Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.
~ Ayn Rand
The two stories given below are true and I have been asked the same questions that I ask my readers, by the persons involved. I am no expert on loyalty but modern life throws up interesting case histories like these to make my retired life interesting!
Story 1.
AB has lived in the same block of flats for fifteen years and from the time she moved in there, she has had the same maid come in to help her. The maid had become more or less a part of the family as it were and AB’s two school going children were pampered by her to be like her own children.
CD moved in to a flat two floors above AB’s in the same building a few months ago. AB and CD met in the lift a few times and exchanged visits to each other. In time they became good friends.
Things soured however when CD offered a much higher salary to AB’s maid and stole her away from AB. The latter with a heavy heart let the maid go but would not offer the same salary offered to the maid by CD to enable the maid to stay on. In due course, AB found another maid and life went on but the relationship between AB and CD was irrevocably broken.
Three months down the line, the maid quit her job with CD as she found the treatment there not quite what she was accustomed to at AB’s. She came back to AB and sought the old position back at the same old salary.
What should AB do?
Story 2.
EF found that her old friend GH was on facebook and sent a friend request to the latter which was promptly accepted. The long forgotten friendship was reestablished online and operated smoothly for a while when national politics went crazy and both found themselves on the opposite sides of the spectrum. EF became quite sarcastic and toxic in her comments on GH’s posts and so the latter simply unfriended her.
In the meanwhile, EF had sent friend requests to some of GH’s facebook friends who seeing that she was friends with GH had accepted the requests and EF made her presence felt in those pages as well.
One of GH’s friends messaged her one day and asked about EF as she found that she was being rude in her comments.
How should GH respond?
I had suggested the topic for this week’s LBC Friday post. You can see what the other writers of the LBC have to say in their respective blogs. Maria, Pravin and Shackman.
Scenario 1 – wish th old maid well but sorry, a replacement was chosen (and this assumes the new maid is working out well – if the new maid notworking out, rehire the original maid)
Scenario 2 -explain the reason for EF’s behavior and suggest if it is intolerable, unfriend her – clearly the friends were not as close as suggested – i experienced a similar scenario in our last election. My friend and I simply agreed to disagree and stopped discussing politics
shackman recently posted..Loyalty
I shall write another post soon with the action taken by the protagonists in both the stories.
I agree with Shackman on both scenarios.
I would be dreadfully sad about the maid, though.
Loyalty seems to have gone the way of the dodo. It’s another case of assigning no value to something which has value but can’t be easily quantified
I agree with you that it is increasingly difficult to come by the old one employer loyalty that my generation saw. Job hopping is a way of life nowadays.
Scenario 1 is hard. I would check with the children to see how they felt, since the original maid had been part of the family. I would feel sorry for the second maid if AB let her go, but it could be the best solution.
Scenario 2 is easier, I think. GH should just tell the friends to unfriend EF, that’s what she (GH) had already done.
Cheerful Monk recently posted..Alternative Facts
I shall write another post soon with the action taken by the protagonists in both the stories.
If AB is quite happy with her new maid — keep her.
As for GH, I would hope she would have posted a general statement for all to read that she was concerned about the type comments being made — adding, that uncivil comments would not be accepted in future — not singling out any specific person. If, this was ignored GH could then privately express concern to EF. If EF continued to ignore, then block her comments. If GH is asked she should answer honestly that she had chosen to block all rude comments which resulted in EF’s being blocked. As for Ayn Rand’s quote — I’ve read her writings, those of individuals in her circle, and found her to hardly be a person I would admire.
joared recently posted..FRIENDS — MEMORIES — GENEALOGY
I shall write another post soon with the action taken by the protagonists in both the stories. I don’t admire Ayn Rand as a person but her books were very much part of my formative years and her philosophy resonated at a time when India was a disastrous Socialist society.
basically I agree with the comments…but life has a strange way of throwing curveballs when you least expect it.
I have a case of scenario on f/b to do with some relatives – all are my friends, but the others are un-friended from one another. It can be confusing but I refuse now to tell one what the others are doing and so forth…
I shall write another post soon with the action taken by the protagonists in both the stories. Human relationships are complex and one cannot be white or black about judging it.
Interesting.
Why the maid taking a much better paid job should lead to estrangement between AB and CD I don’t quite understand. Despite the maid’s and AB’s family’s emotional attachment, first and foremost the maid is doing a paid job. So if offered more money by someone else it’s only natural that she’d take the (financially) better option. I do think that that type of “loyalty” expected by an employer does put an onus on the employee quite unjustifiably so.
However, if I were that maid I most certainly wouldn’t have gone back to AB. Let’s leave pride aside at having made, possibly, the wrong decision by going for the money, what is she expecting AB to do? Sack her new maid because maid One wants to return?
On your second conundrum I have “little” to say. And, as you and I go a long way back, you know why. I quickly lose respect for people who won’t enter discussion, who lay down the rules. What’s wrong with sarcasm? Who defines what is “rude”, what is “toxic” (what does “toxic” even mean in the context of verbal exchange?) ?
I don’t quite understand the question: “How should GH respond?” Why are those other “friends” (till they too become unfriends) running to her/him anyway? Surely we all forge our own relationships, on our own terms. Just because my friend A doesn’t like my friend B doesn’t mean I have to choose between either. I just won’t see them at the same time.
Anyway, slightly veering off the main topic, I don’t understand the readiness with which social media allow people to “be”friend someone, only to then at the slightest whiff of difference of opinion to “de”friend them. That’s not friendship how I understand it. That’s pure opportunism. I know it happened to you and Shackman some time ago – and in a rather vicious attack – the person cited me as the culprit and reason for her leaving the LBC. How much more childish can you get? I noted that neither of you showed me the door just because one of your circle hates my guts. So, thanks for that. But then, neither of you is a fool. And serves not only as a fine example of loyalty but a show of integrity by both of you.
So, Ramana, what did the wise one advise on the two cases you posted, I wonder?
U
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I shall write another post soon with the action taken by the protagonists in both the stories.
I was initially wondering if AB and CD intersected and whether or not they were parallel or orthogonal. Being a little familiar with maid dynamics, they can become almost members of the family, or forever outsiders, depending on the family. My sense is that this isn’t quite a Greek tragedy. If AB is happy with the new maid, give the old maid a good reference, forgive CD, and move on.
As for the second scenario, it sounds like some people need to get off of social media and get a life!
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I shall write another post soon with the action taken by the protagonists in both the stories. And as regards the second scenario, I could not agree more.
Story 1: I agree the children should be consulted, and if they want AB back, then take her back. Hard on the new maid but she must have realised the job wasn’t necessarily permanent and would depend on unforeseeable factors like the long-standing maid suddenly being available again.
Story 2: If a Facebook friend is becoming objectionable, simple – unfriend them.
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I shall write another post soon with the action taken by the protagonists in both the stories.