Credit it in the Bank.

In the following narrative the Muser was plain-spoken. When the occasion demanded, he didn’t mince words to express his mind. This had earned him the sobriquet “Mr. V B L (vocal before logic)”.
After his brush with the Works Manger (WM), many tried to boss over him thinking that they can cow him down by simply drawing attention to that earlier, game changing meeting (Read ‘One Legged Crow’ for more light!).

When something like this was afoot, none other than the WM came to the rescue of the Muser. The WM was greatly impressed by the galvanized change as well as the high octane performance of the Muser. Net result - the roster of silent enemies swelled like ‘river in monsoon’. His detractors had to lie low as WM was closely related to the MD of the company and had sweeping powers vested in him. Now who would want to get into the wrong books of the WM!

One of muser’s detractors was designated as acting Plant Manger (PM). One fine day he happened to chair a meeting to convey management’s appreciation on successfully completing a complex task. Muser was the team leader. Muser along with his multi-discipline team members came in (as usual, on time). The Chair was yet to be occupied. This “punctuality” irked him the most and a verbal cauldron had started to boil in his mind.

The meeting started about ten minutes late and the Chairman (the Acting PM) heaped praises on the team members for having come up with an ingenious solution to solve a technical issue. He tried to impress the team by highlighting the savings of the company, due to the innovative solution. He stressed on how good the balance sheet would be looking at the end of year.

The team felt that this was like going overboard without speed control. The muser clearly understood that the Acting P M was parroting from a prepared note given by the budget controller’s office. The muser had an axe to grind with the budget controller’s office.

He patiently waited for the blaaah blaaah to be over and said “Sir, if the work, that we had completed deserved credit and meant so much to the company ,then why not credit a portion of the anticipated profit in to our individual accounts?”

The Acting P M lost track of his speech, murmured something and hurriedly left the conference hall.

The team members were happy that their leader somehow raked up the issue of pay-hike, which was long overdue. They took leave of him with (grudging) admiration.