Back in 1980, my employer always sent us Business Class if we flew and First Class on trains and ferries. I was flying to Asia and was on the way back from the toilet when another passenger jumped up out of his seat and rushed off to find the flight attendant.

At the top of his voice, he started yelling at her.

Passenger: “That woman over there was breastfeeding in business class!”

The woman with her very small baby was being very discreet, and the attendant listened to this and refused to do anything about it.

The man made even more fuss until the chief attendant came back and told him in no uncertain terms that if didn’t like it, he could move into a spare seat in economy and get off at the next stop, which was something like Bombay. In those days of the early 747s, there was a refuelling stop on many long-haul flights.

After the chief attendant left, the passenger walked over and tried to grab the baby out of the mother’s arms!

Fortunately, I was close enough to get hold of the unruly wotsit, and I yelled for the cabin crew, who rapidly appeared and moved the passenger down to a rear seat in economy, despite all his complaining.

In thirty-five years of flying, I never met anyone as bad. He didn’t appear to get back on after the stop.

And the mother asked me to hold the baby while she went to the washroom.

Related:
Breast To Just Support Her, Part 2
Breast To Just Support Her

This incident took place in India in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. The school where my sister and I studied was in my hometown. We knew almost all of the teachers since they were practically our neighbours.

By the time I graduated from school, the principal had retired and the vice principal had taken over as the principal.

[Vice Principal] was also from the same town, and for some unknown reason, he had some sort of grudge against my father. In local gatherings and such, he would always try to belittle my father at all chances he could get. My father would normally let it pass since he knows that getting into silly arguments with such a bully is totally unproductive.

When my sister and I joined the school, my father was required to pay a refundable deposit of 5,000 Rupees per child, which would be returned when each child graduated from the school. 10,000 Rupees was a large amount in the ‘90s and is equivalent to 95,000 Rupees now.

I graduated in 1989. My father enquired about the refund.

Vice Principal: “Since [Sister] will be graduating next year, both of the deposits will be returned together.”

When my sister graduated from school, my father requested that the school refund both of the deposits. There was no response, even after two weeks, and my father personally went to the school to demand the refund. [Vice Principal], being the egotistical bully, started arguing with my father stating that the school couldn’t refund the deposits. The argument became very heated, and he refused point-blank.

Vice Principal: “We are not returning the deposits. Do what you want. You can take us to court if you want!”

My father went silent, got up, and left the school. He came home, sat down with Mom, and went through all the school-related documents she had kept. My mom had a very meticulous documentation system; she used to save every receipt, bill, stub, etc.

He found the receipts for the deposits and took them to his lawyer friend. My dad informed his friends whose children were in the same school about the issue.

The lawyer filed the case and took the school to court. The school couldn’t provide any reason for withholding the deposits, so my dad won. The school was instructed to pay back the deposits with interest, as well as court dues.

My father’s friends who were in the PTA took up the issue in the subsequent PTA meeting, and they got the school’s trustee board to ensure that such issues wouldn’t be dealt with in the same manner. All deposits would be refunded in time. They strictly warned [Vice Principal] not to bring personal grudges into school business.

Other parents who were owed deposits but had forgotten about them started claiming them. It cost the school a lot to pay back all the deposits.

This happened just before I quit my last job, some four years ago. I was working with the largest IT company in my country. It is known for being employee-friendly, with very relaxed working hours and good perks and emoluments (pay). However, the delivery head of our project (our boss) had a totally different outlook.

Officially, we were supposed to work from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm, but nobody stressed about it because clocking in a total of forty-five hours a week was the only compliance required. (Yes, in India, that is a rather lenient number.) Personally, I liked to work until late, since there was less traffic while returning home, so I’d go to work by 10:00 or 10:30. The client never used to bother us before 11:00. That’s not very disciplinary on my part, I know, but that was the general trend in that company.

This boss guy suddenly decided to become draconian about punctuality with office hours. He declared that everyone was expected to be at their workstations by 9:00.” Nonetheless, all of us complied saying, “If forty-five hours is the only rule, so be it.”

In my team, I was the last person to leave every day, so I had voluntarily taken up a few extra technical responsibilities that needed to be addressed only after everyone signed off and after the client was done for the day (which was never before 8:00). As you can guess, it immediately became chaotic when I began arriving at 9:00 and leaving at 6:00 every day.

Needless to say, the boss was helplessly out of his wits and had to stay back himself most of the nights for a week to wrap up the closing tasks. (He always used to leave by 6:00 before this.) He was neither much acquainted with the standard operating procedures nor could he gather aid from any of his staff, so he really found himself in a mess.

They could’ve simply reinstated our work hours. Instead, this is what they did one fine evening.

Boss: “Why are you leaving now?”

Me: “I’m done for the day. It’s 6:30 already.”

Boss: “Who will do the [technical responsibilities]?”

Me: “But then I’d have to stay for another two hours.”

Boss: “Okay, let’s see. During the last one month, you have come to work after 10:00 every day. That’s twenty to twenty-two hours of deficiency.”

I couldn’t decide if I should laugh or be infuriated at his nonsensical statement.

Me: “But I’ve worked until 8:30 pm every day, so not only is that incorrect, but I’ve actually worked twenty to twenty-two hours more, for which I should claim overtime payment.”

Boss: “Then why didn’t you? Anyway, that’s a separate topic altogether. Starting tomorrow, you’re either coming an hour early or staying an hour late, for a whole month, to compensate for your deficiency.”

This called for some malicious compliance!

At that time, I was preparing for another high-paying job in the government sector that required an immensely tough competitive exam to be cleared, for which I needed to put a lot of effort and time into studying and researching. The exams were due in a month and I was struggling as I used to get home late. So, I saw this as the optimal opportunity — a “kill two birds with a stone” situation. I decided to comply.

I began to clock in at 8:00 every day and study and research vigorously for an hour without any disturbance as nobody came in at 8:00, using the company’s Internet, printer, stationeries, and whatever other utilities were required. I managed to begin my workday by 9:00. For a whole month, I fueled my exam preparation from the company’s resources. And yes, I claimed full overtime payment, too!

To be honest, a lot of times, I used to feel guilty about this, but the pleasure I got from submitting my resignation letter after I got the job I was preparing for was a wholesome, out-of-this-world feeling!

A couple of months after I left, I was catching up with some old coworkers. The state of my team, I came to learn, was sad.

I had been working as the UI Team Lead and also a secondary Database Admin. Following my resignation, the DBA had to immediately hire a replacement. Another coworker had followed suit within three weeks of my quitting because of the boss’s strict time adherence policy. As for my UI team, the last I heard, they had split up the team in two, promoted two employees from each team to take charge of the respective teams, and hired two interns as permanent employees. That did cost the company, but in hindsight, my quitting generated employment, however minuscule it was!

My grandmother retired as a kindergarten teacher back in the early 1980s, just before I was born. Now, she was ninety-four, and I was accompanying her to the neighbourhood doctor for a general check-up/visit. The doctor is also a family friend, thus the visit was more “friendly” than “medical” and without an appointment; hence, the doctor typically lets her sit in the waiting room until he’s free enough to have a long chat with her, while also checking her medical issues out.

This time around, there were quite a few people in the waiting room, so Grandma was just chilling, reading a magazine she’d brought along. A gentleman, probably in his mid-fifties, kept staring at her. He finally mustered the courage to speak to her.

Gentleman: “Are you [Grandma]?”

Grandma: “Yes, I am.”

The gentleman turned to his wife sitting next to him.

Gentleman: “[Grandma] was my schoolteacher!”

Grandma explained that she would have taught him in kindergarten. Everyone was pretty surprised at the recollection; it would have been nearly forty-five years, if not more, for the gent to have been in her class. Upon hearing his name, Grandma shocked everyone by recollecting his childhood nickname — one that he himself had forgotten!

A second gentleman walked into the clinic, and the first immediately pointed Grandma out to him; they were classmates, so he, too, would have been in her class. He was leaving the doctor’s cabin as Grandma was called in, so he happily pointed out to the doctor that she was his teacher. Even the doctor was surprised at the happy reunions.

Later, when we left, a third gentleman, younger than the previous two, entered the clinic. He saw Grandma and immediately bent down to touch her feet. Touching an elder’s feet is considered a mark of respect in Indian culture, a method of asking for and receiving their blessings. On inquiry, he revealed that he had been her student in the early 1980s, probably from the last batch she taught before retiring.

The school where Grandma taught, our old neighbourhood, and the doctor’s clinic are all on the same block, so whenever she’s visiting the doctor or any of our old friends and neighbours, we usually bump into a few of her kindergarten students on the road. All of them — many of them now grandparents themselves — walk up to her and spend a few minutes chatting with her.

I always marvel at such student-teacher relationships: relationships that began at the beginning of the students’ childhood, still as impactful decades later; relationships that transcend generations; relationships that are still in force even after your kids have grown up and their kids are in the same classroom where you were once. It’s heartening, giving me hope for the future.

A couple of years ago, I was working on a part-time basis in a small firm owned by friends. The pay was not very good, but the atmosphere was, and I was allowed to set my own timings, so life was good overall.

Then, a friend whom I knew only through social media approached me for a job in her company. Even though they were offering good money, I turned down the offer as I knew I could not get the benefits I was getting in my current job. Plus, the commute to the new office was very long; I would have to travel two hours one way and change three trains just to reach the office.

A month later, an employee from Human Resources of the new firm approached me again. They offered me almost four times the money I was making and I could set my own work hours. There was also extra pay for working overtime and on weekends. This was important. I joined the new company.

My friend did not know the terms of the new agreement I had with HR; where I’m from, such information is confidential. She used to act like I owed her big time for the opportunity I got. So, one day I corrected her.

Me: “I turned down the offer you were involved with. One month later, I had my own negotiations and got much more favorable terms. I’m here because your company really needs me, not because of you.”

I didn’t share the details of my agreement with her, but we both realized that she was making significantly less than I was. This totally changed her attitude toward me.

Now, she wanted me out, and I was determined to stick through for at least a year. She decided that she would make it very difficult for me to work so I’d quit on my own.

There are a lot of stories I have about how she tried every trick in the book to make me quit. I’m sharing some of them here.

She was my manager and was in charge of allocating work. She started piling more work on me than any other member of the team. I was happy to comply; she did not know that, as part of my contract, I would be paid one and a half times the hourly rate for every hour I worked overtime and two times the hourly rate if any work was allocated to me over weekends or holidays.

Every time she tried to ruin my weekend by calling me to the office unnecessarily, I happily complied. This continued until the time I left the organization and told her how much extra money she had helped me make.

After the long commute to work, I used to be hungry, so I developed the habit of stopping at the food court to pick up a glass of fresh fruit juice and carry it with me to work.

My manager thought that this way she could harass me without actually seeming to do so. She sent a notice that bringing liquids to the office was a hazard.

Ironically, she used to have coffee delivered to her desk three times a day. I pointed out that the rule applied to her, as well, and if I couldn’t have my juice, she couldn’t have her coffee. She had to literally spend an extra unpaid hour at work every time she wanted her special coffee.

Meanwhile, I was happy to leisurely sit in the food court, have my glass of fresh fruit juice with some snacks, and then begin my workday a half-hour later than usual.