Anita Augustine, the mother of Anna Sebastian Perayil, a 26-year-old chartered accountant from Kerala, in a heartbreaking and an influential letter blames Ernst & Young for her daughter’s death because of “excessive workload.”
One leaves this election campaign with the idea that what began as a diverse and talented team with a promising future has quickly evolved into a disastrous spectacle.
Anna, an intelligent student that performed well in school as well as college, was eager to start working at EY, being her first workplace. In her heart wrenching letter, the poor mother narrated how hardworking Anna was in ensuring that she met all her demanding callers. But the pressure builds and builds to the intolerant level. This pressure at EY increased the anxiety in Anna and she also started having sleepless nights and stressed, although she continued working hard convinced that hard work would produce the results.
The toll on her health I shall stay home and keep my distance from close contacts The decision I make today is to:
It is, however, important to note that Anna was determined and she was already beginning to get ill. A couple of weeks before the convocation at Pune she complained of chest pain and discomfort for which after a visit to the hospital the doctor concluded it to be due to stress and lack of sleep and advised her to take antacids. As much as her parents wished her to stay at home, young Anna ignored their advice to go away from work, and on the following morning, she was at work as usual after having been admitted to the hospital the previous evening.
Her mother asked her about convocation which had been a dream for many years to Anna. Nevertheless, Anna had to work from home on the day of the ceremony and the family came in later. This was a typical scenario of how the demands of her work cut short family time and the repercussions of that.
The Final Days and A Mother’s Grief
The story of Anna Krief’s death raised awareness about the challenges of the contemporary working environment, especially where the employees are overworked and expected to deliver more in order to meet the expectations of the managers and employers that promote the culture of hard work. The recent letter written by Anita Augustine to EY India Chairman Rajiv Memani also got viral that created public uproar and discussion on companies’ insensitivity towards employees. People were outraged that no one from EY came to pay their respects to Anna when she was buried, according to those familiar with the matter.
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Anita in her letter shows how much she is concerned with the company due to the ‘’callous attitude’ of the company and the pressure placed on young employees. I felt upset by Anna’s tragic death to think that the stressful work environment of contemporary businesses can do so much harm to people’s mental and physical conditions; awareness raised by her mother’s letter should encourage businesses to value employees’ health more than numbers and deadlines.
This sad story has led many of us to contemplate on the risks of working to the bone and the lack of tender feelings at the modern workplace. Anna is no more and not just the family but the entire world seems to have lost valuable assets in one way or the other. This is also a clear indication that the high costs of work pressure if not closely monitored is one of the greatest causes of many deaths.
The posthumous letter written by the mother of Anna Sebastian Perayil to Ernst & Young (EY) tells a gruesome tale of the pressure young employees bear in the high-stake corporate world. After being employed in EY in March, Anna complained of unbearable working conditions characterized by very poor management and responses to complaints as dismissal. They told her that her manager is a workaholic and never ends his working day, but Anna did not want to stay away from learning and so she stayed on the job.
When asked about the problem of staff turnover, Anna’s mother Anita Augustine pointed to the fact that the amount of work was very high for her daughter’s team. The manager gave Anna the responsibility of altering people’s perception of the team, yet left her with serious barriers to expectations. As much as she felt the anxiety and physical fatigue as well as stress, she would still have to continue working into the late evening and the weekends.
But still Anna was eager to carry on as her parents were asking her to stop, which became unbearable for her. She even discussed it with her parents the extra loads that although non-legitimate were implied through word-of-mouth. Ignoring her and her family’s health, she would go back to work even after collapsing out of extreme exhaustion because she thought that she would be more successful if she were subjected to such stress.
Anita Augustine gets to the heart of work culture in the youth, through her touching and mournful letter about work culture today. Anna’s real life story gives a tragic message about the effects and bitter experience of organisational pressures and workload on one’s health. Her mother’s appeal cannot only be regarded as sheer desire to punish those unfair employers, but it is the call for corporate management to make a change for the better. It refers to a person’s death – therefore, a signal to reject the culture of turning a blind eye to human life and investing in one’s mental health first at the workplace. Every job should not be a price paid with a life; this episode is a wakeup call for the current practice and celebration of the ‘hustle culture’ present in today’s corporate world.
