Rohit Rawat

Just yesterday my spouse narrated a small story, out of nowhere and there I was speechless and busy with my thoughts after the story ended. She smiled and sensing that it will take me some time to get back in future, she just vanished with her usual household chores. It made me think again and again how taking up somebody else’s responsibility or rather burden lands you in a troublesome situation sooner or later. Piling up additional tasks/responsibilities is always good for an individual’s growth however before taking it one should be aware of the limits one may have.

I had read somewhere that whenever you are starting something it is the beginner’s luck that helps you move ahead with preliminaries. As you move forward the battle for survival gets tougher and it no longer holds true that the one who is toughest gets ahead but it is the one who realizes what I am capable of and to what limit I can push myself, emerges as the winner. You need to realize what you are capable of so that you could do and give your best to the organization you are working with. I was ecstatic that I rediscovered the fact. There is a time in everybody’s life when everybody rediscovers things which have been told umpteen times……happens.

So coming back to the story part, there was a Dhobi (Indian Laundromat) who had a donkey and a dog. Donkey was hard working and used to work from morning till late evening assisting Dhobi in moving clothes from river side and back to home. The Dog had the responsibility to protect the house only. Both the animals were not given adequate meals and were rather treated inappropriately. One night when the Dhobi was sleeping, a thief entered the house. Sensing a possible trouble, the Donkey requested Dog to start barking so that Dhobi gets alerted. The Dog who was sad with the kind of treatment he was getting refused to bark. The Donkey decided to bray as he thought it was his duty to alert dhobi when the Dog refused to comply. He started to bray and thief sensing trouble ran away. The Dhobi, who was tired of all the day’s work, woke up angrily and started beating the donkey who was braying at the top of his voice at midnight with no apparent reasons or this is what Dhobi thought.

Moral of the story – Do not interfere with somebody else’s job. If you do, then get yourself ready for some repercussion.

Now looking at this story from some other angle, The Dhobi was quite educated and was MBA from Harvard University(forgive me if I tried to woooooo someone), woke up and started thinking when he heard donkey braying at the top of his voice at midnight. He went out and saw the thief running away. He was happy and started taking care of the donkey. He also gave the donkey extra responsibilities and donkey was more than happy with his elevated status. On the contrary the Dog turned out to be a lazy bump and assigned his responsibilities to the donkey and started enjoying life. As the time passes by, the Donkey felt over burdened however Dhobi was more than happy to delegate whatever he could to Donkey. Donkey in order to please the Dhobi never said No and gets even more burdened. After 6 months the Donkey was high on stress, low on moral and even lesser in motivation. So neither Dog nor Donkey is now performing.

Moral of the story – Know your limits. Do not add on so much responsibility that at the end you are proved to be a burden to the company rather than a good performer.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 12:29 am and is filed under Interesting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.