A slice of history

(Image courtesy: New Indian Express)

Prof L Suresh presents a white paper on his latest find – Corporate Living Fossils.

Evolution

Millions of years ago, corporate life was all about employees working like asses for donkey’s years, being stubborn as a mule and refusing to budge from the place. The management too believed in the concept of employee retention, encouraging senior professionals to ‘stick on’. But those who never proved themselves found themselves in a rather sticky situation, as they couldn’t find a job elsewhere. So they put up prominent name boards, lodged themselves deep within the corporate hierarchy (thus giving rise to the term ‘boarding and lodging’ which also made their intentions clear, of staying on forever) and were soon forgotten with time.

Classification

While these old-timers clearly belonged to the list of antiques from the corporate’s past, their antics however, were pretty much in keeping with the times. And so, they came to be known as Corporate Living Fossils – short for ‘Corporate Threats, Living Disasters and Intellectual Fossils’.

Family Tree

Corporate Living Fossils, like their counterpart recently found in Southeast Asia, belong to the rat family. They sniff around for gossip, chew up communication links between other employees, raise a stink with the kind of work they do and most importantly, hate their country cousins, the mouse, which makes them computer unfriendly.

Behaviour

Despite being technically challenged, Corporate Living Fossils fight for accessories like PDAs and laptops that serve as effective props in making them look busy. But once they get their gizmos, their use is largely limited to playing solitaire. This little insight tells us one very important thing about these fossils – they have lots of time and very little work. So they generally operate on a simple work philosophy – ‘Don’t get straight to the point. What’ll I do for the rest of the day?’

Habitat

Since most organizations don’t have attics in the workplace, Corporate Living Fossils take up the next best place that keeps them totally isolated from the passage of time - the office cabin. (Most of these fossils love their cabins so much that over a period of time, they have come to be lovingly known as the organization’s cabin baggage.)

Survival

Remember, Corporate Living Fossils have withstood phenomena more excruciating than the ice age and meteor crashes – they have lived through corporate restructuring, downsizing, management changes and boss transfers. At times of such violent corporate shake-ups, they prefer to settle down into deep hibernation and yet, manage to retain their jobs, designations and most important of all, their cabins. That’s why it takes a lot to dislodge fossils from the workplace.

Corporate Impact

Most Corporate Living Fossils make their organizations see red – on the balance sheet - as they nullify every last penny of profit that has been excruciatingly made by drawing obscene salaries. They have also been instrumental in making most organizations sick - of paying them massive perks and bonuses, year after year. That’s when HR departments decided to cater to their predatory instincts, instead of paying them in cash.

Predatory Instincts

Most Corporate Living Fossils feed off the young blood in the organization – hapless trainees, new recruits and nervous secretaries. These are part of the non-monetary benefit packages that entitle them to a free hand with the new employees, calling them in for day-long training sessions and numbing them to the point of total submission or complete exhaustion, whichever happens first. This also ensures that the species does not face extinction as such sessions help in adding to the tribe – by grooming of the ‘fossils of the future’.

(Appeared in the New Indian Express Sunday Supplement on 09 July, 2006)