Dedication vs Survival: Lessons from Anna's Story

Ruchir Gupta -

It is very saddening to know that Anna Sebastian Perayil, a 26-year-old employee of EY, passed away due to extreme work pressure from her employer/manager.

What can we learn from this incident?

  1. Never work on holidays. Let your employer lose their billions, but never work on holidays, especially not on Sundays.

  2. Don't work more than 8 hours a day if working from the office, or 9 hours a day if working from home. Ignore all calls, messages, and WhatsApp communications from your employer/colleagues after this time. If possible, keep a separate phone number for your employers/colleagues and switch it off after office hours.

  3. Never tolerate disrespect. Your self-respect is above all. As said in Gujarati, "To beg is worse than hunger." (ભૂખથીય ભૂંડી ભીખ) Leave the company if you feel humiliated.

2 incidents from my life:

  1. When I joined my first company as a fresher, the office hours were 9:30 AM to 6:45 PM, Monday to Saturday. However, my boss never let anyone leave before 7:30 PM. He often stayed until 9:30 PM and forced 2 or 3 of us to stay with him until he left. He frequently abused employees, even in front of female staff. The company kept the original mark sheets of the employees, and when anyone tried to leave before the bond period ended, they demanded a hefty penalty to break the bond and withheld the experience letter. To hell with the experience letter—I fought back, took my mark sheets, and left. Even after 12 years, I don't have their experience letter, and I am okay with it.

  2. Some months ago, I joined an engineering college as a Vice Principal. It was a part-time job, and the college was run by a 30-year-old trustee with no experience in education (he himself was not very literate). When I found that the students were suffering because the faculty was inefficient, unskilled, and undisciplined, I told the trustees that they had to either be upskilled or replaced. When those faculties conspired against me and threatened the trustee of mass-resignation and the trustee demoted me as an assistant professor to appease them instead of upskilling them, I resigned from there too.

Dedication is not a virtue. Survival is more important than the dedication. It is okay to be selfish and think only about self.