The day I gave my staff blank cheques

My first monthly salary was R600 It was a fortune It was more than I needed to pay for my food transport rent cigarettes and a few evenings out I was even able to send R200 home which made my father very proudAs subeditor at the Readers Digest my next job I was paid R1300 Of course they didnt pay me anything extra for writing since I was staff I should have been happy with R1300 it was double my previous salary and who gets thatBut I felt cheated By then I had arrived at a conviction not evidencebased that I was a much better writer than I actually was and deserved a much higher salary than I actually received It galled me that someone else should be deciding what I was worthSo I finally left all employment and started Sol Features a writers agency of my own Word got around that an angry journalist was setting something up and other angry wannabe writers began showing up Soon we had a bunch of serious writersI paid them no salary Actually Zero I told them plainly that I had no backers I promised them that I would go to war to get them a rupee per word when they wrote instead of a hundred rupees per 1000 words the going rate thenBut we needed to pay the typist the rent the phone bills Soon we began designing company house journals and using that money to run an office I could finally pay salaries to people who also earned from writing I awarded myself for the first time the salary I thought I deservedAnd I gave my other writers the salary I thought they deservedIt took a while for the extent of my own hypocrisy to hit me The man who had resented anyone else deciding his salary was now the chief honcho of his own company mdash and deciding what other people should get paid Nobody objected or thought twice about it since this is the norm Your bosses tell you what theyll pay youBut one day I cracked I didnt want to be the DeciderinChief any more I called my team and broke it to them Seems to me there are at least three ways you could decide how much you should be paid worth need and want One you take whatever you think youre worth based on what your assessment of your merit Your criteria your decision Two you could decide that you need a certain sum based on your expenses savings needs and other dues Its unconnected with your merit market value or how good you are at your workSomeone might have quoted Marx here From each according to his ability to each according to his need I continued Three you could decide to be paid what you want Any number Maybe youd like to retire by age 35 so you want a fortune each month Now I dont know which of these three is the fairest but I dont want to be the one making that decisionWith this I announced the plan everyone would get a blank cheque which they could fill as they wished The bank balance would be made public I promised not to monitor the withdrawals and swore this was not a test of some kindHeres what happenedNobody wanted it They thought it was a trick Everybody suspects an offer with no strings attached Raju Bist now a professional photographer asked me What if I discover that Im greedyWell better to find that out sooner than later right I repliedSomeone else asked me what would happen if a person took out all the money in the bank and disappeared Well I replied we call that eating someone elses lunch How far do you think theyd getIn the first month everyone withdrew less than what I had been paying them And in the second month slowly they began exploring the limits and contours of the system I genuinely didnt monitor anything I knew they simply couldnt let it go bankruptOne day I learned that they had used the system to help one of them buy a bicycle By mutual consensus everyone else agreed to withdraw a little less so that one person could draw a little morePeople got involved in finding new work Suddenly Sol Features felt like it belonged to everyone of usA Londonbased startup called Markets httpssmarketscom lets employees decide what theyd like to draw Its transparent and people can be challenged by their colleagues and defend why they think theyre such hot stuff The owner says 99 per cent of his people are happy In our case Id say it was 100 per centHere viewed from there C Y Gopinath in Bangkok throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai the city that raised him You can reach him at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycompgtCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates