It was the ultimate face palm moment for me. Given my predicament, I needed friends but seemed to be making enemies at every step that I took.
My discomfort must have shown on my face because Simran's cold smile changed to one of satisfaction. She quickly walked to the chair opposite mine and opened her laptop.
"Abhijit and I had a detailed discussion on how we should proceed with your induction to ensure that you become a performing member of the team as soon as possible" she said with extra emphasis on performing. "And make no mistake, you will be assessed constantly. One mistake or misstep and you are done. Of course, I am the one responsible for reporting your progress or lack thereof to Abhijit and the management."
A vindictive look crossed her face as she looked at me after this.
I got it. She was out to get me and didn't really have to be so obvious about it with every word that she spoke. I forced my mind into cold stillness. There was a lot of shit that was going to get thrown at me and I was going to have to get my shields up. The first step was survival and then assessing the system and learning how to beat it. If this woman thought that I would just roll into a ball as she kept kicking me, she would have to be taught better.
But that was for later. Right now, I put my most innocent and submissive smile on my face and said, "Of course Simran. I totally understand. And I will do everything to ensure that I don't disappoint Abhijit or you or the management"
She relaxed a bit. In her mind she had won and had me by the throat. I was nicely strung up and she could safely torture me without any fear of retaliation.
"Great", she continued. "I have emailed you a list of documents that you are expected to finish reading by the end of the week. My second email contains some raw data that has to be processed for upload into the database. This has to be completed before you leave today. And I mean that."
With that she got up and left. Nothing about the team or where I fitted into it. Just threats and warnings. "Quite the short induction", I thought.
Sighing, I powered up my new laptop and accessed my email. The first email from Simran had a long list of links and attached documents which literally ran into thousands of pages. And she expected me to finish reading them by the weekend, travel or no travel. Then I clicked on her second email. That had several text documents full of raw unformatted data which at first sight looked pretty unintelligible.
Her instructions in the email body read, "Please format the data into the correct format for upload into the database. The format is provided below. All the columns may not be relevant to the format, so you may discard the irrelevant data and make any other edits required."
That was it. This was low level data work which would take days to complete manually. I quickly checked the laptop to see if there were any tools that could help me. None.
I was pretty sure the BI team had the tools that could do the job in minutes but Simran had not given me access to them. I already knew that I could not use any of the online AI platforms since that was strictly against company policy. And I was definitely not going to go begging to Simran for access to any tools or for any help for that matter. It was obvious that she was setting me up for failure right from the start.
Opening one of the data sheets, I idly started scrolling through it while racking my brains for a way to complete the task. After some time I started noticing something. The data was not as random as it seemed. I looked closer to try and understand the context and pattern. It seemed to be city-wise data for users accessing some software system along with their activity log while logged into the system.
I scrolled through the other data sheets. The data was user data for the same software albeit for different modules. I had an idea which could work.
Quickly I downloaded an open-source database software and created a local database on my system. Then I coded a program that would filter the data in the uploaded text files as per the format shared by Simran and add it to the tables that I had created in the database. The program would also flag the rows that had errors or did not align with the required format. Then I uploaded the data text files and ran the program. The run was completed in 10 minutes. Several hundred rows with errors were flagged and added to a separate table. Looking through the error table, I noticed that the errors were minor and seemed to be to deliberate rather than systemic.
I downloaded all the formatted data in excel from my database, including the error table, wrote the email to Simran marking Abhijit, attached the files and hit send.
In a few minutes a message popped up on my screen. From Simran, "Please come to Abhijit's cabin".
When I entered, Abhijit was sitting with Simran. There was some tension in the air. As soon as I entered, Abhijit started, "Good job on the data Das. But what I don't understand Simran, is that why such a task was assigned to him. And I can see from the email trail that you had asked him to finish this by EOD today. Any reason for this?"
Simran looked uncomfortable but said confidently, "It was meant to be a test. I wanted to see if he could manage difficult situations under pressure".
"And do you think he passed?" Abhijit queried.
She replied in a tight voice, as if the reply was being pulled out of her forcibly, "Yes, I think he did."
"I agree", he said. "Let's avoid such tasks in the future and do keep me marked on all your emails with Das during the onboarding period,"
When Simran nodded in agreement, he dismissed us with a wave of his hand.
Both of us came out of the office together. Ignoring me completely, Simran went off down the office floor with an irritated click-clack of her heels. No other communication came from her the rest of the day or the next which suited me just fine. I was happy to get on with the reading list she had shared with me. It made for extremely interesting reading and I had already devoured a significant portion of it.
There was one more task that I had to accomplish – avoid Anjali at all costs. Mostly I stayed inside the BI department where she did not have access and even skipped lunch so that I would not run into her. Her calls were easier to manage as I let them all go unanswered.
I simply could not face her. It would take her exactly 5 minutes to corner me and make me tell her everything. Then, knowing her, she would pull all the strings she could to cancel my transfer. And I could not let that happen.
First, I would get branded as weak and unable to chart my own path without the backing of her influence in the company. Secondly, Sawant Agarwal's warning echoed in my head about the thin ice I was on and about not speaking to Anjali about the transfer.
And I could not endanger this job further till I secured another one.