Files
Boss walked in and found a set of
papers lying on the floor.
Boss (angry): You are all so irresponsible.
Didn’t any of you see these papers lying on the floor right in front of the
office? Or were you all so busy with your work that you couldn’t stop for a
second to pick them up?
Employee Two: Sorry Sir.
Boss: Sorry, that’s the one word solution
for everything with you, isn’t it? Do something wrong and then say sorry. Aren’t
you ashamed? What are these papers?
Employee One: Those are property documents
of Mr. S, Sir.
Boss: And they are lying around like a
piece of garbage. Do you know how important these documents are? What if they
got lost?
Employee Three: Mr. S has the original Sir.
Boss: That’s not an excuse for
irresponsibility. And I know Mr. S better that any of you guys. He is worse
than you all. I won’t be surprised if he says that he has lost the originals.
He asks us to keep his papers with belief
that we would keep them safe; so that he could refer them tomorrow. But what do
we do? We throw them around like a piece of garbage. Irresponsible idiots…
Why weren’t these papers filed? Up till
last night they were on top of the front desk. Now they are lying on the floor.
What if I hadn’t seen them? They would have been left there till the cleaning lady
swept them away. Why aren’t they in their file?
Employee One: We keep three files for Mr. S,
Sir, and there was a slight confusion as to which file they belong. So we
thought we’d ask you before filing them.
Boss: So were you waiting for an auspicious
moment to ask me? Tell me now, what’s the confusion?
Employee One: The three files we keep for
Mr. S are ‘Documents and Deeds’, ‘Income Tax Matters’ and ‘Sales Tax Matters’.
Boss: So what’s the confusion? These should
go to ‘Documents and Deeds’.
Employee One: I told them Sir but they didn’t
agree.
Employee Two: The client has sold the
property Sir. So now it is more relevant in ‘Income Tax Matters’, for
calculating Capital Gains, etc.
Boss: So file them in ‘Income Tax Matters’.
Employee One: But the client hasn’t received
the full sales consideration yet Sir. He might want to refer them again. So isn’t
it better to file them in ‘Documents and Deeds’?
Employee Two: That makes Capital Gains
computation even more difficult. So they should certainly go into Income Tax
Matters.
Employee Three: Don’t leave Sales Tax out
of this! When sales consideration is received against fixed assets point five
percent VAT is payable on it! What if that point gets missed while VAT computation
and audit? So they should go to ‘Sales Tax Matters’.
Boss: Point five percent? I don’t think it’s
relevant.
Employee Three: Point five percent of Ten
Crores Sir. It is relevant enough for the department to issue a notice.
Employee One: Which file Sir?
Boss was lost in thought.
Employee Three: Most relevant fact as of
now is that we almost lost them. So may be the best solution would be to file
them in ‘Miscellaneous’ or ‘Lost and Found’!!
Boss: Shut up you idiot.
And after some more thinking he
gave the final verdict.
Boss: Take two more copies of the set and
put one in each file!
-Ashok Sri Kirshna
