Dove or Hawk?

A colleague dropped by and we had a short chat on some latest promotions of a few personnel in our company. Since merger, some people seem advance must faster than the others and definitely there are disappointment for those who failed to get promotion. There are people saying that so and so are the blue eye boys or girls of the new boss and therefore getting promotion much easier than the rest of the people, like riding on a helicopter so to speak.

A few of us were in fact asked by the boss to apply for a higher position some time back in June or July. I didn’t bother to apply and was not call up for the interview. My colleagues did and went for the interview and not surprising they were not successful and it turned out that the management already had someone in mind to sit in that position and funny enough the guy was not even called up for interview.

That’s how it works sometime. Bosses also want to be nice guys, they certainly do not want to offence anyone in the manner as such that they play their tricks to make you believe that you have a chance to be promoted even though they already have somebody in mind. Therefore they call up all those who are senior enough to be promoted to be the side-kicks so as to make the occasion merrier.

My colleagues then wondered how come some people got promoted without even have to attend the interviews while some others like us have to apply for a promotion. That’s crystal clear, I guess, those who were called up to attend the interviews are those without any realistic chance to be promoted, not in the boss’ book so to speak, as simple as that or otherwise why the double standard?

My colleague then told me that since that interview incident he tried to be as humble and polite as possible and I asked him why. He said he noticed that those less offensive and polite people and sweet talkers tend to get promotion faster than the rest especially those hardcore rascals like us. I asked him what about a person’s contribution to the company then? What about the year of experience and loyalty then? He said all that not as important as whether or not you align yourself to the bosses.

Well said my friend. That’s the reality of working life as a wage earner.