People need mutual respect and understanding. If there is a lack of such respect in our lives, it will easily lead to big problems. For example, if you go to an unfamiliar place and want to ask for directions, imagine you see an old man on the side of the road. You walk up and ask rudely: "Hey old man, how do I get to a certain place?" In most cases, asking like this won't get you the information you need, and even if you do get it, you might end up walking a lot of unnecessary detours. In the workplace, companies should respect their employees even more. If a company doesn't respect its employees, the employees may still work diligently during the specified hours, but once they leave work, they will turn their backs and not care about anything related to the company anymore. For employees, doing what is required by company regulations is a must, but as for things that are reasonable yet not explicitly stated, they don't have to worry about them. Over time, this will create a barrier between the employees and the company.
There was a story from long ago that illustrates this issue well. A very lazy person lived in the Song Dynasty. This person was idle all day and dreamt of becoming rich one day and living a life like an emperor, but without putting in any effort, how could such dreams be realized? So, this person remained extremely poor and often envied those who owned cormorants. He thought, "If only I had a group of cormorants, they would catch many fish for me every day. Then I could just sell the fish at the market, making it easy to start earning money." However, cormorants were expensive at the market, and after searching through all his possessions, he didn't even have enough money to buy one cormorant. So, he returned home dejectedly. Back home, the lazy man lay in bed thinking hard about how to find animals similar to cormorants. Suddenly, he remembered that there were many monkeys in the mountains. Why not catch some monkeys, train them to pick fruit for him on the mountain? With this idea in mind, the lazy man immediately went up the mountain and, after much effort, finally caught many monkeys. Now he could implement his plan.
The lazy man brought the monkeys back and locked them in a room that was completely airtight. The room was filled with many bamboo baskets. He didn't give the monkeys any food. After starving for several days, the monkeys became docile. At this point, the lazy man used food to train the monkeys to carry baskets. Any monkey that couldn't carry the basket properly wouldn't get food. Soon, all the monkeys learned to carry the baskets. Then, the lazy man bought many fruits and trained the monkeys to put the fruits into the baskets. Anytime a monkey accidentally damaged or bit into a fruit, it would receive a severe beating. After months of training, the monkeys could place the fruits into the baskets without damaging them.
At this point, the lazy man thought the time was ripe, so he released the monkeys into the mountains to pick fruit for him. Every day, the monkeys would bring the picked fruit back to the lazy man's house undamaged. All the lazy man had to do was take the fruit to the market to sell. But each day, he only gave the monkeys one fruit, which wasn't enough to fill them up. Finally, one day on the mountain, the monkeys couldn't stand the hunger anymore and ate the fruit they had picked themselves. Surprisingly, they weren't whipped by the lazy man. At that moment, they suddenly realized that the mountain wasn't the lazy man's, nor were the fruits. Why couldn't they pick and eat the fruit themselves? So, later, the monkeys never returned to the lazy man's house again.
Article reprinted from: http://www.blwh.cn/rz_more.asp?id=297