Ain’t Human Nature Funny?

One of my hobbies is personally proving that everyone is an idiot in all languages other than their own. Thus, in an inadvertent exercise in humility, I spend some time reading rudimentary Spanish.

I recently ran across a short story called “Carta a Dios” (1940) by the Mexican writer Gregorio Lopez y Fuentes (For those readers who are conversant in Spanish please place the missing accents where they belong.) This charming vignette illustrates a fundamental fact about human nature, i.e. if you know what someone takes for granted or what they accept to be true without question, you know that which is most important about them. Some of you cynics out there will note that this story also shows that “No good deed goes unpunished.”

But on with the story. Our protagonist is a dirt-poor peasant named “Lencho.” The scene: a small house on a hill near a river, a corral, and a small field of corn and beans soon ready for harvest but in need of rain. Lencho’s wife calls her husband, their two sons from the fields, and their youngest boy from nearby to a simple dinner.

Conversation turns to the weather and the clouds descending from the northeast that promise rain. Lencho asserts “Soon it is going to rain” and his wife adds, “God willing.” And so it rains, the harvest is good, and Lencho and his family live happily ever after. Not really!

Instead it hails, the leaves are stripped off the trees, the land is covered with salt-like crystals of ice, the crop is ruined and the family is devastated. No one can help Lencho and his family and they are destined to starve the following year. But Lencho is a man of faith and asserts, “Surely, God will not let us starve.”

Although Lencho has worked like a beast of burden all his life, somehow he has learned to write and so he decides to write a letter to God. He writes, “God, if you do not help, we will die of hunger this coming year. I need one hundred pesos to plant another crop and to live until the harvest comes in.”

Lencho puts his letter in an envelope, addresses it to “God,” goes to the post office, buys a stamp and puts it into the mailbox. Sometime later a postal employee sees the letter, opens it and chuckles. He shows it to his supervisor who shares the mirth and then becomes serious. He says, “Such simple faith is such a beautiful thing to see. We cannot disillusion a man of such faith.” And so the supervisor takes part of his paycheck and asks his fellow employees and their friends for contributions.

Although they cannot collect all of the one hundred pesos they are able to enclose sixty. They put the money in an envelope with Lencho’s name on it. Lencho arrives a few days later and asks if there is a letter for him. He exhibits not the least surprise when he is told yes. Ah, such faith.

Lencho opens the envelope, counts the money and becomes infuriated. He goes to the post office window, asks for paper and pen, and writes the following, “God, the money that I asked for arrived in my hands with only sixty pesos. Send the rest because it is much needed, but don’t send it to this post office because all of the employees who work here are crooks. Lencho.”

Should you want to learn more about human nature, see www.workplaceattitudes.com.

Bureaucrats Get a Bad Rap

I recently received a phone call from a long-time friend who happens to be a Libertarian. I remember some of his long tirades about the evils of government and particularly how bad bureaucrats are. Well, Norbert just qualified for Social Security. With only a modicum of chagrin, he decided that he would indeed take the benefits. It seems that Norbert had fallen upon some hard times and his business endeavors didn’t work out and the Social Security check was a godsend.

But this isn’t the only change in Norbert. It seems that he now thinks that bureaucrats can be quite fine people. He said that the people at the Social Security office were extremely nice, helpful, and efficient. They helped him track down missing documents, helped him fill out the forms, and were very supportive.

Why is it that there are so many people like Norbert who like to bash bureaucrats? Many seem to believe if we could only get rid of the “bureaucrats” life would be better. They also ask “Why do we need bureaucratic regulation?” I can think of a few reasons such as the savings and loan debacle, poison pet food from China, lead paint on children’s toys, tainted meat, and the recent mortgage meltdown. What do you think? Maybe we should keep some of the firefighters and police who protect our streets and the foresters who fight the forest fires.

I agree with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison when they wrote, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” I wonder if I could design a politician’s version of the Workplace Attitudes Test.

Thank Goodness for Gratitude

When I did the initial research to discover attitudes related to disruptive behavior in the workplace, I had the opportunity to meet a lot of turkeys.

This includes embezzlers, back-stabbers, bad-mouthers, imposters, malcontents and job-hoppers and I also talked to a few people who liked to threaten their former employers with law suits. Individuals in this rouges gallery had bad attitudes in the extreme. These same bad attitudes were generally absent in good or non-disruptive employees.

Turkey attitudes include judgmental, vindictive, entitled, disrespect for authority, undisciplined, egocentric and so forth. Again, to be a turkey, one has to hold at least one of these negative attitudes strongly. If you want to know more about these bad attitudes visit the Workplace Attitudes website at www.workplaceattitudes.com.

These work-related attitudes were discovered from a series of open-ended interviews but one other underlying attitude or characteristic seemed to be present in good workers and absent in problem employees—that is, gratitude.

Gratitude explains a lot. If you decide that a pre-employment test is not for you, you may want to look for gratitude in your job candidates. If you find evidence of gratitude, I believe you may be fairly sure that this person will get along well with others.

Wikipedia provides the following definition: Gratitude, appreciation, or thankfulness is a positive emotion or attitude in acknowledgment of a benefit that one has received or will receive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratitude
One of my favorite quotes is by Meister Eckhart, “If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.”
Melodie Beattie talks about gratitude as follows:
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity . . . It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_gratitude.html
If you’re looking for an employee who will get along well with other people, you can’t go wrong by asking them “What are you grateful for?”
If you want to learn more about research related to gratitude and good health, I suggest that you look at some comments made by Charles Osgood in his Osgood File (CBS Radio Network) The Osgood File (CBS Radio Network): 7/12/02The Osgood File (CBS Radio Network): 12/19/01
http://www.acfnewsource.org/religion/gratitude_theory.html