Dear Mahatma ,

On behalf of Complex Lifestyles Solutions Inc. I thank you for applying for the job of Vice President in our esteemed Company. Thank you for sending us your elaborate autobiography. 

1. The position you have applied for requires vice not virtue. Please note that we had not advertised for a Virtue President.
2. Your commitment to constant truth telling is dangerous for our organization’s self image. We want someone who can be very, very economical with truth.
3. Here we are looking for a high testosterone, can do, combat ready, loud human saxophone and not a turn- the- other- cheek type.
4. We are a socially responsible company as a matter of policy and within permissible limits. We do smuggle some pesticide in our product but make up for it by advertising socially responsible messages on paid commercial channels.
5. You say that you live simply so that others may simply live. Unfortunately, we are in the complex lifestyle solutions business. The more complex life gets, the more people buy our solutions.
6. By the way, what is this ahimsa thing? We are also firm believers in non-violence. We just out-talk, out-smart, out-sell and KILL all competition.
7. Our Company mission statement is inspired by one of the greatest leaders in human history who incidentally was born on the same day as yours: “There is enough for a man’s need but not enough for his greed. As long as there is never enough we will continue to be in business.”

We regret to inform you that we cannot offer you the job at the present time. Should a revolution happen in the future, we shall consider!

Sincerely,

VP (Human Re-Engineering)

MAHATMA REPLIES:

Dear Vice President,

I realize through my lifelong experiments with Truth that it is easier to form perfect vicious circles rather than virtues in cubicles. There is great suffering inside those cubicles where you pretend to work the whole day. Your office spaces look more like stables that house holy cows. There your employees are tied up not by chains but by their tags, titles and designations.

In that boardroom with all the gadgets of the information age there is still that old culture: AGREE CULTURE. Never mind your obsession with getting the facts on the table and shoving truth under the clean carpet. Your annual reports will make the best of fiction writers blush with envy. They are fabricated for your stake holders who, if they knew the whole truth about your Company, will turn into hostile stick holders. Sorry for using a bit of a violent imagination there. Never mind, your future looks as bright as charcoal perched on the back of a water buffalo.

Just the other day, I am sorry to say, I had spotted two of your managers fighting over the size of cushions on their chairs. ‘You are merely an assistant manager, how can you have a chair with a thick cushion? asked the senior guy with bushy eyebrows. As you know it, the boss is always right. A junior’s bottom is not eligible for the comfort of cushy chair. He must suffer his quota of verbal violence and bruised bottom before he gets promoted.

Allow me to sign off with this piece friendly counsel: before you sit on your chair every morning, just kneel down in front of it. Then prostrate like you do before a deity, with eight parts of your body touching the floor. Finally focus on the image of the lush leather chair in the sacred space between your eyebrows. You know why? The chair will survive longer in the organization than you will. . Even when you are retrenched and sent home with a pink slip; the chair will look on and smile at you from ear to ear. The chair knows a thing or two about renunciation. It is already preparing to unseat the next Vice President!

Yours truthfully.

Mahatma.