“Were it not for the red-nosed fact that here and there in this
Organization is a man foolish enough to be loyal to the institution
that enables him to close down his troubles when he closes down his
desk, the whole Office would by now be torn with internal strife like a
rat-tailed Roadster, and we would be headed for the rocks of riot and
rebellion.
“Your up-stairs piping is so defective that everything you take in at
the ears runs out of your mouth. You hear one man spill some remark
about another, and you scamper off with your little red eyes to tell
the other.
“Then when the other comes back with a rib-rocker on the first man, you
scamper back again and break the news to Number One.
“The other day you eared-in on a conversation I was having with my
partner about one of our men, and in exactly eleven minutes by our
beloved Office Clock the whole Force had tabulated the tidings.
“Before I had a chance to talk to the man myself, he came at me with
the logical deduction that he had a right to be informed at first hands
on a matter concerning himself that seemed to be as well known around
the Works as the hour for Knocking off Work.
“And WITNESSETH: Sometimes when Party of the First Part has been
discussing important matters in conference with himself or others, you
have hopped around like a coolie with the dhobe itch, trying to sniff
out some clue on which to ground a bit of gab.
“I have never walked through the office that I did not spot you back
of a door holding a whisper-fest with somebody, and, if my memory isn’t
fooling me, we have never yet talked here in the office about lifting
or lopping prices, or changing selling plans, or shuffling Salesmen,
or shaking up the territory, that it has not leaked out to the Road
Robbins long before we wanted it to.
“We now know for a cinchety that you are the guilty goop because
you fell for a plant that we had cleverly framed up with the kindly
assistance of myself.
“AND, since we propose to run this roost harmoniously—radiating a wee
wisp of sunshine and fellowship wherever we can, and making Business
a pleasure instead of a punch-up—there does not seem to be any place
around these puritanical precincts for a leaky radiator.
“You are bright and clever, and you don’t injure your spine trying to
get out of the path of an idea, and, by all the rules but one, you
should shoot right to the top of any business.
“The one rule that you have not yet sponged up is that Success is more
than brains and bustle. Success is the art of closing up the Exhaust
occasionally.
“I can find no doubt in any hole or corner of my mind that you have
many times scratched your busy little head and wondered why you have
remained in the same job all these centuries while other men not so
clever as your oblique self have sailed right past you into the harbor
of Heavy Responsibility With Correspondingly Light Pay. The reason is
as stated in yon foregoing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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