Allure

Remember, Gavin, our first conversation?  I sit in dejected misery, career shredded, heart filleted from backbone, soul destroyed.  For a latter-life breadwinner, no tragedy could devastate more.  Recently diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, barely able to process the events around me, you extend kindliness into my situation.   'Cast your burdens on Me, all of you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  We are all made in His image', you say.

And when we probe business ethics and social morality? 'Vince is asking me to do business deals that I don't want to do.  He's ok with that', you say. Do you remember those ethics, Gavin?

Before you surfaced, I managed much in our new e-commerce venture, drowning in the process, parrying office politics fostered by dear old Vince, our Chief Executive Officer.  Into the office by 06h00, working weekends, there was no time to build other facets into my life.  After months of waking each night, noting tasks for tomorrow, being courted, flattered, pounded by Vince, setting deadlines, balancing workloads, losing my temper, stressing productivity, I just couldn't any more.  In no uncertain terms, I told Vince so.

Vince abandoned me.  He tired of my saying conventional things:  'You can't bribe your staff'. 'You can't lie to your clients'.  'You can't sell software that doesn't exist'.  He spotted the chance to sideline this ethical, competent, capable, and in so being, threatening, employee.  You replaced me, as he anticipated my retaliation and revenge, a recipe for dismissal.  I just didn't take the bait.  Instead of instant dismissal, there have been three years of constructive dismissal. 

Not being a skilled manager, Vince motivates staff by causing competition.   He buys loyalty by promoting people to their level of incompetence.  Knowing that nowhere else have they that level of influence, they submit to Vince's wiles.  Most of what happens is attributed to mischief and fun.  But often it is beyond the pale, within the grey murky depths of cruelty and ruthless malice.

Recently retrenched, young, with wife and child, plans to build a home, dreams for a lifetime, you were a most intriguing proposition for someone like Vince.  With blonde hair and blue eyes, engaging smile and somewhat crooked teeth, why, you are perfectly dressed for the part.

Vince projects an aura of benign well-being, lively humour, hiding keen ability to assess, instantaneously, vulnerability within his fellow man - to strip off the protective layer, scale by scale, to the naked desires, the manipulative weak-points in others, and to reel them in, or smash them on the rocks, with long-term strategies, where necessary. He wears light-rimmed glasses with round lenses, which enhance his image of bonhomie.  With minimal hair on his pate, he projects mystic, monk, sage, shaman. 

Having walked the road he set for me, I ponder that glint in his eye.  Is it mischief or malevolence, benevolence or malignance in his soul that is sated?  What angle will he take as he scans the environment, intent on prey swimming within range of his twinkling eye?  Where will he cast the hook next, and what bait will he use to lure and reel in his prey?

In you, Gavin, Vince spotted something.  Naivety?  Materialism?  A sleight of mind, that not you, but Vince, can see?  It's taken three years.  With feather-light touch, he's done it.  He's made you over in his image. 

Lure 1

When you arrived, it was instant favouritism.  Vince spoke with few others, and never with me, that washed up employee assigned to the role of bottom-feeder.  Over a period of six months, whilst the company wound down to a crawl, Vince explored your inner depths, sliding over the strong parts, seeking out the cracks and crevices, influencing and persuading, insinuating and pervading. 

Then came the first bait.  Vince dangled company cell-phones.   And how he played you.  You swung one for each of yourself and Vince's other favourite, making no play for the rest of the staff.  Fair play was abandoned for purchase of influence within power.  Vince tasted your corruptibility.  I watched, bile rising, gall spewing, the glint of eye, and flex of nostril as he caught and savoured the nuance.

As I woke each mid-night, with the taste of threatened unemployment looming, I'd pray, Gavin, that you'd assess the bait, see, taste, touch, smell it, that something inside you would glean the subtlety within it.   But the hook was baited, the trap set and you reveled. 

Lure 2

During those first six months, into the next twelve, Vince tested the water by offering you a medium sized client, stretching your client relationship skills, which are good, if not exceptional.  Despite your best, we lost the client.  So be it.  The exploration and influence, pervasion and invasion continued.  It stretched and flexed into your dealings with clients.

When was it that you first dissembled before a client?  Baited the first hook, cast the first lie, stole the first thought?  You're becoming quite well schooled.

My soul fades as I watch you turn from your truth.  But you can't see can you?  As I wake in the night tossing and turning, I pray, Gavin, that you'll assess the bait, see, taste, touch, smell it, that something inside you will return you to your truth.  May your affinity be with your ethics and values and not the material things, false accolades, lien attention with which you are seduced.

Lure 3

Can you do what it takes? You're building your own business now, Gavin, under the tender gleam of Vince's watchful eye.  Startup costs and effort are ours.  Once established, your company will be spawned off with you and Vince as directors.  The work is ours, the profit is yours and Vince's.  I watch as you flagrantly plagiarise intellectual property from other websites, priding yourself in your acumen.  Is it only with me that there is a cast in your eye when you mention these things?

Landed

No further lures are necessary.  Seduction is complete.  Gavin, you are an exact copy, a perfect reproduction of Vince.  He's cast you back to swim unfettered in the commercial environment equipped now to clone in others, as he has cloned in you, and to seduce clients into contractual obligations that our company may not meet. 

The garland is yours, the trapping of champions.  You have large office space, company cell 'phone, company car, overseas trips, whilst you build your house in company hours. 

You are not consciously aware of what has occurred.  Do you sometimes ponder, retch, blanch, or feint?  Do you think about to whom and in what you have fidelity, and the icons for which they stand?  Perhaps.  It is in the cast of your eye, the shadow of the lash on your cheek as you speak.

If not now, Gavin, then sometime, something will show you the trap that you're in.  And when you see, Gavin, be very cautious.  In just one glint of an eye, that garland becomes a wreath.  And when it does, Gavin, take heart.  It is in that single flash that you revert.  Wiser, and discerning, you are better equipped for your truth, to become the image in which you are made.