Whither promises?

Recently I read about a taxi driver who cheated the company he was tied up with, by meddling with the GPS and pocketing the full amount taken from the commuter. Such an offense is typical of a socio-economic crime committed by people during the course of their work. Blue collar crime is tagged to a person of lower economic strata and white collared crime is the name for financial fraud perpetrated by people in the upper social strata during the course of their professional work or business.

There is another type of conduct where financial loss is caused by “convenient” forgetfulness of the given word. This can be tagged as soft collar acts of omission as the “victim” cannot confront the person, because this generally happens between people who know each other well.

A friend of mine was once approached by an MNC, whose director was a known person, to do some online content creation. A contract was signed lending it the corporate touch. The friend was overjoyed and dedicated her valuable time into bringing out a laudable work. But instead of financially compensating her, the director’s aide continued to re-send the article multiple times with stringent time deadlines, seeking alterations and clarifications on issues too insignificant to matter. Finally in frustration my friend let go of the beautiful article without any compensation. The “employer” never brought closure to the matter with her but went ahead and used the article. My friend’s tryst with the MNC ended on a disappointing note.

Yet another friend of mine had this to recount to me. He was approached by a leading publisher, well known to him, for a translation work. A sample work of the project was given and my friend sailed through it as it was as easy as yawning for him. He was all set to translate the full work upon an agreed remuneration. To his surprise, that project was withdrawn, with the promise that it would be given back later. He was piled with a very difficult and lengthy prose and given a time frame for completion. He went about it with his usual sincerity, spending countless hours over research to effect the correct translation. Although he was compensated, he is yet to get the promised earlier, the easy prose which came with the same remuneration. He wistfully remarks that it is impossible to remind a friend of his or her promise.

What about the “soft spoken” realtor who promised my relative to do a few alterations to the apartment? It seems soon after registration he conveniently forgot that he ever promised anything. With a bit of prodding, part of the work was got done, and the rest, well, my relative himself got it done at quite a cost.

A promise becomes a reality only if the person having the means has also the intention of fulfilling it. Or else it turns into only a “miss”!