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Work Itik (*Visayan for mallard duck)

If you work for someone, then work for him: Speak well of him and stand by the institution he represents. Remember, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness. If you must growl, condemn, and eternally find fault, resign your position and when you are on the outside, complain to your hearts content. But as long as you are a part of the institution do not condemn it.

~ Elbert Hubbard


Gawd. Generations of people have posted versions of this quotation in countless bulletin boards (there's a version set to stanzas so it reads like freeverse) .

It's been posted so much, people automatically accept it without question.

What many fail to grasp is the key idea: "If you work for a man, then he owns your @$$." A man. The owner. The one who can do what he damn well pleases. If you work for him, you are pwned -- and if you want to stay long in your job, cover your @$$ -- unless he tells you to bend over.

A very practical advice from @$$-Kissing 101. But not for everybody.

Never, ever, post this when you are working for an office owned by a government cherishing democracy as its highest ideal [where on earth can we find that government?]. In that situation, you are not working for a man; you are working for the people -- the best interests of the people should come ahead of your boss. "Bayan muna" ("The People First" -- no, i'm not talking about the Party List -- ever notice how many fascist governments call themselves "People's" or "Democratic"?, sheesh . . . ).

You wish. There is no such thing as a true democracy.

Government is a social object -- an idea that forms people into a group, a tribe. Every tribe demands a tribal chief. If there's a power vacuum, people quickly fill that void.

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.


I think a more accurate saying would be

Power attracts the corruptible; those who are incorruptible do not seek it.


There are exceptions of course. But all governments, being human, eventually revert to being tribal. All people are then pressured to kiss the Chieftain’s Ass -- and his donkey -- it would be imprudent not to do so.

Ever wondered why, when Jesus made his triumphal entry to Jerusalem, he rode an ass? Palm Sunday for Catholics. [By the way, the most popular palm in da Pinas is coconut -- in Bisaya, it's "lubi" -- way back in the 90s, our school's local radio station had a program sponsored by the local coconut research center. The program's name: "Lubi, Atong Mahalon" (Coconut: Let's Love It) -- i digress, hehe, but the (not so secret) joke has something  to do with the anatomy, not the animal, (something lost and distorted in the slang translation from Visayan to American.)

At any rate, most versions of this quote are terribly abridged (read the original text, thanks to Quoteland) and omits the prior statement that we may tell the boss how we feel about him and his policies:

If the concern where you are employed is all wrong, and the Old Man is a curmudgeon, it may be well for you to go to the Old Man and confidentially, quietly and kindly tell him that his policy is absurd and preposterous.



That does not make you safe though. The old way was (and still is) to shoot the bearer of the bad message. Curmudgeon indeed (nice, antique word for @$$hole).

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