August 22, 2012 | Compiled by Tang Feng
(Minghui.org) This is a story known among the Chinese community.
There was once a talented student from China who went to France to study. He found that the public transportation there mostly relied on self-service. There were no ticket check-points at train stations, and they rarely had anyone randomly checking passengers for tickets.
Once he figured that out, he often skipped buying tickets. Four years passed. He graduated from a prestigious university with an excellent academic performance. Feeling rather confident, he began to seek job opportunities at international firms headquartered in Paris. They responded to him enthusiastically at first before losing interest all together. Furious, he was certain racial discrimination was the cause.
Finally, he barged into the office of an HR director of one of the companies that had denied him the opportunity and demanded an explanation. The director told him, “Sir, we did not discriminate against you in any way. On the contrary, we held you in high esteem. To tell the truth, you are exactly the type of talent we were looking for in terms of your qualifications. However, we found out that you were fined three times for failing to buy bus tickets when we checked on your credit. It showed two things about you. First, you do not respect rules and regulations. You are very good at finding loopholes in the rules and exploiting them. Second, you are not trustworthy. Much of the work we do here requires trust. If you are trusted with the responsibility of developing a regional market, you will be given a lot of authority and privileges. We cannot afford any complicated monitoring system without substantial costs, just like our public transportation system. This is the reason why we won’t hire you. To be specific, I think you will have difficulty finding any company in France or the entire European Union that wants to hire you.”
Finally the HR director quoted Dante: Morals may always make up for limitations in wisdom, but wisdom can not fill the moral void.
The western economy is built upon trust. For many people in China, “integrity” is synonymous of “foolishness,” yet the so-called “foolishness” is what the western economy depends on.
Lao Zi said, “Great accomplishments are the result of great wisdom.” Management is about managing people’s minds. The cost of management is greatly reduced when a company has trustworthy employees with integrity and is greatly increased when it has false and cunning employees. From a long-term perspective, being “cunning” is far from being “smart” and being “trustworthy” is being “wise.”
Most western corporations highly value the moral character of their employees. Warren Buffett said, “Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. If you think about it, it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.”
People in China today often overlook the importance of moral character because morality was destroyed by the atheist communist regime’s many political movements, including the Great Cultural Revolution where morality was one of the “Four Olds” to be weeded out. When it comes to hiring, academic performance, education and experience are what matters. A man lacking moral integrity, even with a degree from the most prestigious college, can do more harm to a corporation than good. Many Falun Gong practitioners in China, on the other hand, have become hot commodities because they apply high moral standards to everything they do.
Xing Ping (pseudonym), a Falun Gong practitioner from Hebei Province, was looking for a job in town in the winter of 2008. She had two choices: a supermarket or a take-out restaurant. She decided to go to work at the supermarket because it was a more hygienic environment. But the owner of the take-out restaurant called her and offered to match the wages of the supermarket. She even offered free meals and boarding and ample time for her to practice Falun Gong. She insisted on hiring her because she had heard great things about Falun Gong practitioners. She heard that practitioners were trustworthy and reliable. Yet Xing Ping decided to work for the supermarket after all.
When she first started working for the supermarket, she did not know how to differentiate counterfeit bills. One day she accepted a fake 20-yuan bill. When she found out it was a counterfeit, she asked to keep the bill and to deduct 20 yuan from her wage. The owner refused to deduct her wage. Xing Ping then burned the counterfeit bill and insisted on giving 20 yuan back when she received her wages. She was eventually let go when the owner’s father decided to help run the supermarket.
When the take-out restaurant owner heard that Xing Ping was between jobs, she asked a friend to invite her over. She told Xing Ping that she still wanted to hire her because Falun Gong practitioners would not steal money from her. She added that she once hired someone who does not practice Falun Gong and that person was caught stealing from her purse. Xing Ping said she might be too slow paced for a take-out restaurant. The owner insisted she would be fine. She has been working for the take-out restaurant ever since.
The restaurant attracted customers from all walks of life. Some customers, after having already purchased a dish, asked to exchange it for another, then another, and another before they left the store with a very small purchase. Yet Xing Ping never lost her patience. She makes sure they are satisfied with their purchase. Sometimes customers forget to take their purchase with them or to take the change back. Each time Xing Ping would run after them. Sometimes she would not catch them, so she would keep their purchase or money for them until they returned. She gradually built a reputation among regular customers as a kindhearted and trustworthy woman, and the customer base has grown since she started working there.
One day the father of the supermarket owner became ill and could no longer help with the business. The owner wanted Xing Ping to work for her again. When Xing Ping told her that she had already found a new job, the owner asked her to help find another Falun Gong practitioner. By the time Xing Ping could find an available Falun Gong practitioner for the job, the owner had completely worn herself out and sold the business.
(To be continued)
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