Working Against Our Interests.
To put our own interests ahead of others’ is the surest way to hurt our own interests. Because most persons do not recognize or believe this truth, most persons work against their own interests. A clerk in a railroad “information bureau” was asked for a timetable showing the trains to a certain place. He lazily laid one where the inquirer had to reach after it. On being asked whether there were no trains between two indicated in the schedule, the clerk said there were, but that he was temporarily out of his supply of the time-tables that showed them. When the inquirer suggested that it would have been well for the clerk to mention this fact at the outset, and save risk of serious and unnecessary delay through the missing of a train, the clerk’s answer was first a stare, then a sneering laugh. He apparently wanted it plainly understood that he was not going to put himself to trouble like that in order to look after the interests of someone else. His own thoughtless convenience was of more importance to him than any other man’s interests. So he hurt his own interests badly, as he did those of the railroad that he represented, by refusing to think of another’s interests. His attitude was exceptional, to be sure,—but only in the glaring character of his shortsightedness, not in the spirit that it stands for. In subtler ways men and women are constantly hurting themselves by thinking most of themselves. He is greatest — now and here, as well as in the life to come — who is the best servant of others.— S. S. Times.