The king's sincere workers
There was once a king who had two ministers. One day he said to his ministers, “Please submit to me the names of all the palace workers who are working sincerely. There are about five hundred workers altogether, so I would like to know which ones are sincere.”The first minister brought the king a list of twelve workers. He said these twelve workers were very sincere whereas the rest were not sincere. The other minister brought a list of three hundred sincere workers.
The king said, “The insincere people may be needed a little, but they often cheat me. Only the sincere people deserve my special attention. I never get a chance to give the sincere ones a reward, so now I would like to reward them.”
To the one who had submitted only twelve names the king said, “How can we have only twelve people who are sincere out of five hundred?”
The minister said, “Many people are insincere. Some people work for just an hour or a half hour daily. Some don’t work at all. But you still keep them. You don’t want to fire them because you have a big heart.”
The other minister said, “King, O King, he is wrong. Without these three hundred people on my list, you could not manage. They are absolutely sincere. You try keeping only those twelve and you will see that it is impossible to manage.”
The first minister said, “I am not saying that the king should keep only these twelve people. I am only saying that the others are insincere. These twelve will never deceive the king. They do much work with utmost sincerity.”
The king said, “Let all of the five hundred workers pass by me one by one. I will look at each one and come to my own opinion.”
So one by one the five hundred workers passed by the king. As each one passed by, the king said, “I am sorry. I cannot give you a reward.”
At one point five workers came by in a row who were all very surprised that the king did not give them a reward. “It is quite unexpected,” each one of them said.
When everything was over, the king was confused. “Why did these five say that it was quite unexpected?” he asked. “All the others just remained silent.”
The king told the story to a very, very wise friend who, quite unexpectedly, had come to see him. “I don’t understand what it means,” he said.
The friend answered, “I tell you, O King, the minister who said that only twelve workers are sincere is right. But the one who said that three hundred are sincere, you should investigate.”
The king started his investigation by sending for the five who had been so surprised when he didn’t give them a reward. He said to them, “You five all said that it was ‘quite unexpected’ when I didn’t give you a reward. Why did you say that? I will give you lots of money if you tell me the truth. I assure you that I will not fire you or punish you if you tell me the truth.”
One of them said, “O King, all three hundred of us bribed the minister, but we paid him the most. Since we never work, we had to pay him more than the others. Then he promised that he would say we were among the good workers. Since we were paying him so much more than the others, he assured us that we would definitely get a reward from you and we were expecting it. This minister is very bad. On many occasions we bribe him. The other minister is the sincere one. He won’t accept bribes from anyone.”
The king immediately fired the bad minister. Then he gave a reward to the good minister and to the twelve sincere workers. He also gave money to the five who had confessed that they had bribed the bad minister and said, “From now on all my workers will work under strict supervision. This time if they don’t work sincerely, I will definitely fire them.” Then he gave his friend all his gratitude.
