My theory of dealing with new joinees is simple. It is – Don't tell them the truth, let them discover it. When I am introduced to a new joinee I put on a smile as big as that of the Joker in Batman and say - Welcome to the organization. The truth is I always want to say - Welcome to hell. When new joinees ask me for help I tell them I am busy right now. Okay. That's not a lie. I am always busy in office. I tweet a lot. So what I am not working. I am busy.
Last Monday a new joinee joined my team. Since the team leader was absent I had to spend few minutes telling him about the awesome work we do and the not so awesome he will be doing for us. I showed the new joinee our products which he appreciated and told him we do such great work because we are dedicated, hard working employees and expect him to become one. Okay. That's a lie. We are not model employees but I was just following my theory of not telling the truth to the new joinees. Also it won't be nice for the new joinee to discover on day one of his new job that the job sucks.
After I had given the orientation to the new joinee I gave him the path where various company manuals were saved and told him to read them thoroughly. As the writer of few manuals for the company I know how dense they are and the only thing a fresher can do with them is to read them till he gets bored and then tweet – First day of the job and it has already started to suck. #FML
Lunch time came and I asked the new joinee to join my group for lunch. My lunch group is like mini India. There is too much diversity but there is one thing that unites us all. The great thought that unites us is that we all think our work sucks.
My lunch group consists of people from the Marketing to the IT support dept. We have nothing in common and still like each other. There is also minority representation i.e. their is one guy from production dept which is me. I think the reason I like the people in my lunch group is because I don't work with them. Once we will start working together on a project, we will start exchanging emails and then I will start hating them and they will start hating me. The email theory of the more work emails you exchange with a person, the more you think that person does nothing all day except forwarding you emails with the addition FYI from his/her side.
We had lunch and most of the people in my lunch group left. Only four people were still sitting. One from the IT support, one from marketing and me and the new joinee from production. The marketing guy was finishing his dabba and he asked me, "Oh….I heard you have quit."
There was silence for a moment. The new joinee was sitting next to me. I couldn't have said the reasons I resigned in front of him. There are some things which are better if the new joinees discover them by their own reasoning instead of someone telling them in advance for example cubicle blues. So I said, "Yeah, that's true" and left the table.
To sum up
I have quit. I won't say I don't have any regrets because I have one. I should have done it much earlier.
