25 year old engineer Saurabh Mittal left his BPCL job worth Rs 20 lakh. Fed up with the lack of basic facilities like toilet and poor work culture in the office, he resigned. Now he is doing MBA.
New Delhi: On one hand, today’s youth work day and night to get a government job with salary and prestige of lakhs of rupees, on the other hand, a 25 year old engineer left his job in the country’s prestigious ‘Maharatna’ company in just two years. The surprising thing is that the package of this job was Rs 20 lakh per year. But there were no basic facilities like drinking water and toilet in the office, due to which he got fed up and took this decision.
The name of this young man who left the job is Saurabh Mittal, who is a graduate from the prestigious NIT Kurukshetra. At the age of just 22, he started a job in Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) on a handsome package. Saurabh’s posting was in Siliguri, where he was responsible for the entire operation up to North Bengal, Sikkim and Bhutan. Saurabh tells that the inner reality of the job of this Maharatna PSU, which looked very attractive from outside, was something different.
‘There is no benefit for the company in making toilets’
Talking about his difficult work environment, Saurabh said, “My office was inside an old warehouse. There was neither clean drinking water nor toilet. The AC was also broken, which I got repaired with my own money. I complained about the lack of toilet in the office several times to the manager, senior officers and HR. But the attitude of the officers was very bad. HR said that this is a matter of the business department. The manager said to ask for the budget. But in the end, Finance The department rejected the proposal saying that the company would not get any ROI (Return on Investment) by building toilets in the office!”
Luckily, Saurabh’s house was just 10 minutes away from the office, so he had to go home several times a day to use the toilet. “The officials sitting in AC rooms in the main office in Kolkata had no idea of the hell we were living on the ground,” he says angrily.
‘Calls even on holidays, abuses till midnight were common’
Saurabh also made serious allegations on the work culture of the office. He told, “There was no such thing as a holiday there. Once my manager had clearly said that there are no holidays in the company, holidays are meant for work from home (WFH). Even on weekends and Sundays, calls from the office kept coming till 12 midnight. Not only this, I was also made to do personal work like picking up senior officers from the airport and booking hotels for them, which had nothing to do with my work. Meetings and Videos Shouting and abusing in conferences was quite common there.”
Father disappointed, but mother gave full support
There was no hope of growth there due to only 3% annual salary increase and promotion only on the basis of seniority. Saurabh decided that he could not live his whole life like this and resigned from the job. For Saurabh’s family, who hails from a small district like Kaithal in Haryana, the BPCL job was a matter of great prestige. That’s why his father is still unable to accept that his son left the government job. But, his mother, who herself witnessed the mental torture and late night calls being received by her son, fully supported him. He said, “I do not accept that my son should live in such a hell.”
Next step: Now on the path to MBA
Presently Saurabh Mittal is in Gurugram and is pursuing MBA from a reputed institute so that he can give a new direction to his career. Along with this, he is also doing part-time content creation (video blogging) to meet his expenses and to make the youth aware of the reality of such jobs. His advice is that the young generation should not decide on any government job just by looking at its external glamour, but should also understand its reality.