Thank You for not promoting me

The last few years have been some of my best. I can't remember the last time I truly enjoyed looking up to living,looking forwards to the adventures I have waiting in store for me. Maybe that last time was way back when I was a child, running around in fields and woods in my hometown.

I have missed this feeling. This liberating, empowering feeling. And I have one of my biggest enemies to thank for this. The person whom I least expected to be thankful to.

My old manager. The one whos name starts with a B.

He was an asshole. Correction, I just looked him up on linkedin: he is STILL an asshole.

I was part of a team which together did a lot of work for his company. A US based consultancy. I had put in a lot of long, all nighters; hundreds of hours of unpaid work. Working overtime on weekdays, and frequently on weekends, there is no measure of how much we have contributed to the growth of the company, and its US customers. I was promised a chance to go abroad, first short term, and then later, a long term onsite opportunity to make up for those lost days. You see, that rare chance to earn in dollars is the only perk of working in the IT field in India. The golden ticket. But first, I was told, I had to prove myself, and wait for at least a year.

So wait I did. First one year, then another, and then, a third. During this time, the long stressful hours took a toll on my health. I was always under stress, and constantly weak and tired. Asthma was only the beginning. I also got married, and found that the unprofessional and unethical work environment was interfering in my personal life a well.

Being an optimist, and extremely patient one , I was willing to wait. But gradually, I realized that I did NOT have all the time in the world. I had always delivered what I had promised as part of my work. So why isn't the manager delivering what he had promised me ? I also found out that he had promised similar onsite opportunities to everybody else in the team. Everybody except the office janitor.

So, in that third year, reality finally started dawning on me. And I had the argument with the asshole manager. I put in my papers, without a job offer in hand. And left a few months later.

About one year from that confrontation, I arrived in Australia.

I still work under managers, but things are so much better. Nobody here forces work overtime , at least without compensation. Ample leaves, and flexible work options. I do go to office everyday, though technically, I don't have to.

But this is the big truth: none of this would have happened, if I had not been wronged against. It is only when I got pushed into a corner, that I started looking for another exit. If everything in my life back then had gone according to plan, I would still be in India. That exit, that was the best decision I took in my professional life. And it has changed me and my future forever.

So thank you,asshole, for not promoting me. For not giving me those opportunities. Thank you to all of the other bad people I worked for, for constantly pushing me into that corner. Thank you for being such miserable human beings.