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Those are lies that, if you believe them, will ruin your life； And they spread so widely that they almost became truth—Why were you fired? Because you are not a good employee ； Why aren’t you a good employee? Because you didn’t proactively do what the boss asked. But if you proactively follow your boss’s requirements, will your boss definitely not fire you? Not necessarily! Are those employees who disagree with their bosses or cannot get along with their direct supervisors doomed to remain unemployed for life? Of course not — if you’re willing to read the stories of the CEOs of the world’s top 500 companies, you’ll find in those biographies that most of them have lost their jobs at some point — was it because their bosses lacked vision, or because they had lofty ambitions of their own? Fiorina, former CEO of HP, has a famous saying: I NEVER OBEY THE RULES (I never follow the rules). Isn’t she a good employee then? U.S. President Lincoln said that you can deceive everyone for a while ； It’s possible to deceive some people at all times, but it’s impossible to deceive everyone at all times. Hitler said: A lie repeated a thousand times becomes the truth. Between the two of them, whose do you trust more? If there were a clever scammer, one who was smart enough, he would surely say that he only needs to deceive everyone for a certain period of time – why bother deceiving everyone all the time? Wouldn’t that make it too difficult and costly? OK, most of those who train you to become a \"perfect employee\" are such scammers – they know full well that if you follow their instructions, you could lose everything in your life. But they’re not afraid that you’ll hold them accountable later, because if you manage to recover from their \"brainwashing,\" it will take at least ten or twenty years; who cares about what happens that far in the future? Every era has its share of scammers, but in an age of freedom, those scammers are more sophisticated, so you must stay vigilant. For example, when an insurance agent tries to sell you insurance, although he may be doing it for your benefit, you still need to determine whether the insurance product he is offering is indeed the best fit for you. The reason I decided to expose the so-called workplace lies is because of my friend Fang Xi. One day, while we were eating together, a friend said that for some reason, things that are clearly nonsense get presented as \"bibles of the workplace\" or \"guides to success\" – things like \"Send Me to Garcia\" and \"No Excuses.\" These works not only offer unoriginal ideas but also misrepresent concepts; the workplace isn’t a battlefield – who would want to work in an office filled with tension and conflict? Who would want to spend the whole day reporting to their boss and saying “there are no excuses”? In other words, on the battlefield, fighting bravely is a soldier’s duty, and dying in battle is an honor; but in the workplace, it should be sufficient to accomplish extraordinary things in ordinary positions, right? There’s no need to risk one’s life, right? What right does a boss or an enterprise have to demand that employees work without any excuses? This friend works at a company where working overtime is the norm; the managers there never think that employees need rest. They require employees to clock in when they start working, but there’s no such requirement for when they leave. Several employees at this company develop diabetic kidney disease as a result of the heavy workload, yet the company still insists on this approach. Their reasoning is that to be the best employees, one must be like that American soldier who delivered a letter to Garcia – one must be willing to make sacrifices. If you’re afraid of death, then don’t become a soldier; if you’re afraid of fatigue, then don’t come to work. There should be no excuses when working – if you get so tired that you vomit blood, it’s your own fault for having a weak body. I was very surprised at the time and thought, It can’t be that blatant, right? That friend said it was obviously blatant, and moreover it was all wrapped up in lofty words—for example, the company demands loyalty from you, but it never mentions any guarantees for you. It expects you to \"deliver messages\" to Garcia without any excuse; if you refuse, then you’re not a loyal employee, nor a good employee, and even not an ethical one. After all, the role models for you when it comes to trees are all cadets from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point – can you say that those cadets are not worth learning from? Can you say that the motto of West Point is wrong? Fang Xi reflected at the time that if these unoriginal and inhumane ideas were presented as \"pastries,\" then everyone could tell whether those \"pastries\" were spoiled, because we Chinese are familiar with pastries. But instead, they are packaged as cheese; although it’s actually rotten cheese, haven’t most of us seen cheese before? We can’t say whether it’s good or bad. As a result, some extremely unethical ideas are packaged as \"business bibles\" or \"guides to success\" – presumably the people who write such books are themselves aware of their hypocrisy, since every sentence in those books is written with Chinese bosses’ preferences in mind, yet they pretend it’s a recommendation from Harvard Business Review or one of the world’s top 500 companies. In fact, it’s not easy to make money by selling books. As the saying goes, it’s easier for outsiders to do certain tasks well – a truth that everyone is aware of. What’s most infuriating, however, is that these are often nothing but shameless lies wrapped up in clever packaging. If you really try to become an “excellent employee” by following what’s written in those books, you’re essentially handing over your entire fate to a particular boss. You lose the opportunity to strive for growth and achieve independent success – no matter whether that boss seems to be ambitious and noble or rather petty, selfish, and greedy. If you do this and hand over everything to them, one day you’ll not only face the tragic fate of being fired but also lose the chance to start over. Because at work, you have no choice but to obey; you learn nothing, and you lose not only your job but also your life. Those are lies that, if you believe them, will ruin your life ； And they spread so widely that they almost become truth—Why were you fired? Because you are not a good employee ； Why aren’t you a good employee? Because you didn’t proactively do what the boss asked. But if you proactively follow your boss’s requirements, will your boss definitely not fire you? Not necessarily! Are those employees who disagree with their bosses or cannot get along with their direct supervisors doomed to remain unemployed for life? Of course not—if you’re willing to read the stories of the CEOs of the world’s top 500 companies, you’ll find in those biographies that most of them have lost their jobs at some point—was it because their bosses lacked vision, or did it stem from their own high aspirations? Fiorina, former CEO of HP, has a famous saying: I NEVER OBEY THE RULES (I never follow the rules). Isn’t she a good employee then? Even if she isn’t a good employee, I believe her life will be much more fulfilling than that of most employees who obey their bosses their whole lives and endure everything they are told. You might say that Fiorella is qualified to say such things, given her position – in fact, even before she took on that role, she already had great ambitions; great achievements don’t come about overnight. Character is destiny – a weak character leads to a weak fate, while a strong character, even if it falls once or twice, will eventually be able to get back on its feet. Due to my work, I know many laid-off workers from state-owned enterprises; when they were young, didn’t each of them aspire to be a screw that would never rust? Hardworking and willing to endure hardships, doing whatever the leaders told them to do – how was their life later on? Is it to your liking? Perhaps you might say that their knowledge has become outdated and they have been phased out—do you really think that by following all orders \"to the letter\" day after day, you’ll never be eliminated? By then, you won’t even be able to cry—too many companies only hear the laughter of newcomers, never the tears of those who have been there for a while. Go see the boss and tell him: I’ve worked like a hardworking ox all these years, dedicating myself wholeheartedly to my work. Now you say you don’t want me anymore? That’s too cruel, isn’t it? How many bosses would go out of their way to say thank you to you for all those years of consistent effort? Have they ever reflected on the fact that they didn’t give you a chance to grow? It’s already good enough that they don’t reprimand you harshly or blame you for not striving to improve. They will say: A market economy is one characterized by fierce competition; what we need are talented people, not slaves. Where is it difficult to find employees who are willing to obey orders? The key is to be able to bring benefits to the company. Let them say everything. The bottom determines the mouth – when success masters train you, think carefully first: are they really training you or destroying you? They tell you that bosses like employees who have \"no excuses,\" and you should immediately realize that they are speaking in line with what your boss wants; otherwise, how would they make a living? As for you, if each of you were such employees, think about whether you could guarantee getting a promotion and a raise Let me tell you what kind of employees leaders like the most – those who don’t even ask for payment and are extremely obedient. If things are successful, it’s all thanks to the leaders; if they fail, it’s all one’s own fault. If the leaders show kindness from time to time, one should always keep that in mind ； If a leader wrongs you, don’t bother explaining anything; if you can’t even bear such slightings, how can you achieve anything great? Let me tell you, as an employee like this, your boss will indeed like you, but is it a blessing or a curse for your life to have such a boss who likes you? I remember hearing a TV speech that left a deep impression on me. At that time, I was flying back from Guangzhou to Beijing, and due to traffic congestion, the person who was supposed to pick me up was late. With nothing to do, I stood at the entrance of the airport supermarket watching TV, and happened to see a training expert there talking about a book titled \"No Excuses\" – the main idea of which is that if you want to be a good employee, you must treat your supervisors in the same way that West Point cadets treat their officers; you must carry out whatever orders your supervisors give, without any excuses. That training expert said seriously, “At the West Point Military Academy, reasonable requests are called training, while unreasonable requests are called hardship; in any case, there are no excuses.” He gave a specific example: one night, just before bedtime, an officer came up to a cadet and said, “I need to use these gloves tomorrow; wash them clean for me.” ”The trainee immediately stood at attention and saluted, saying, “YES, SIR.” It’s really tough on our training master; he has to ‘act out’ the scenarios – playing both the trainees and the officers at different times. “As we all know, it’s easy to wash gloves clean, but how do you dry them? This trainee washed the gloves as quickly as possible, then wrung them out repeatedly with a dry towel; after that, there was nothing else to do but keep shaking them. ”The training master bent down and moved his right hand in a pendulum-like motion: “This trainee kept doing this motion all night long. When day broke, an officer arrived; as soon as he reached out, the trainee immediately handed him the glove. After putting it on, the officer said ‘GOOD’, which is equivalent to ‘not bad’ in Chinese, and then he left.” ” “Why didn’t the officer ask the trainee how he dried it? You must be going through a lot, right? He didn’t need to ask; he was an officer, so all he had to do was give orders. As for the trainees, their task was simply to complete the assignments without any excuses – they just needed to get the work done properly. There was no need for all that nonsense. For example, it’s so late and there’s no dryer – what should we do? That’s something you need to figure out on your own. So there are no excuses. ”Finally, the training expert pointed at the audience and said firmly, \"Those of us who are managers know that the most troublesome thing is when subordinates don’t obey orders; so we buy them a copy of ‘No Excuses’ and have them follow what’s written in it.\" ” I hate this training guru—I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the motto of the West Point Academy. As a soldier, obedience is a duty, because his profession is to \"defend the country.\" It means sacrificing oneself so that thousands of families can live in happiness; he must do this, and **honor demands it of him. But most of us are just ordinary workers among thousands of others. It’s hard to say whether the work we do can even be considered a \"career.\" Is it worth dedicating ourselves wholeheartedly to it? Soldiers obey orders and sacrifice their lives on the battlefield; they are given pensions in return. We work hard for a profit-driven boss, and when we suffer harm, who else but our family will shed tears to comfort us? For most people, work is a part of life – we need to work first and foremost in order to survive; once our basic needs are met, we continue to work because we want to integrate into society and become useful members of it. The purpose of working is certainly not to sacrifice ourselves at our jobs. A soldier should always be prepared to fight in battle, as that is his role as a soldier, but does the organization we work for require us to give our lives for it? If it’s necessary, why go through the trouble of learning about the man who delivered the letter to Garcia? During the war years, which young soldier didn’t risk their life to deliver letters to the Eighth Route Army? I believe that those who write books like \"No Excuses\" these days only need to find a foreign name in order to revive those slogans from the \"Cultural Revolution\" era that ignored human dignity. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with slogans like \"One red heart, two kinds of readiness,\" \"Obey all orders,\" \"Don’t make demands on the organization,\" or \"Be willing to be an unsinkable screw.\" Indeed, when a person is facing his country and a noble cause, he should act in that way. But if he is just an employee in a company, then he must make demands on the company and cannot simply be content to be a \"screw\" – because there are no such things as unsinkable screws in this world. So if a person chooses to be a screw, even if he is willing to accept a low salary and avoid seeking fame, when he eventually \"rusts away,\" people will still use a wrench to remove him and throw him into the trash bin. At that point, even his desire to be as insignificant as a screw will be shattered. This post was last edited by cnpc100 on 2009-3-21 11:34.]