The single-seat
Have you noticed that some restaurants have started making room for customers who come alone to eat? They come without any friends, or relatives! Strange as it may sound, but they too like to eat out, go to movies and have fun, albeit alone. Social behaviorists have noticed this sudden change as a growing phenomenon; they opine that very soon the number of lone visitors is growing to increase. I am not going into the reasons here, because the objective of this article is to show how loners are treated at work, even in organisations that claim to be inclusive.
The socially challenged with their common needs
Broadly speaking, they are defined as socially challenged people hereinafter referred to as ‘subject’. They have all other common emotions, like the need to have fun, have a good life, and obviously the need to work; however, they do not have inter-personal skills, also known as soft skills! Studies show that there could be many reasons behind this self-abandonment, one of which could be the so-called superiority complex, or simply the inability to continue with repetitive and meaningless small-talk. The boss maybe an engineer and an MBA from leading institutes, but it doesn’t matter to the subject because the boss doesn’t know anything about Kafka, or Baudelaire, hasn’t read Harry Potter or Marx; therefore, for these subjects, the boss and every member of their team would seem to be a misfit. The subject doesn’t socialize with the team because of a probable mismatch in common interest; doesn’t accept anybody’s friendship on FB; comes and does the work and leaves. The only exchange is a hello, and a warm one, or a bye, or a happy weekend, or even an all the best, as the case may be! The subjects may be even turning down their invitations for the fear of being misunderstood; but do any of these warrant a termination!
Organisations can perhaps do little
Inclusiveness, by definition, means “the fact or policy of not excluding members or participants on grounds of gender, race, class, sexuality, disability. In this definition, our society is yet to establish the inability to socialize as a disability. However, atrocities of various kinds loom large in society and organisations. They can range from work getting off your belt orchestrating your low performance to staging allegations of harassment to people not eating, not going out with the subject to people not talking, even to criminalizing the subject. Therefore, at a time when the subject needs help, the door is shown. Until the time there is some kind of remedial help received from within the organisation to recognise the inability to socialize as a disability, organisations can do very little. It is spreading in society at an alarming rate now, and families of the subjects suffer because organisations are unwilling to carry on with them.
The consequences for silence
As a consequence, these people lose their jobs on various grounds; rude behavior, lack of performance, insubordination, or even worse. Why should they lose their jobs is what I am trying to look at, don’t they have a family, don’t they have the same needs as other normal people. Then how are the organisations inclusive! Organisations have included the LGBT, the SC, ST, OBC, but are unwilling to include people who prefer to work in silo? What if I labelled them as SCP (socially challenged people), would you accept them then! Is this inclusiveness only at the physical level? Interestingly, it is also observed that the normal colleagues manage to find out horrible stories about subjects; some even insult them as harbingers of negative energy, or find them malicious, they are these black Peters or the Rudolphs! However, they also have the potential to bring the team closer!! It doesn’t make their colleagues bad because they manage to find stories, they do so because they are untrained and hence apathetic towards people who don’t prefer to socialize and talk.
Choice between convenience and inclusiveness
Organisations find it convenient to go with the crowd; instead, if they gave the subjects their little space, a little corner to work, developed a mechanism to let them be as they are, it would enable the subjects to continue with their solo fun and entertainment, run their families as their normal counterparts. They may be incapable of small talks, but can achieve big things for the organisations, if only we made room for them? With insecurities growing by the day, the number of Rudolphs is on the high for sure! Whether to go with the crowd or to train the crowd accept the subjects as they are so they fit in the crowd is a choice between convenience and inclusiveness that learning organisations might consider. Otherwise, the single-seats will increase, not in restaurants alone! It's time organisations looked at this important aspect of human relations.
Inclusiveness, by definition, means “the fact or policy of not excluding members or participants on grounds of gender, race, class, sexuality, disability. In this definition, our society is yet to establish the inability to socialize as a disability. However, atrocities of various kinds loom large in society and organisations. They can range from work getting off your belt orchestrating your low performance to staging allegations of harassment to people not eating, not going out with the subject to people not talking, even to criminalizing the subject. Therefore, at a time when the subject needs help, the door is shown. Until the time there is some kind of remedial help received from within the organisation to recognise the inability to socialize as a disability, organisations can do very little. It is spreading in society at an alarming rate now, and families of the subjects suffer because organisations are unwilling to carry on with them.
The consequences for silence
As a consequence, these people lose their jobs on various grounds; rude behavior, lack of performance, insubordination, or even worse. Why should they lose their jobs is what I am trying to look at, don’t they have a family, don’t they have the same needs as other normal people. Then how are the organisations inclusive! Organisations have included the LGBT, the SC, ST, OBC, but are unwilling to include people who prefer to work in silo? What if I labelled them as SCP (socially challenged people), would you accept them then! Is this inclusiveness only at the physical level? Interestingly, it is also observed that the normal colleagues manage to find out horrible stories about subjects; some even insult them as harbingers of negative energy, or find them malicious, they are these black Peters or the Rudolphs! However, they also have the potential to bring the team closer!! It doesn’t make their colleagues bad because they manage to find stories, they do so because they are untrained and hence apathetic towards people who don’t prefer to socialize and talk.
Choice between convenience and inclusiveness
Organisations find it convenient to go with the crowd; instead, if they gave the subjects their little space, a little corner to work, developed a mechanism to let them be as they are, it would enable the subjects to continue with their solo fun and entertainment, run their families as their normal counterparts. They may be incapable of small talks, but can achieve big things for the organisations, if only we made room for them? With insecurities growing by the day, the number of Rudolphs is on the high for sure! Whether to go with the crowd or to train the crowd accept the subjects as they are so they fit in the crowd is a choice between convenience and inclusiveness that learning organisations might consider. Otherwise, the single-seats will increase, not in restaurants alone! It's time organisations looked at this important aspect of human relations.
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