The Detroit Times

What's the Reason?
BY A. ANDINGTON BRUCE
Author of "The Riddle of Personality," "Psychology and Parenthood," etc.

You have been in your present employment for five years. During that period you have advanced scarcely at all. Your pay is little more than it was when you began work. You have been left in an inferior position, while others have shot ahead of you. What's the reason?
Isn't it about time that you asked yourself this question? You don't want to be a stick-in-the-mud all your life.
There's some reason that you are standing still. It's up to you to find out what it is.
And don't imagine that you can find out in a moment. Don't take it for granted that the answer can be summed up in the easy phrase "It's my employer's fault—he hasn't given me a square deal."
If that is the kind of employer he really is the sooner you hustle to get a new job the better for you.
But be sure first that you are absolutely justified in passing the buck to your employer. Be entirely honest with yourself.
Have you fully deserved promotion?
Take the matter of your attitude toward your work. What has that been?
If you have looked on your work as merely a disagreeable necessity; if you have put neither interest nor imagination into it; if your main object has been to get through it with as little expenditure of energy as possible; if you have come to work daily at the latest possible moment, and quit work daily at the earliest; if you have attended to your duties perfunctorily, and on the principle that "any old way will do"; if this in whole or part, has been your attitude is it any wonder that you have been ignored when promotions were dealt out?
Your employer has not hired you merely for the pleasure of giving you so many dollars per week. He expects faithful service in return. Industrious service, and intelligent service.
What have you done that would warrant him in believing that it would pay him to entrust you with more responsible work?
Have you thought out—or even tried to think out—a single idea which would suggest to your employer that you are above the average in business capacity?
And what has been your behavior outside of business hours? You are free then, you say, free to do as you please. Is this really the case?
Reflect a little and you will appreciate that, away from work no less than when at it, there rests on you a certain responsibility so to behave that you shall keep yourself in good working trim.
If you have been dissipating, if you have been addicted to late hours, necessarily you have more or less unfitted yourself to do good work.
This is cheating your employer. And by itself would account amply for your failure to win promotion.
Face the facts of your everyday conduct. Try to see yourself as others see you. Nay, ask others, friends whom you can trust, to tell you exactly how you seem to them.
You may be told some bitter truths. No matter. The great concern to you (and ought to be, to learn why you are lagging in the race of life.
This learned, you will know what you have to do in order to begin to make your way to the front.