made my colleague think I have gone crazy due to work pressure and like any sensible person they would have tried to distract my attention so that the security guard could overpower me and save the innocent computer.

I am sure this would have been a brilliant move by my colleagues but it had one flaw. I work on the second floor and the only security guard of my company sits on the ground floor usually reading newspaper or solving Sudoku. The amount of time taken to send the message that a man is bullying a computer and the security guard reaching to the second floor is enough for me to show my ex-colleague's email to my current colleagues. As soon as my current colleagues would have read ‘enjoying work’ they would have found my action completely rational and would have returned to their desks to smash their keyboards into pieces.

However, before executing my brilliant plan I decided to reply to my colleague’s email. I pressed the reply button and wrote:

Dear Ex-fellow passenger in the same sinking ship,

I am not at all feeling jealous after knowing that you are enjoying work. In fact I am doing great. I have just come to know a VP what has a companywide reputation of being pain in the ass has quit/fired. Also the company is working on a new plan so that our lives won’t ever again get screwed during deadlines.

According to the plan the employees will come to office in morning and will be allowed to leave office only after the project is finished. The management is currently busy making lodging and boarding arrangements for the employees and the HR dept is currently busy trying to figure out the legal costs for defending the company of kidnapping charges.

Some employees have said that they would like to meet their kids on weekends but I don’t think management will be making any exceptions to its policy guaranteed not to screw employees’ life during deadlines but to screw their life during the whole project.

Rest in my reply to the reply given by you to this mail.

All is well

With warm regards,

Abhishek

I thought about pressing the send button but decided not do so because I had worked with the ex-colleague and knew she is not the kind of person that could lie with a straight face. When one of her new colleagues would ask her why she is laughing, she would show her new colleague my mail. She doesn't have enough imagination to tell her new colleague that I just imagined that KKR won IPL, Shahruk Khan is dancing naked and Gangully is watching him.

To sum up

Never send an 'I am doing good at work' email to a frustrated employee.