One of the most uttered word in chess is checkmate. It's the word a victor says when he/she makes the winning move. Life sometimes does seem like a game of chess. At least that's how I looked at it at my job. We're political creatures by nature, so getting want you want sometimes comes at the expense of others.
What I'm about to narrate to you is how I received the "checkmate" at my job, It all happened in a span of six months.
The Journey
It was basically a normal job, a salesperson. Worked 9 to 6, sometimes till 7pm. Six days a week, ocassionally seven days. At the time, the pay was good but not very good. It was my first job, fresh out of college. After almost an year on the job, I started understanding the political dynamism of the job. Frequent job hires, sudden job fires. This person like that person, that person hates this person. There were no heated clashes, most of it were soft, more indirect.
Soon the top man of the company started courting me, he wanted me on his side. He gave me rides home, talked about his personal life, run some errands for him(some secret, some not so secret), we went to some events together. He literally put me on the spotlight so that others would notice, like I have done a great job or had the potential. They didn't took it lightly, they had doubts because I didn't deserve the love and spotlight. I was there for a year now, they've been there for years, some half a decade some more. That's the first move.
The Moves Begin
The second move is when the top man asked me to be his extra eyes and ears in the company. I didn't give him an answer, told him I would think about it. He pressed and I keep dodging until he thrust it into my face. I agreed that I would do that for him but I did not because I didn't want to be a spy, get caught in the crossfire or being labeled a 'snitch'.
Which leads us to the third move, a senior coworker gave a proposal for generating a new revenue stream within the company. The profits will be strictly shared between us. It was like a small company within THE company. I wasn't sold at first but the guy was a great salesperson. He mentions that he has done it before, it's a smooth operation and it will be undercover.
The fourth move is an unexpected shutdown of THE whole company and an urgent meeting. It happened after we perform a few 'smooth operations' on the secret undercover project. The meeting was fierce and intense. The top man threatened us with a police arrest, a court case and a decade of prison time. Right then and there, a receive another emotional shock of my life, a decade of prison time at 21 years old would mean I'll be out by 31, missing the most fun part of one's life. Throughout the whole meeting he was keeping eye contact with me, reading my face. My face was near serene, the turmoil was inside but it was leaking outside.
I decided to quit right after the meeting, you could say I was running from my problems but to me I was closing a chapter. After a week, the senior coworker called telling me I shouldn't quit and need to come back. My mind was made up so I bluntly refuse. The company reopened and things were back to normal just like before the shutdown. That's when I received the "checkmate".
Conclusion
The meeting was a show off, till to this day I haven't gotten the police arrest or the court case. It was all bluff, nothing was real. It was a well thought out plan. Everything was a calculated move that happened right under my nose without me realizing it! I still can't figure out the reason why and how fast it happened.
After reading Robert Greene's books, I do feel uneasy everything I think about the moment when the offer was made to me. Should I've taken it and 'play the perfect courtier'? I probably would still fail because of lack of experience. Experience is important in this things, the person with more experience wins most of the time. The more you play the game, the more experience you get, so I guess everyone loses in the beginning.
Note: In the headline I mentioned 'Get into Entrepreneurship'. That's another story of it's own and will talk about it in my next post. When published, I'll link it back to this post.
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