The Gradual Indignation

“No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”

- Martin Luther King Jr.

How many of us actually inculcate the above words; in thought and in action? Most of us, put a value on the labor that is required of us in terms of how much money it generates. The more money it generates, the more we aspire to it. Today's world regards intellectual labor to be at a much higher pedestal than physical labor. It is outright funny that we can't understand how equally indispensable both of them are. Most of us foster a certain indifference to those who are not a part of the 'intellectual' class of laborers. Add to this our own baseless stereotypes about them; based on their region, religion, gender, caste, socio-economic conditions. Also, we indulge in an implicit domination of such workers by virtue of archaic organizational hierarchies; which place them at the bottom. And now the pandemic, piles on the misery of these workers.

I had a certain experience of this at my workplace, a couple of days ago. We were on a time crunch for the commissioning of our latest project. There was one last instrument installation remaining from our side (automation section). The higher ups were breathing down my boss's neck. He already had a lot on his plate and was overwhelmed by the task at hand. The task was then conveyed to me & a senior colleague to handle. To put things in context, in the broadest sense, my work is to ensure the smooth functioning of the plant's distributed control system (a computerized control system for a process or plant usually with many control loops, in which autonomous controllers are distributed throughout the system). It looks something like the picture below: 

We need to interface the field instruments through a junction box or remote input-output box, with a field control station which is then interfaced with the central supervisory control. We define these connections for the instrument and delegate the wiring connections to a contractual technician. Put simply, the technician has to ensure 9 pairs of connection for one instrument; meaning 18 termination points. While it's not a very difficult task, it is not a very easy one either; especially for an inexperienced technician. Because of the COVID-19 situation, we are deprived of a much needed workforce. We were somehow managing the work (generally handled by 6-7 technicians) by overloading 2 technicians. I engaged one of them further to finish the terminations. I explained the connections to him and left to handle some documentation. He was slow on it. He mentioned to my boss that he was overloaded; to which he got a very aggressive Hindi equivalent of "You only know how to work your mouth, try moving your hands and feet". I pretermitted his speed and assumed that he would finish the connections in time, but alas; as fate would have it, he messed up the loop checking. It delayed our start to the production process a little. But the implications were dire; for him. First my senior colleague upended him. And then my boss went on to give him a verbal choke slam.

The next day, he poured his heart out to me regarding how he felt. He was sorry but he held that it was an honest mistake. I tried consoling him by saying that these things happen. But, it was only mildly curative considering the wrath that fell upon him. Of course, he should have been careful but his misdeed definitely did not warranty a public haranguing. Despite his mistake, he was integral to the successful commissioning of the project, though hardly anyone will give him that credit. Often times, because of pressure situations, I have seen higher ups being unreasonably harsh on those who are working for them. I believe it is important for us to be mindful of the Golden Rule to avoid a gradual indignation of our colleagues: 

How would you want to be treated by people with power over you?

Now why on earth would you treat people you have power over differently than that?