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“We have come to bury ‘Hard Work’ not to praise him, but praise him I must. Hard Work was a good man, but I must say here that I told him so. I warned him that he was a dying breed - that no one worked that way anymore and that he would soon join so many of those we see buried here in this very cemetery ( ‘See…they cannot even afford to be buried in decent cemeteries V. 1st class G,’ he thought in his mind)

‘I warned him that good man though he was, ‘good’ is only a figment of your imagination. The rule of the ‘rat race’ is that you are as good as you say you are. I warned him…I warned him…

Mr Marketer broke down in tears. Mr ‘I.T’ came to Mr Marketer’s side and with his arm around Mr Marketer’s shoulders, he began, “Mr Hard Work was more than a friend to me, after all he was here all day, and most of the night. And how much closer can you be than spend 18 out of every 24 hours with anyone. But then, even I warned. I told him that I.T had made life much easier, but he always wanted to do things the hardest way. He insisted on ‘back-ups’ to all our discs… (Who does that these days?) He insisted on ‘hard copies’ to all our files stating that our systems were always crashing or hanging. I told him that no one looked in the archives for anything older than one year or even one month, but he insisted, “What if this…?” “What if that…?” We warned him that the world no longer went round in circles but that life zooms on ahead at the speed of light and that all is left in its trail. We told him that to keep up, you could not continually look back and tidy your roots. But he did not listen. We warned that he was a dying breed”

“And what can I add to what my colleagues have said,” Ms Computerised HR began… “He always said you shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bath water and I always told him those were the days when there was a scarcity of babies. Now for every baby you throw out you can get 10 to replace it, so what’s the big deal? I always told him he took things to heart too much and I think that’s what finally killed him - a broken heart.

“I warned him that the new corporate order was about results - how much, not how well…. and he never seemed to understand.” She looked round at the others with tears in her eyes… “Though we tried to keep it hidden, you all probably knew there was a thing between us, but those his ideals kept getting in the way. If only he relaxed a little bit more and let me take care of him, perhaps he’d have been alive today.”

I don’t know about you but I feel we buried ‘Hard Work’ a long time ago in this country and I mean real hard work…

These days everyone claims to be working hard but less is getting done.

People stay in offices till 10 pm, as if how late you stay is the measure of success.

Marketers zoom around the clubs, churches, mosques and bars, and arrive back in their offices fulfilled at having done a hard day’s work and indeed their balance sheets appear to confirm it.

Memos are not written and are not read… after all we’re building a paperless culture and too many meetings are held for there to be any minutes of any.

Indeed the general picture I get is what do you need documentation for anyway! The reading culture is dying and also will soon be buried in an age where television and video provide heavy visual and sensual stimuli in replacement of stimuli to the brain and imagination that books used to provide.

Record keeping is a thing of the ancient past - all in the guise of computerization etc. etc. Have you ever tried to find something that was in anyone’s ‘system’ six months ago? Do archives and stores even exist in corporate office plans anymore? Forgive me, I am not knocking computerization in any way, but where it was imported from, they store information and dates accurately and safely. Here we did not buy the software on ‘safe storage’. Where it was bought, libraries and visual matter still exist, but here the computer seems to be a substitute for every type of printed matter.

The marketer is so busy making his next sale that he doesn’t have time to file the documentation on his last one, so God help you if you are the last sale and you have a problem with your purchase.

A few departments are left with some hard work - usually they’re called ‘back offices’ - but with all the ‘razzmatazz’ of the ‘front offices’, they just wonder what they are doing there and naturally that affects the quality of their work.

Perhaps we’ve never thought through the damage this culture may eventually do. Imagine a hospital with no record of it’s patients blood group (the file is lost or the computer crashed), a manufacturer with no record of the combination of the last safe he sold, a bank with no evidence of its customer’s title documents, an oil company with no record of the depth of the last oil well it drilled, a university with no record of some students’ answer sheets (believe me that is already happening), a WAEC that has lost all previous years results, a telecommunications company that has no record of your stolen phone line (and that I can tell you is also already happening!)

Funny though these situations may seem, they are not unconnected to the death of Mr Hard Work. A lot of the things that make life go smoothly are sheer hard work - no glamour, no flourish, no praise, no fanfare; just hard work!

Filing, backing up, keeping records is hard work which as a service provider you owe your customer. Wrong attitudes and poor service should not be tolerated by any employer and customers themselves should begin to exercise real democracy and shout (if necessary), insist, and object vigorously till they get good service. We’re a selling and buying country, sellers must be taught to provide after sales service for every service they provide, perhaps not every service requires records of 20 years but there are some reasonable information you should be able to provide your customer within a reasonable time of it being needed.

Some of the repair work this country needs is deep… real deep.

I’m ready to do some real deep spring cleaning. Are you ready to give it a try? We’ve really got to restore values to this country!