I Had It Enough

During the month of November, 2004, I was assigned the task to collate the production data of the team. It gave me access to the daily production data of each member of the team. One day, I chanced upon a variance in the output shown by the information system and that reported by Aman. The first time she manipulated her production data, I warned her but reported it to Dakur. Both of them ignored it. The second time she did, I mailed the data as proof to Sheetal Thakur, Senior Operation Manager, without keeping Dakur in the loop. He was not aware of my email to her. After a few days, she mailed him back, wanting to know the status of the matter and if it had been resolved to the satisfaction of everyone involved. He still would not address the matter and pushed it under the rug. I would soon pull the rug from under his feet.

It was during this phase that the whole team stood united and boycotted Aman, Gaj and Dakur. We neither spoke with her nor with Dakur. It didn’t matter if he was the team leader. It shocked him that I could lead an entire team of 15-20 guys to revolt against him. For a month, with the exception of Gaj, no one in the team conversed with Dakur. Gaj was his right-hand man, his messenger, a serpent not worth trusting. He was our and Dakur’s one-man channel of communication. But we wouldn’t entertain him outside the production floor. He was an outcast.

In the month of March 2005, to provide proof of Fang’s collusion with Aman, I began to keep a close look on the route bin of both of them. I knew that there would be some evidence to nail them, even though they were very cautious in not leaving any proof of their misdeeds. However, I continued to keep a watch on their bins in the hope of unearthing evidence. My persistence paid off when I found in his route bin a few claims which were routed by her for audit purpose. The audit was crucial as it ensured that we did not end up releasing more or less than that prescribed under law. Both would result in loss to the client and IBM. I took a screen shot of a particular claim that had a financial error and left it in his bin. I waited for him to complete the audit and route the claim back to her bin. After a few days, he audited it and as expected, did not report the financial error in his report to the management. To show that he was doing it deliberately, I followed the same procedure with few other claims as well. I emailed the report with the screen shots to Dakur, requesting him to take action against Fang, based on the evidence adduced. Aman was not my target; Fang was a scourge in the team. Dakur still would not take any action. We continued to persist with him to no avail. At this point, the communication channel broke down between me and him. I was no longer communicating with him. I had it enough. I decided to escalate the matter to the management.