Another Unique yet Strong Reason for Job Change

Mohan was writing an email and for some reason he did not want his subordinate to know about it. Just before he would have finished, Roma (a colleague from other department) arrived on his desk and started reading aloud what he had written in his email.

Interestingly, what Mohan wanted not to be disclosed was heard by everyone including his subordinates sitting next to him.

In this case what seemed to be fun for Roma turned out to be an embarrassment for Mohan!

He did not like this act of Roma but could not utter a word. Neither he was good at nor did he like making fun of others. People assumed that because Mohan was silent, he had enjoyed the moment too.

In a team of 5, he was the team leader but he was positioned such that his team members could easily track what he was doing at any point of time including his emails.

​Unfortunately, two of his team members were suffering from inferiority complex. They were always very interested in knowing what Mohan was doing and how he was doing. They would come at his desk very often and suddenly asked what he was doing, what file was open on his computer screen, what he was working on etc.

Although, they never appreciated him in public, yet they wanted to be like him. Mohan had trained his team members in everything he knew yet never got appreciated by his team members in public or private.

Not only this, these two people would go on to accuse Mohan among the other team members behind his back. When Mohan came to know of this, he felt disheartened. But what could he do? Not all people are as witty as Birbal to deal with such people. Mohan was a simple man, not good at corporate politics.

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One Sunday afternoon while sitting in the park, Mohan recalled his entire work experience. He wanted to know what was going wrong in his career (without consulting an astrologer). He recalled the companies he had worked for, the offices they provided, the type of work, the colleagues and team members, city and every other thing he could remember.

​After an hour of this analysis, he had sufficient data to compare. He concluded:

The very first company where Mohan worked provided him a space. Although the company was not a multinational but it provided him a closed office. He could concentrate on his work not worrying about his information security. There was no one sneaking at his laptop for what he was doing. He could take as long as he could to write an email.

Even in his 10th year of professional experience, he was as creative as in his first year. He changed this job for money and after this job he could not get job satisfaction.

And he realized, “Manager”, “Career Growth” and “Money” were never the reasons for job change and while he sometimes thought that he changed jobs because of his colleagues and/or team members he realized that his actual reason for job change was not a direct one.

The open office layout created an unwanted stress in his mind, due to which he could not concentrate on his work, skipped creative ideas with the threat of being stolen and constantly disturbed by his team members for mostly unnecessary reasons.  

After several rejections, Mohan got an office as he wanted. It took him two years to find one. Whenever interviewer asked, “What are your expectations”, Mohan would smile and say, “Personal space in workplace”. He did not get the deserved hike in salary but he did get rid of stress! ​

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