“Be it known to you further that no Business can succeed without
Loyalty and Co-operation. Modern Business demands of every man that he
be loyal, or be off.
“Pin-headedness, tale-peddling and office politics are barnacles on
the barque of Business, and the Firm that does not scrape them off is
doomed to decay.
“Any man with a brow an inch over all, should know that the lot of the
Leaker means to be ultimately despised by the very men he has made
confidants of.
“Every time you have started one of those
he-said-that-you-said-that-I-said stories of yours, you have rawed up
all the decent men of this Office.
“Today you stand about as popular around here as a hair in the butter;
but you don’t know it, because, like all back-fence babblers, you
are foggy up on the perceptive plane, and you think that the man who
listens must like yourself be loose.
“Some day you will learn, young man, that a tight tongue makes a
sagacious sky-piece—that to speak well is to cheat hell—that the chain
of Successful Business is linked with loyalty—and the Leaker lands in
Limbo long before the last lap’s run.
“Thanking you for your kind attention, and asking you to now kindly
consider yourself sunk without warning, I beg to remain etc, etc.”
Having spake after the manner of the hereinbefore mentioned, Comrade
Boss removed his eyes from the transgressor, and wheeled around in his
chair.
And, taking his pen between his index finger and the back of his hand,
began to sign yesterday’s mail.
So.
HOT SKETCH NO. 3
THE SELF ABNEGATIONIST AND HIS FINISH
THERE was a Large Employer with fantail whiskers who got good and sore
at his Help.
They didn’t have the interests of the business At Heart, he said. All
they cared about was to fist-in their salaries and see that the Office
Clock was accurate.
Any time any of them did any dweedling little thing in the shape of
exceptional work, they expected credit for it, he murmured.
If the Sales Manager pulled up his sales, he would pull down his vest
and bid for congratulations.
If the Credit Man lost only 1/40th of 1 per cent on the year’s
accounts, he would dodge around in front of the throne expecting to be
caught and laureled.
If a stenographer got her dictation at four o’clock, and then jumped
into the saddle and won the race before Big Whistle, she would expect
her Dictator to say she was Some little hustlerine.
Even the Office Squirrel looked for commendation every time he
discharged the responsibilities of his Office without fumble or fizzle.
What this Employer wanted, he contended, was employees who would work
for the good of the Business and not be always thinking about their own
good. He said he hadn’t a man around the place who could sink Self with
the rock of Gibraltar tied around its neck. The reward for doing a good
thing, he preached, was in having done it.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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