Tuesday, November 10, 2009

The Parasites

There was once a lawyer who had an apprentice lawyer. The lawyer trained the apprentice for a few years and during the few years, the apprentice could not pay his apprentice fees to the senior lawyer as the apprentice was penniless. The senior lawyer felt pity on the apprentice and thought he could recover it after the apprentice completes his training and gets a few cases for himself to make a living.

The apprentice completed the training, got to become a lawyer on his own. The senior lawyer was proud that his apprentice is on his own. So, he thought that he could the apprentice fees that was due. The apprentice told that he will not pay his apprentice fees. The lawyer felt very bad about the apprentice and told that he would sue the apprentice in the court of law. The apprentice nodded.

The lawyer sued the apprentice in the court of law. The notice was served about the hearing. The lawyer called in apprentice to talk to him. The lawyer told that he was not willing to sue him, but he had no option. The apprentice told that he will not pay even if he wins or loses the case. The lawyer was puzzled and asked the apprentice why he said so.

The apprentice explained, "If I win, the court itself has declared that I need not pay. If I lose, I will sue you again on the grounds that you have not trained me correctly to even win this simple case, so I need not pay you the money"

The lawyer really felt pained and took the apprentice out of his good books and withdrew the case too.

Every company has a lot of parasites. These parasites are mostly the indigent, the unworthy and the loathsome without the sense of gratitude. So, how do we win these parasites? You cannot, or rather, you should not.

The parasites remind me of Q's dialogues from Star Trek: The Next Generation. (Non-Star-Trekkies, refer Wikipedia to know who Q is)

"You can't outrun them! You can't destroy them! If you damage them, the essence of what they are remains. They regenerate and keep coming, eventually you will weaken, your reserves will be gone. They are relentless!"

There might be a question, if we cannot or should not win, we are the ones who are losing, how can we admit that? This again reminds me Q's dialogue

"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here, it's wondrous with treasures to satiate your desires both subtle and gross, but it's for the timid" ;)

Parasites will be there, never give a damn about them, but be cautious and brave :)

PS: See, we have encountered a new type of species - the parasites - in our channel :)

So long until the next post.

2 comments:

swapnamithra said...

Excellent post.It's not in just IT orgs, these kind of parasites exist every where. It is better to identify them and stay away.

R. Prabhu said...

Thanks Sathya! True, these parasites are found everywhere, that is why I generically mentioned as "every company...". They can be a pain, if you contract them!