Archive note: This text comes from the older archive of Nomika Epilekta and is preserved with editorial care for historical and informative reading.

Reading your article made me recall the countless years I too lived and worked alongside major names in small and large businesses.
Indeed, how easy it is to criticize and place blame on a third person, and specifically on an employee, and how difficult it is to put yourself in that person's position and try to understand their needs?
So he dared to ask for his holiday allowance in order to go on vacation? How is that possible!!! I was in the professional arena for more than 38 years, I received a great deal and gave just as much, but fortunately I did not live through this great crisis that today afflicts young people as well as people close to retirement. Fortunately, although I went through periods of economic crisis alongside employers, they were able to pay me — without irony — even if late. They never, however, mentioned their difficulties to me, because they knew that I understood how they had reached that point, just as they knew what difficulties I had gone through to acquire the qualifications I offered and to cover, in my own way, the daily needs of the office; because although our free time during working hours was minimal, not to say nonexistent, in difficult moments the employer found the time to inform us.

What else can an employee expect from an employer? Their salary and whatever is due to them, so they can meet their expenses with dignity. Vacation is something we all look forward to, so that we can rest and recharge our batteries — for the employer and for ourselves — and gather strength for the future demands of life.

During all these years I met quite a few employers, but never ungrateful employees; a sense of honor is always present in workers' hearts toward the employer, even if it is not visible from everyone. Better days will come in life, as long as you have the patience and persistence to manage the needs of your household and your office properly and prudently; and of course the employee who asked for his allowance in order to go on vacation is not to blame for this, nor, of course, do you punish him with dismissal because he did not say “thank you” — and I put that in quotation marks because an employee carries thanks and a smile in everyday life.

Your employer friend reminded me of other things as well: work full of zeal and love for what I did, thinking above all of him. Being at work on time, smiling, pleasant, with a clear mind; thinking for him, speaking for him, keeping his coffee warm, ordering his food on time, not disturbing him during his quiet time, and so on.

It is no accident that the customer is always right, or that the courts vindicate the worker.
Woe to the employer who thinks that his employee took a vacation while he did not; woe to him once again, because he surely neglected to inform that employee — while they discussed everything like a family — about his financial problem.

And every day is easy... not for the employee, but for the employer who can pull the strings, easily placing the responsibility for his mismanagement on third parties, and even worse on his employee, who is nothing more than an executive instrument.

Yet no one is lost, even in today's difficult time, because the person who commits injustice harms himself more than the person who suffers it.

Thank you for your time...