Just another day at onsite..

Today, I thought would be just another normal day working at onsite. It’s been almost 4 months since I came to UK. At the end of the day, I really keep thinking, “How wrong could I have been?”

The day started with a call from my PM saying there was an issue with the deployment we had done yesterday. This was at 5:55 am in the morning. Life seemed to be all a turmoil from then on.

It seemed that some of the sites were down and we were being held responsible for it. There are sometimes when the meaning of self-confidence seems to make no sense. Here were client mails, client operations guys and our own company folks questioning if I had done something wrong. Ultimately, I was sitting and wondering, “Did I really screw-up this time? Is the tiny voice that seems to be making a last ditch effort all wrong? Should I just strangle and stifle that voice so that it shall stop tormenting me? Should I accept that I am one big mess?” All this and some more thoughts passed through my mind. I felt like the lousiest being on earth.

There were calls from here to India, India to US, US to UK and all around again. Somehow, I was not supposed to attend it. It seemed like a discussion by a jury, before it came out, looked at the pathetic soul which they now ruled and pronounced, “Guilty!” “Am I?” Somewhere a flickering doubt remained and kept pestering me.

By evening, the problem seemed to have evaporated. People were all friendly and “Happy Weekend to you” wishes were flying around. After day when my very being was put to test, these folks carried on like nothing happened at all. My manager simply said, “Welcome to the client-facing role”. That statement was made after handling many clients and multiple such issues. I wondered, what will it be like at his position? For after one day of this tribulation, I felt like a loser. For a person to answer these things, day-in and day-out, what must it be like? I could not imagine. My manager simply said, “These things happen. Concentrate on your daily work and things will work out fine.”

Yes, things will work out fine. But, the unsullied soul of mine is now ragged and stained. Will it ever get repaired? Probably not. Yes, I’ll become harder. The virginal innocence seems to have been raped at the hard-doors of reality. But yes, I’ll survive. Maybe, over a period of time, I’ll not even look back on such things. But, today, it was a day of absolute dismay, a day when everything I do was questioned.

Well, if you have read till here, and still willing to come onsite, please do. Just remember, on one day, you too shall face such a situation and maybe, I’ll be around and tell you, “Don’t worry. These things happen.”