Article #69 : The Punching Bag

Did you ever experience the frustration of a person on you without you being the reason? Did you happen to analyze such situation(s)? Is it just because they cannot show the frustration on anyone else? Then let me tell you that you are the Punching Bag for them. 

Well, in this article, I am going to present you the story of a frustrated manager, Somu 

It’s 9 AM in the morning. No one has arrived at their workplace yet. The landlines are taking rest, the cubicles are feeling relaxed, but the swipe machine is waiting for its turn.  

As the clock strikes 9:05 AM, associates start taking their places. While some of them start working, the others keep praying for the day. In the middle of nowhere arrives our frustrated manager, Somu. 

Everyone gets alerted. Somu calls one of the associates and starts venting out his frustration for talking to his colleague.  

Somu says, “Do you know what is going to happen if you don’t work like this and keep talking to everyone the whole day? I don’t think you have time sense. You have been provided with everything here, an asset, AC, chair, table and what not, still you don’t work. Be professional first, then we can think of everything else” 

Although the associate tries to explain himself that he was talking on a work-related issue, Somu is in no mood to listen.  

After 5 minutes, Somu asks the associate to leave. The associate feels offended. 

Somu feels quite relaxed, the reason for his frustration was not because the associate was talking, in fact, it was because of the 1-hour fight that he had with his wife at home. As he couldn’t talk or shout at his wife, he simply vented out that frustration on an associate who reports to him. 

Another hour passes by and this time, Somu starts shouting on one more associate as he receives an escalation from the higher management with respect to the work. In fact, the work was carried out by the associate as per the instructions from Somu.  

Still Somu says, “What kind of work is this? Who asked you to do it in this way? Don’t you have common sense? Now how can we handle this escalation? I still wonder how you got this job” 

The associate tries to explain that he did the work just as per the instructions from Somu, but Somu doesn’t let him speak 

The associate feels sad as there was no mistake from his side, still he had to hear all those words from Somu. 

On the other hand, Somu feels relaxed again. The reason for his frustration is not the associate who did the work, but the higher management who escalated on Somu. 

Likewise, Somu vents out his frustration every now and then on his team for inappropriate reasons. The associates felt that he has a problem with every one of them as he scolds them unnecessarily for everything.  

Starting from the moment they come for work to leaving the place, they become the victims of Somu’s frustration. If they come for 1 minute late to office, it’s a problem for Somu, if they go for a tea break, it’s a problem for Somu, if they take leave, it’s a problem for Somu, even if they happen to meet Somu outside on a weekend, Somu tries to figure out some issue and vents out his frustration. 

Somu leaves no stone unturned. He uses his team as the punching bag for his own personal or professional issues. No one in the team likes him, in fact associates from other teams also start noticing his behavior. 

Somu’s behavior simply gets escalated to the higher management unofficially. At the same time, his team gathers for a discussion outside the work place and raises an ethics grievance on Somu officially. 

As expected, Somu denies his behavior during the grievance redressal. But to his surprise, the team proves their compliant with the related audio recordings of Somu. 

The grievance team finds it as non-compliance to the company’s policies and terminates Somu citing ethical reasons.  

Keeping the story aside, every one of us would have also seen people in our personal or professional lives who use someone as their punching bag although there’s no issue with that someone. Personal relationships tend to break after a certain amount of time whereas when it comes to profession, it would definitely backfire and can even lead to loss of the Job. So, let’s ensure to use only the punching bag in the gym as the actual punching bag and not anyone around. 

What do you say? Let me know in the comments below.