The Most Important Finger of our Hand

One of my true & interesting life experiences while interacting with a senior employee of my company

Ajay Bharat Uniyal
Aug 31, 2018 · 4 min read

It all started with one of the occasional one-on-one interactions with my company’s HR head. Though there was an open-door policy yet such interactions were actually rare, partly because employees for long had lost the faith in HR policies. Still, I was there since I had raised concerns about my career growth with my manager who wanted me to talk to the HR head instead.

But before starting on this, let me give you a brief summary of the background to keep the story in the right perspective. The company I worked for was once very big and had a huge respect in its domain. But due to multiple wrong decisions, it was going through an extremely rough patch. Over the years there were multiple instances of layoffs. The working environment was as such that you can secure your job by being part of a certain non-official ‘group’. It was an overall insecure environment with most of the employees working with highly insecure mindset.

I was finding it really difficult to adjust myself in such an environment. Moreover, there was a consistent pressure from this ‘group’ to agree on certain terms and be one of them. I was just avoiding them and was keeping my focus on my work.

Subsequently, this group started projecting me as a negative employee. Situations were created to drag me into debates which they later termed as arguments attributing to my bad attitude. I was having this meeting under these circumstances and actually already had an inkling about what he might offer to me. It was a lengthy conversation in which he actually did offer me the prospects of a better future based on certain conditions. But I want to share a specific part of this conversation here when he was trying to teach me something.

So, taking the cue of my negative reputation, he was showing as if to teach me the art of having healthy relationships at work. I countered him on this, saying that I am already maintaining healthy relations and his interpretations are wrong.

Thus to prove his point, he started telling me a factual story and conversation went something like this-

HR: “Do you know which one is the most important finger on our hands?”

Me: “Well, not exactly; I think all of them are important”

HR: “No, there is one specific finger, which is so important that even the international medical association has specified guidelines for all doctors in case this finger is lost. As per the guidelines, the doctor must cut off any other healthy finger and attach in place of this lost finger.” He continues…

“This finger is the thumb and it must be preserved at any cost. And the only reason for its importance is that it can reach out to and touch all the other fingers. This allows our hand to work properly.” He summarized it with the comment that we should behave similar to a thumb and work in collaboration with everyone.

I don’t know if there is any truth in the fact of cutting a healthy finger & attaching it in place of the thumb. But what I was thinking at that point was that since I already have that spirit of workmanship, how to tell him that he has analyzed me incorrectly. So, as he was going through his story of fingers, I was actually maneuvering my fingers in my hand to understand his concept. And while he was still not complete, I prepared myself on how I need to respond to his false allegations using his very own interpretations.

As soon as he ended his story, I politely asked him to listen to my views on his interpretation. I stretched out my hand in front of him and said, “I agree that only thumb could reach to all of the other fingers. But if you watch closely, the thumb could only reach up to the root of all fingers. And if you want to make a proper grip, each finger needs to bend a bit so that the thumb could reach up to the top. This is very much required if you want to efficiently do your day-to-day work and not just drag along.” I concluded my small demo with a statement that I am consistently doing my part in the company to reach out to each & every person as and when needed, and now it’s their responsibility to bend a bit to work together so as to give efficient output.

I can’t explain the look on his face. It was something like you suddenly strip-off someone with whatever he/she gained in a long professional life. This meeting ended abruptly afterward.

Later, I came across a thought-provoking video of an industry leader where he was sharing his lifelong learning. He said that we should never work for a poor boss. He explained the poor boss as someone who is intellectually dishonest and highly insecure. After watching this video, images of most of the senior employees of this company crossed my mind.


I am sharing this story without any sense of some victory. I also do not want to say that I did anything extraordinary in the way how I responded. Still, I believe that it might help those people to relate & respond who unfortunately are in a similar situation. Please share your comments, views, opinions, and suggestions.

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