The Lost Opportunity

When the office attender told us that we were called for a meeting Sam and I were very happy that finally we have got a chance to discuss our challenges with the Management. In fact we were actually waiting for this opportunity. Earlier we made few attempts to arrange a meeting with the management but of no use. So this invitation was great news for us. We immediately started collecting all our proposals which we have been preparing for months and got ready for the meeting.

Sam and I are working as senior behavioral trainers in a Training academy which is a part of a group of educational institution. This training academy was close to two years old. It was catering the training needs of around 1800 students from various disciplines like engineering, Science and management. Our job is to take care of the training needs in the whole group of institutions. There were three more soft skill trainers other than us in the training academy. . This academy was headed by a person Mr. Praveen, the Chief operating Officer who resigned his position three months ago. After his resignation there was no person appointed by the management to fill the chair of Chief Operating Officer. Since then we were taking care of the activities of the academy. All trainers are under the intention of making Mr. Sam as the COO, as he is more experienced and senior among us. We tried to discuss this with the concerned authorities, but our efforts were paid deaf ear. In the last three months after Praveen's resignation the activities of the academy were very much limited, no new programmes or initiative were planned, we were simply running with the already fixed training schedule. So this meeting was really great news for us.

With all enthusiasm we entered the board room where the meeting is scheduled. The principal of an institution is supposed to head that meeting. While we were waiting for him he entered the room with a cloudy face. We waited for him to open the discussion. Then he said, "I am not having good news for you and I am sorry to convey this to you sirs". We were confused & shocked. He continued, "The management has decided to dissolve the training academy and they want all the trainers to submit their resignation. So I request you and all others trainers to submit their resignation". Sam questioned as to what made them decide so without consulting any of the trainers. He replied that they have decided as they feel that outsourcing the training would be profitable for the institution. While I felt insulted to be there any more Sam was reluctant to submit the resignation and he insisted that he would like to meet the CEO before submitting the resignation. But he replied that the CEO is out of station (which was actually a lie, which we found later) and it is not possible to meet him now and insisted that we submit our resignation. He also added if we are not doing so the management may be terminating us. While Sam tried his best to keep the situation cool I felt enraged. Sam was planning to convince the management to reconsider the decision to dissolve the academy. He was trying to argue to that it was not a right decision made by the management. I told Sam that it is useless to continue with the discussion any more as they have already decided and now they are executing it.

That was really a bad day for us. Five of us have submitted our resignation with no idea of what we are going to do next. While Sam and I had an idea of our future career others were in a real big trouble. The plight of our fellow trainers made us feel more worried. After a month we are done with our final settlement and moved out of the institution.

THE CASE IN INDIVIDUAL PERSPECTIVE

While Sam managed