Dutifulness

This morning Victor was filling up his coffee cup at the pantry. A security guard, in a neatly pressed stiff cotton shirt was already there, with an evidently impatient gesture and was waiting as though something was about to happen in the next few seconds. In the next few seconds, the guard’s colleague came up to him, handed over a stapler and hurried back. This guard quickly started stapling his shirt’s right cuff from the inside, for it seemed to be missing cuff buttons. After stapling, he stood there for a minute and triumphantly convinced himself that the cuff looked natural from the outside. Afterall, cuffs were part of his uniform too. Knowing that Victor was observing him, he threw a look at him, gave a sheepish smile and disappeared from the spot......

Victor was soundly skeptical about his own dutifulness right from Day-one of his stepping into the corporate world. Many occurrents neatly proved to him by distinctly pointing out instances of his under-committedness, during which time he was nevertheless cognizant, but all the same, nonchalant. Victor never took further action but had some or the other off-key defenses to break away. Though he can’t lay them here one by one, he is now glad that he knows and thoroughly understands how those little defenses collectively colloborate and conspire into making his under-committedness an eternal feature – an inadvisable and morally contemptible follow through.

Just to put things in perspective, Victor can proudly exclaim his loyalty on personal and formal counts, yet, honestly, not to that degree which could motivate him to sacrifice an opportunity at hand for the sake of organisational welfare. Perhaps, that would not make his employer feel boastfully luckier about him, but would surely make sense to most of those already successful. He reluctantly declares that only a negligible part of employers might have experienced that ‘boastfully luckier’ thingie.

Let alone organisational welfare, Victor has been comfortably won over by a feeling of guilt that he couldn’t contribute that ‘extra’ thing for drawing gratification through a discharge of his functionary responsibilities to the brim. Realisation dawns upon him that ‘contribution-to-the-brim’ is ironically not an ‘extra’ thing but merely a part his original responsibility bundle. Victor feels, in retrospect, history couldn’t be indemnified, although there is always something called a second chance – but only if he is willing to exploit.

Victor hopes that one day he would be able to put things in a better perspective, without a crave for a second ‘second chance’