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05:29 PM
Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
April 21, 2013
The one way you can guarantee a mess of the job you are in is to borrow money from your colleagues. It is an insidious habit and tends to spiral right out of control. For one, you lose your credibility, for two your colleagues resent you because you are a nuisance and they begin to avoid you.
Now, you might convince yourself that you are only taking small sums but that is not an excuse. It gets much worse if you are in a slightly senior position and you are using your position to take money from juniors. That is unforgiveable and you not only compromise the integrity of your person but also that of the company you work for. There is no doubt you lose the respect of your staff and don’t for one moment think they are not sharing their common woes about you with each other.
Ask yourself why you think this is okay to do. Just because you promise to pay it back (which is a lie because you have no intention of doing so) does not absolve you. Two, you are misusing your authority because the juniors have to keep quiet even though they resent you. Three, you are going to get into deeper trouble because you will begin to ask for larger sums because you now feel you can get away. On the other hand the junior loses respect for you because you are borrowing silly little sums of money and he is too awkward to say, hey, give it back…Sir.
Do you know that because of people like you some folks have even resigned just to be able to escape your clutches. They just cannot take the pressure and the annoyance anymore. Every time they see you approaching it takes its toll.
Surveys have shown that bosses who borrow money are intrinsically bad bosses and are most likely to be inept at their work. Certainly, the junior staff sees it as a sort of tax on survival and if it keeps them secure they probably give in much as they hate it. In an article in New Vision a newspaper from Uganda, it is interesting to note that they have coined a label for such a person. They call him the serial borrower and they castigate him for lowering morale, for being a pest and for running an unhappy team.
Ironically, many of this tribe don’t even think they are doing something wrong. They sort of assume that it is fine, after all, look at the favors they do like clearing expense accounts, sending staff on official conferences abroad, adding to their perks, so what a couple of hundred bucks?
The difference between respect and the absence of it.
(The writer is a Senior Editorial Advisor of Khaleej Times and the paper’s former Editor. He has also been the Editor of Gulf News, Gulf Today, Emirates Today and Bahrain Tribune)
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