Super Rani

This short story is about one of our colleagues. His name is Rani. Since I started working for this company, he was there before as the major employee in IT division.

His reputation has spread a long time ago as the best programmer in the company, talented with many skills and participated in many projects.

We were juniors at that time and did not ask mush about these projects. We just wanted to get our job done in the best possible way, and to acquire new knowledge to cope with the fast developing world of software and IT.

Rani was quite separated from us. He hated the idea of sharing his skills with others, and we respected his feelings since he was the senior employee in our little IT division.

As the market changed, the company devised new policies to stand on its feet again after a long depression. One of the main tasks in this long-term strategy was to create a new software that can compete with other similar projects trying to reach the biggest share in the market. This came to the surface after the failing of all negotiations with other companies to provide such software with a reasonable price. Therefore, our company chairmen decided to rely on their own to provide that level of luxury and dedicated Rani for this kind of a task; critical and requiring the best experience available among the staff.

Rani indeed started this new project in no time, and as it was expected, he preferred working alone. He said, "No help is needed. This software is a piece of cake". We were not in a situation to argue with that, even some of us were really hoping to get some of his knowledge in database design, data management, networking… etc.

We didn't hear mush from him later. Nearly a month passed and we realized he's still working in the project. Then another month, and a third one. He gradually increased his efforts as more time passed, so as to deliver the project as soon as possible.

After more than 4 months, Rani spoke to us at last and asked for our help. We were happy first, but for our great astonishment, he stated that he needed data enterers, not programmers. Nevertheless, some of us agreed to help him hoping they may get their names included in this project.

Things changed since then in IT division. Paper work increased because this approached, devised by Rani, was based on printing data on paper for further analysis. So, our team became printers instead of programmers.

Another month passed and we realized our critical need to some new volunteers to help in archiving a ton of papers.

We heard rumors about substituting Rani with any other employee to finish this never-ending project, but company master chief put an end to this in his last meeting with heads of the departments. He announced Rani as the only person capable of achieving this task and all company divisions must count on him.

I think our company had spent more expenses on wasted paper for the next couple of months than in its entire life. More employees were needed to carry on with the increasing need to "analyze data", as Rani always called it.

Every new employee was happy with that. They finally got a job from nowhere. Even if it was boring and frustrating, they got salary for it. Not me… of course. I realized that I was wasting my life in a meaningless festival, so I quitted the instance I found a well-paid job in another company.

News still reaching my ears about Rani and his software. My old colleagues were still contacting me to tell stories about everything. One night, a friend told me that his master is still betting on Rani to deliver an astonishing software that can make a shock in the market as soon as it is finished.

"And when is that?" I asked him.

He said, "Rani always show us he is in the final stage".

"That's what he said last year. Remember?" I asked.

"Yes, that's right, but then he was analyzing fake data. This year, he began dealing with real company data!"