There comes a point in almost everyone’s life when he or she discovers an uncomfortable truth: Being nice to everyone is not necessarily a sign of good character. Sometimes it is unnecessary courtesy and benevolence shown to the wrong people. And sometimes the recipient considers your politeness as sheer weakness.
However, this reality is seemingly pre-dominant in most of our workplaces particularly, in a newspaper office. Given my significant experience in the English print media journalism, I found that most of the time I had been and still am surrounded by three types of people : Those who produce the newspaper, those who discuss how the newspaper should be produced, and those who somehow manage to do neither while unrelentingly voicing strong opinions about everyone else's performance.
Let us assume our character to be Mr F.
Mr F is the editorial chief of a respected English-language newspaper. He is professional, experienced and, disturbing for his enemies since he is good at his job. He could take a chaotic pile of news reports, political statements, and press releases badly and wildly translated copies and turn them into a coherent article before the one and only serving of muri-chanachur reaches his table. Penning an editorial is usually a piece of cake for him. He also mingles freely with everyone. This, as he eventually discovers, is his first mistake.
He believes in the old-fashioned Bengali virtues: Respect your elders, listen to people, don't unnecessarily hurt anyone's feelings, offer tea, help the junior colleague, answer the message, and return the phone call. In other words, Mr F behaves as if civilisation in this part of the world is still functioning.
However, his colleagues are often equipped with other ideas.
There is Mr X, whose key professional achievement has been to survive in the same position for 35 years. There is Ms Y, who had perfected the technique of looking extremely busy while producing remarkably little. And there is Mr Z, who had never written a memorable headline in his life but somehow had developed a PhD-level expertise in explaining why everybody else's headline is always wrong.
They may not be incompetent in the dramatic sense. But they are something even more interesting: Comfortably Mediocre. They had climbed-up that beautiful professional hilltop (Please read the newspaper office) where ambition had died long ago, but resentment remained surprisingly fit.
Mr F's success therefore presented them with a daily existential threat. He isn't rude to them. No point competing with them. He isn't even particularly interested in them. This is surely intolerable, since nothing annoys a mediocre person quite like discovering that the person they dislike continuously ignores them.
So the small manipulative moves began to turn Mr F reactive. A crude remark said every now and then. Insults are hurled through a third party, so that it reaches Mr F through another colleague and then via another one. Mr F uses designer brand perfume kept free for all on top of his desk, but his foes compare the fragrance often with a corpse surrounded by incensed sticks. Or a meeting where Mr F's advice was carefully and collectively ignored and then, five minutes later repeated and endorsed by the editor to great applause.
At times it seems like a silent whisper in the corridor or a raised eyebrow. A typical “Ami kichhu bolini, but…” followed by an entire indictment of the man's character. And then comes the classic workplace accusation: F has become arrogant.
This surely puzzles Mr F. He has not become arrogant. He has simply become tired. Here comes the crucial distinction between becoming arrogant without knowledge and authority and becoming arrogant in an artful way.
Blind arrogance says, “I am superior to you.” Artful arrogance says, “I have more important things to do.”
Unfortunately, to people accustomed to having access to your attention, the second can look exactly like the first. This is where many good people get into trouble. They think if they stop explaining themselves, people will misunderstand them.
They are correct. People will misunderstand them anyway. Mr F slowly discovers that some people do not interpret generosity as generosity. They interpret it as availability. Some do not interpret politeness as kindness. They interpret it as a flaw as well.
And some do not interpret silence as dignity. They interpret it as an invitation to continue talking about you. You are most welcome to either agree or disagree; this is where a little constructive arrogance becomes useful.
It is not the “Do you know who I am?” type. That sort of arrogance is usually found in people whose CV requires several pages to explain who they are.
However, Mr F''s carefully crafted stoic arrogance says just a “Thank you”, and then doing absolutely nothing.
Someone offers unsolicited advice? “Thank you”. Someone tries to provoke him? His reply is “Interesting”. Someone delivers office gossip? “Oh I see.” Someone attempts to explain why a mediocre decision was actually brilliant? “Fair enough” And now it is time to leave office.
Purely a personal remark - a Dhaka workplace, like the British Empire, was never designed to survive such passive resistance. People wanted emotional reactions. Mr F, however, only gives them punctuation these days. They expected arguments. He offers them either deluxe or single malt, and they refuse it considering it poisonous. They expect arguments, explanations and hyper reactive outbursts.
As he gives his opponents silence, soon the office corridor begins to buzz. “Mr F has isolated himself, what is the strategy behind it.” “He doesn't talk to people anymore.” “He has become very distant.”
This last accusation is particularly amusing since Mr F had spent years mixing with one and all. He had accommodated all the mediocre in the whole bunch in whatever capacity and at least four inexplicable gatherings arranging Biryani. But since he has stopped participating in every little drama, his absence now becomes ''evidence of arrogance''.
This is perhaps one of the established laws of human behaviour among newspaper men: When you stop feeding a particular relationship, the person who was eating and drinking from you will accuse you of starving them. Eventually, the petty manoeuvres become more soap-opera type. For instance, a rumour is carefully planted and then circulated within the office about Mr F’s remaining a bachelor.
A minor editorial error or disagreement is inflated into a question of leadership. Somebody even attempts the conventional office ritual known in South Asia as “Let's see if we can make him look bad without technically saying anything bad.” It is a difficult art. Then again, it requires the delicacy of an astute diplomat coupled with the imagination of a Bengali auntie.
But Mr F had already learnt something by then. He did not need to defeat every accusation. He just needs to keep doing his work. That is his revenge. Not the cinematic kind. No dramatic confrontation. No slammed doors. No speech beginning with “Let me tell you something.”
And here lies the peculiar tragedy of professional mediocrity: People can spend years trying to reduce someone else''s credibility without growing an inch themselves. Mr F hadn't become arrogant because he thinks he is better than everyone.
He now has become selectively unavailable because he finally understands that not everyone deserves equal access to his valuable time, attention, generosity or emotional energy.
And yes, some people will call you arrogant. Let them. If you are polite, they may call you weak. If you are generous, they may call you foolish.
If you are quiet, they may call you a conspirator. If you are successful, they may call you lucky. If you answer them, they may call you reactive. And if you don''t answer them, they may call you arrogant again. At some point, it is important for Mr F to care less about external validation or criticism within the office, since he is mostly surrounded by proven mediocre elements.
The bottom-line however: You do not need to become arrogant. You just need it to become difficult to be misused. Now, there is a difference. You have to be courteous, but don''t need to be permanently available. You have to be generous, but not make your generosity a professional identity.
Respect everyone, but not confuse respect with intimacy. And above all, don't waste your finest emotional energy proving to mediocre people that you are a decent human being. They may already have decided otherwise. So let them.
The British have a wonderfully useful expression for this sort of situation:
“Carry on.” The Bengalis have an equally useful one: “Chhere dao”.
Between the two lies a complete philosophy of survival.
Sometimes you simply smile, straighten your tie, finish the editorial, drink your tea and walk away. Not because I think I am better than everybody else. But because, finally, I have understood that my peace is also a deadline, and some people don't deserve an extension.
* The writer is Senior Assistant Editor, The Daily Observer
* The views expressed here are the writer's own.