A Good Man – Chapter 17 – JohnA Passaro

The best way to find out
If you can trust somebody
Is to trust them.

Ernest Hemingway

Sometimes after cashing out the register during the day, the amount of money that was in the draw wouldn’t match the amount the register said should be in the draw.

When this occurred Bill would be in his office for hours trying to figure out what had happened.

Was there a voided transaction that caused the error?

Why were there so many voided transactions?

Was someone stealing money from the register?

I’m sure these were all questions that went through his mind as he tried to figure out where and why the deficit occurred.

On one such day, after Bill spent hours trying to figure this out, I asked him a question.

“Bill, why don’t you just install a video camera in the store and point it at the cash register?”

His reply was classic Bill.

He said, “I’ll never have a video camera in the store. I don’t want my employees feeling like I don’t trust them. That doesn’t make for a good work environment.”

He went on to say, “I have to believe the people who work with me will do the right thing even when no one is watching. I know installing a camera would help, but that’s not the environment I want to manage in.”

It is better to trust someone and have them violate that trust than it is to live in a world without trust.

It is better to love someone and have your heart broken than it is to have never experienced love.

It is better to believe in someone and have them disappoint you than it is to live in a world without belief.

To trust, to love and to believe is opening oneself to being vulnerable.

There will be times when you are burned by doing so.

Trust, believe and love anyway.

Overall, the world is a much better place when you do.

Read the next chapter – Spontaneous Combustion