The Battle Begins

The battle begins

How many times in our lives have we been blind to something about ourselves, until one day, it appears as a flash of reality.

Today was one such day for Nat.

She had been avoiding her team lead for a while now, ever since she had finally realized what a sorry excuse for a leader he was. But, after another unnecessary meeting, he cornered her, along with Shitface. She had nowhere to go. She braced herself for whatever was coming.

"Did you get the mail this morning from Mr.NoBalls?" asked Eunuch, her lead.

"Duh!", Nat thought to herself, "It was addressed to me!". "Yes", she answered politely.

"I've taken it up with Mr.Asshole. I did it first thing in the morning. This is not acceptable. We cannot let this happen" went on Eunuch.

No fireworks this time. She's grown up, you see. Nat, she's learnt her lesson. She waited. She wondered what the reason was this time around.
"We have a 4000 hour project coming up"

"Ahh yes. There it is. The reason" thought Nat.

Out loud she said "Its testing work" conveying with her tone that she's not interested and waited for the lie that she knew would follow.

Sure enough, there it was.

"Oh, we are getting some development too this time".

"How many resources would there be?" questioned Nat.

Oh, one lie is always followed by many others.

"It will be me, Ms.Ratface , and they said they would loan 3 people from the other team but…"trailed off Eunuch.

"We decided we'd rather have you Natasha", finished Shitface who was just dying to put in his two pennies worth.

"What? One woman as a replacement for 3? Do they take me for that big a fool?" Natasha thought to herself..
Moreover, Eunuch had not written a single line of code for the past 6 years, as he so proudly claimed and Ratface is involved with another project, so any guesses for who would have to shoulder all the work?

"There is this dot-net project too that is coming up" went on Eunuch..

Nat knew it was pointless to even mention that she had no clue about dot net. They would only come up with some ridiculous answer like "oh, we can train you" and brush her concerns aside.

Nat no longer paid attention to the ramblings of Eunuch and Shitface. She felt this weird sensation within her. Something like she had never experienced before.

"I guess I'm going to be violently ill", she thought to herself.

She waited for it to pass. She rode the wave, as it came. Only then did she realize that what she felt was this uncontrollable fury at the farce that she was being forced to witness. She felt this immense rage towards these fellow human beings in front of her, towards their pathetic pretenses and towards their unprincipled souls.

"Why?", she fumed to herself, "why am I forced to interact with such people". "They use my morals and my integrity as a noose around my own neck when it is the same morals and integrity that makes me stand here in the first place".

"Calm down", she told herself, "This is not the time and place to think about this". The rage within her lessened but stoutly refused to die down. This was uncharacteristic. So far, she had been extremely capable in shutting out her anger. Now it wouldn't listen to her.

Through all this madness, there was one moment of clarity. One of those rare moments in which one finally sees reality though it had been staring into one's face all along.

"Oh my God, how could I have bee so blind", thought Nat, "It is they who are at my mercy. It is they who need my expertise. That's how it's always been. Never the other way around. Lord, what a fool I've been".

Sanction of the victim. Never the other way around.