Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

I must have missed something in my life as the title of this post was very confusing the first time I heard it.

I was being interviewed for a job. This was on the telephone. There were several people on the other end of the line. The principal interviewer asked me something like, “What are cases where you had a hard right and an easy wrong?”

I asked for several explanations to the question. I just didn’t understand what seemed to be a perplexing situation for the interviewer. What do you do when it is easy to lie and difficult to tell the truth?

I didn’t understand this concept of “difficult to tell the truth.” We aren’t little kids hiding chewing gum under our tongue when the teacher asks about it. We are adults in working situations. We tell the truth and work with it. That is what adults do, huh?

Mark Twain, or someone else famous, said something like, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

That sort of means that the “truth” is the truth and everyone knows the truth so others will remember the truth as well as I remember the truth or something like that.

The estimate was $10, the actual cost was $13. I wish that weren’t the case, but that is the truth. We work with it.

“But if you admit to a cost overrun, you will be the subject of scorn.” Well, maybe so, but the cost overrun is the truth and eventually everyone will know the truth.

Well, if we are clever, we can hide the truth until the truth doesn’t matter and we can get away with a lie. Well, maybe so, but the truth that we are lying and therefore are liars will come to light.

This begins to be so complicated that I get a headache. Right is hard if we make it so. Wrong is wrong by definition. Perhaps I am a simpleton.