THE LAW OF KARMA

REAPING WHAT WE SOW

A True Story

Most of us have heard this expression throughout our lives.  It is also known as "karma".  Many 'sleepwalkers' do not even consider this lesson in their daily pursuit of more, more, more. I will tell you of a personal experience that held me in the grips of anger and bitterness for four years. 

    I was in desperate need of employment.  I had been out of work for a year while caring for an ailing grandmother and mother.  I was still maintaining a separate home for myself and my daughter and my resources had all been spent.  I answered an ad in the newspaper for a position that I was qualified for and was granted a job interview.  This company was a privately owned corporate franchise.  Knowing that it is not always an ideal situation to work for a small family, I approached the interview with the desire to land this job and I felt confidant that they would follow the policies and procedures put into place by the parent corporation.  You see, I am of the teaching that the spoken word is held equally as credible as the written word.  If all else failed, I felt this family had to abide by the corporate basic policy.

   During the interview  with the father and son, I spoke honestly of my last year being caregiver to my family members.  They quickly agreed that it was the 'right' thing to do and mentioned having recently done this themselves.  "Family comes first" they quickly chimed in.  When asked my views concerning customer service, I brought forth my experience and teachings of winning the trust of each customer and providing them with the best possible service each and every time.  I informed the owners that  I approach each client with sincerity, truthfulness and individual attention that would best win the client over and keep him with the company for years to come. After all, isn't this the way that we should approach all relationships in our life's dance?  I thought this was basic knowledge.  How they smiled and agreed.  I was hired on the spot and offered more money than I had imagined.

   Did I have my intuition turned off?  You bet I did.  All one had to do was pause to feel the tension inside this building, notice the piles of paper haphazardly placed on every flat surface of this office.  Everything was in disarray and the women in the office stared blankly at me as though their tongues and souls had been ripped out.

  I worked alongside men who couldn't wait to tell me about the practices of this family regarding the customers and the employees. Each story became more and more hard to believe. Yep, it's nothing a little love won't conquer was what I told myself as I was sure that I could turn morale around.  The stories seemed to translate into the mother wearing the pants, the father being a professional man who had lost his edge and was now totally submissive to his wife, and the son who had failed miserably in college.  Three.  Three of them.  Not too many, I thought.  I was convinced that I had enough light and wisdom to show the way to a better tomorrow.  I was about to learn a very valuable lesson.

   The first thing the employees warned me about was the owners methods of time and record keeping. "She (the mother) will change your timecard anytime she feels like it and not pay you correctly, so always make a copy of your timecard on Friday's.  She will not pay your overtime and whenever she feels, she will steal from you vacation pay and sick pay."

   This is America, I thought, with guidelines in place to protect workers from employment practices such as these.  I had a lot to learn.  After all, I was 40 years old and had already worked for many company's and employers, and timekeeping was seldom a problem.

   The manner in which these three handled day to day business made me wonder how they still had a business to manage. At that time, they had held this corporate franchise for ten years.  I immediately began my campaign to treat the woman creature with kindness and attention that her soul so desperately needed, yet she held her soul beyond reach.  Now, I am no stranger to human nature and behaviors.  One of my purposes during this earth dance is to learn all that I can, through experience and teachings, of the being human.  I knew of this purpose at a very early age and was given certain interest and experiences to help me seek the knowledge and wisdom surrounding it.

  Until this part of my earth dance, the only souls that I had been unable to directly touch had been the souls of the addicted.  Through experience and learning, I came to understand that the souls of the addicted are some of the most challenging to reach because the addiction itself stands guard over it's host.  They often seem unreachable, but even addicts have to come down from their drug of choice some time.  It is in those times that they are either most destructive or most reachable. It is a case by case situation that requires extra study, extra care, and expert timing. 

   Now, I had taken on corporate giants before.  I believe that we have nothing to fear when we take truth with us so I had battled issues of employment rights, safety issues, sexual harassment, and basic civil liberties many times over.  Every battle that I undertook up to this time had resulted in a rewriting of policy and procedure and an immediate change regarding the driving force.

   Being one who works to live instead of lives to work, I had laid down my lust for power and gold many years prior.  I knew from watching the news, politicians, religious organizations, corporate giants, oil companies, many lawyers, and many wealthy people that many feel laws do not pertain to them.  That somehow, with all of their power, riches and gold, they can easily escape man's law and spend their days stealing from and walking on the backs of everyone one else.  Why do they think they can escape the Universal law of "reaping what you sow"?  Trust me my friend, if you have escaped it until now, your circle will surely  return to join together, and you will suffer results  that your money will not be able to buy you a way out of.  Then you will be harvesting the bitter fruit of the spoiled seeds that you planted .

  It wasn't long before the she creature decided she would keep some of my earned money.  Alas, I had the time card to prove the error so she made up some story about how the mistake had occurred and stated the error would be corrected in the next week's pay.  The first time, perhaps it was a mistake. After all, she is human too, right?  I continued to offer unreturned love and basic employee to employer respect despite of her dark presence.  After a few weeks the pay was incorrect again.  I brought this again to the attention of the father and son as this was the appropriate chain of command and they promised to get it resolved by the next week.  I sent them with a firm warning, twice may have been a mistake, but the third time would not be handled in such a forgiving manner.  I personally did not have trouble with my pay again until I left the company but I had to hear the stories of all the other employees each week who were taken from and the lies they were told regarding why they would not be paid in accordance to their own time keeping.  This was an issue that burned me to the quick.  Why didn't these employee's demand their fair pay?  I found out that these meek people feared unemployment worse than they feared being ripped off of weekly pay and vacation pay.  The economic state of our country.  The working poor.  Please understand, this she creature took from these people as easy as I walk my dog. No apology, no decency, no sense of conscience existed within that woman's actions.

   The treatment of the customers was a threefold process.  Father took his sales pitch out and said whatever was necessary to get their business.  He handed the client over to son who followed up with more deceit and upon purchase of goods or services, the mother provided her methods of billing that was not in accordance with what father and son had promised..  They did business as though they did not need this customer in the future.  And this went on for 14 years.  The first ten and last two I was not working there.  How did it go on for so long?  That corporate franchise name.  The corporation was a territorial one so the three had the market on this named product in our city and some surrounding cities.  These are cities full of restaurants and the product was restaurant kitchen equipment and repair..

  These unfair charges could be anything from false recording of overtime labor, parts, misc. supplies or her favorite which was shipping charges.  That is where I came in.  Some of the duties of my job was shipping and billing.  Each and everyday her focus was to inflate shipping charges as robustly as possible without getting caught.  All the while, destroying customer confidence, maintaining bad relations with customers and vendors, and sneering down her nose at anyone who dared question her. Her favorite term for those who did question her billing practices was "Schiester".  This woman was unknowingly trying to take the business down regardless of the outcome.  It was so visible that it was ridiculous.

  Now, lying and stealing from the customers and other employees was really more than I could stand.  I notified any agency in America that would handle these type of issues and did have some success with Osha, (safety violations), and the local police  (repeated parking in the one parking spot designated for the handicapped) but turned down by others.

  Could these three not understand the very basics of life and business?  Did they not care?  Were they so arrogant to consider themselves above God's laws although they attended Mass each week?   How could they stand themselves amidst all the lying and stealing?  They profited from the unfair charges to customers, cheating vendors out of their due pay, and holding out on employees overtime, sick and vacation pay.  It was a sad mess and it grew within me each day.  I brought these offenses to the team of three's attention so many times that I grew weak.

    After two years of doing daily battle with them I had become as vile towards them as they were the rest of the world.  When we allow ourselves to spend all of our positive energy on trying to correct negative that will not budge, times three, we then can become lost in the same darkness and our  light does not shine for the good of the seekers.  The last bit of light that I held after these two years would be extinguished when I worked my two week notice and expected vacation pay that I had not taken to be in my final pay.  When it wasn't and I inquired why, I was told that I had not earned it (although I had just completed my second year and was now eligible for 2 weeks.)  That was a favorite of theirs.  While in discussion with the son about the payment he told me that we would fight "the good fight". The good fight?  What does that even mean?  Is there really such thing as a "good fight"?

   None the less I had truth and written policy on my side so off I went to file a civil complaint.  I had two years of documents, time cards, complaints  with me but I had forgotten one very crucial thing considering the forces I was battling.  Can you guess it?   That's right, a-t-t-o-r-n-e-y.   The presiding judge, their lawyer, and the father rewrote the policy manual right in front of me and everyone else in the courtroom.  They had won my earned vacation pay and I was sent out to feel that I had been in the wrong. Immediately following the disappointing day in court I knew that I had to do something differently to purge this bitterness from my heart.  It was then that I went to the desert to begin my vision quest.

   Now back to the original point of this which is seeing ones actions travel full circle.  My coworker from that company who had been there 10 years left the company at the same time that I did.  He opened a competing company based on good customer relations, honesty, ethical billing and following up on commitments and over two years has done quite well and  brought many clients over from the offending company.  They found that they no longer had a client base to support themselves and their drive for more, more, more.  They had begun to struggle when along came the president of the parent corporation who paid a little surprise visit based on complaints. He stripped the family of their franchise and gave them 60 days to vacate the building. Sweet justice. The kind that we shouldn't try to impose on our adversaries. Universal law handles these situations without our involvement.

   So, when tempted to deceive or dishonor someone at your own gain, just remember,  "We reap what we sow".  If we sow vile seeds, we get bitter fruit.  If we sow seeds of peace, harmony, compassion and love, we receive like blessings many times over.  This is the law of karma, the Universal law of fair exchange and the Biblical law of treating others as though you wish to be treated.  And so It Is. May the Blessings Be.

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