“I quiT” – Episode @21 | Mr. Venky Bond Writings

(01:47 PM)

After the lunch, everyone returned to their desks and resumed their work. When Ishanth turned on his monitor, he saw Quadhar’s message on his inter-office communicator. When he saw that, he immediately went to Quadhar’s desk.

“Hello Quadhar” said Ishanth and sat in the chair.

“Hi Ishanth.”

“I saw your message and so came here running. What happened Quadhar?”

“I guess you heard the info that Uthrani submitted her resignation.”

“Yes Quadhar, she explained us just now during lunch time.”

“All right. She will be moving out in max 7 to 10 days. I am working on my plan to release her as fast as we can. Few minutes back, me and Thyagarajan had a discussion on that.”

“Okay.”

“As part of that, you may need to take up Uthrani’s tasks.”

“What? I should take up Uthrani’s tasks?”

“Yes Ishanth. Meher is a junior, he cannot handle and so Thyagarajan decided to assign them to you.”

“But Quadhar, look at the load of work I am currently handling. I am working late nights which you know I don’t like at all. But, I am doing it just to avoid working on weekends. Or else I would not have done even that.”

“Ishanth, I know about you. But, here you have to understand that this is Thyagarajan’s decision.”

“Whatever it may be, I cannot take it up Quadhar. I am telling you this right from day 1, I don’t like taking up that project. I am not interested in that maintenance activity. I am sorry. If you want, I can talk to Thyagarajan and settle this down.”

“Okay Ishanth. Better do that now, he is forcing me to assign additional tasks to you and I am not left with any other choice.”

“It’s okay Qudhar. Don’t worry about it, I will speak with him.”

“Okay Ishanth. And, the other important news is that we will be on-boarding two additional junior resources into our team.They will operate from Bengaluru location. And regarding assigning tasks to you, if you deny, then maybe we have to assign this project to one of them. You may have to speak with Thyagarajan.”

“Okay Thanks Quadhar. I will speak with him” said Ishanth and started moving out from Quadhar’s cabin.

When he just started moving out, Quadhar called Ishanth back and “Hey Ishanth. Wait for some time; let me talk to Thyagarajan for one more time. If he is still not intending to change plans, then you can talk to him directly.”

“Okay Quadhar” said Ishanth and went back to his work desk.

Quadhar had some thoughts running in his mind and so he stopped Ishanth from speaking with Thyagarajan.

(02:57 PM)

After Ishanth left of his cabin, Quadhar worked for sometime and then went to Thyagarajan’s cabin to discuss about the next steps.

“Hi Thyagarajan. Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon Quadhar. Sit down.”

“Thyagarajan. I have devised a plan.”

“Oh. Good.”

“Shall I start explaining?”

“Yeah sure Quadhar.”

Quadhar started explaining about the plan he prepared for the next steps to be followed in the project as Uthrani is moving out. They are also in the plan to on-board two new fresher’s into the project who will be working from Bengaluru location.He clearly drafted out the plan on who will be working on which project, who will be taking up Uthrani’s project and also the revised timelines. It took about 55 minutes for him to discharge the entire explanation to Thyagarajan.

After going through the complete plan, Thyagarajan started shooting questions at Quadhar on the plan and Quadhar answered them politely.

“Quadhar. Why don’t you assign this project to Meher and let him share the work with one of the new joiner. I think that will be a better idea.”

“Thyagarajan, even Meher is a new recruit into the project who joined few months back. So, I don’t think he can handle this out and also he is completely from a different background. This is what I have told you right from the beginning.”

“I understand Quadhar, but we are left with no choice. Ishanth straight away rejected when we assigned this project a few months back. I think he will deny it even this time if we try to assign it to him. Uthrani is the only girl who used to work on this and now even she is leaving all of a sudden. We cannot accept the risk of attributing this to fresher’s. I am not able to understand what to do. This is bumping my brain. Quadhar, Why are we not able to allocate the tasks in a proper way?” asked Thyagarajan with a very low voice for the first time in the last three days trying to figure out a way to break this problem.

“Thyagarajan, can I say one thing if you don’t mind?”

“Yes Quadhar, go ahead.”

“We are actually running out of resources. For the count of projects we have, the number of resources with which we are handling these two projects are not enough; we have to pull more resources to run this project in a smooth way.”

“We cannot do that Quadhar, we are already on-boarding two fresher’s into our project. We cannot go for more resources. For sure I cannot consider that option. Anyway, let’s leave that for now. So, now, this is the entire plan and revised timelines? ”

“Yes Thyagarajan.”

“All right. I will look deeper into this and will get back to you. Meanwhile, please summarize the tasks on that project and submit me a report in the next 24 hours. And also give me an update on the project which we need to demo next week. We will sit for sometime tomorrow morning and will discuss on those two things.”

“Sure Thyagarajan. I will do that soon. As of today, I will assign those tasks to Uthrani and will ask Meher to learn the process from Uthrani.”

“That’s wonderful. We have to keep going Quadhar. Our progress rate is down when compared to the reports from last quarter. We need to work on that and see where we are lagging and refine that. I don’t want to see the same kind of results in the next quarter. I want you to focus more on the productivity so that you can produce more results from the team by effectively managing the resources. Now that Uthrani is leaving, we will have some pressure, we have to handle that well and see that it is not doing much damage to the timelines and the smooth functioning of the process.”

As Thyagarajan is explaining, Quadhar interrupted him. “Thyagarajan.”

“Yes Quadhar” replied Thyagarajan staring at him why did he stop him in the middle.

“I want to speak to you about one more important thing.”

“What is that Quadhar?”

@Plan

Guess the story: What will Quadhar say to Thyagarajan?

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