Bonus

The boy who was whining suddenly fell silent after his grandmother's seemingly professional coaxing: "Be good, be good, stop crying, I'll reward you with 10 candies later." The boy immediately changed his state from crying and suffering to being happy and excited. The old man's voice echoed from inside the house: "Stop crying, stop crying, there's no candy, don't use trivial material things to bribe your noble silence. I've been silent for a whole month, why haven't you given me any candy?"

The ordinary conversation that came from the neighbors this afternoon suddenly reminded me of an activity that usually takes place bustlingly at the end of the year - rewards! The "candy" began to be solemnly announced in the evaluations. There was a lot of glory but also a lot of sadness. Every year is the same, some laugh, some cry. Employees of successful units happily hold hundreds of millions to buy gifts for Tet, cadres in weak places sadly receive a few dozen pairs of shorts as gifts. As for civil servants, their common rewards at the summary ceremony were not enough to overcome the... thunderous applause! Civil servants smacked their lips to comfort each other, rewarding with applause was both fun and cheap. Material rewards seemed not to be in the income dictionary of those who were paid by "semicolon". After the endless applause, all eyes turned to the union, hoping to close until each outstanding union member received a can of peanut oil. It’s still peanut oil like it was decades ago. My family’s New Year’s menu has never included peanut oil because we know for sure that this item will be provided by the union. My family jokingly calls it union oil, a smooth reward both literally and figuratively. Every time we receive a union gift, we reward the organization that is called “mother and father” with a round of applause in response. “Hoes and shovels are used from below, sugar and milk are used from above and down”. Just peanut oil, we’re used to it!

When did the reward work start? According to an unpublished study, "rewards" were formed in the... primitive times. Don't be surprised, it's so ancient but there are rewards from that primitive time that are extremely modern. Not only grilled meat or cassava, people have created rewards that perhaps even in the 5.0 era, many people are still fascinated by. Yes, that is power and women. When a brave and courageous man has many achievements in repelling enemies to protect his fellow human beings, he is honored as the leader of the tribe, and of course, when he becomes an "official" of the tribe, the accompanying benefits of the yin and yang nature are the default. A deadly attractive reward! Very public and transparent, very primitive, no need to be secretive, just like any girl, choose her without fear of being criticized for "unclean support"!

Returning to the story of the boy and his grandmother in the example mentioned at the beginning of the article, rewards are sometimes used as a bargaining chip. The boy's outstanding "achievement" was to stay silent, and the noble reward for that action was 10 candies. Why did it have to be 10 candies? Sir, as a curious neighbor, I know that the old lady had previously offered 8 candies, but the mischievous boy still refused to keep quiet! He demanded 10 candies. So you see, in life, sometimes the word reward is used, but it is not a reward but an exchange.

In the past few days, the newspaper has been full of headlines about a commune party secretary who was dismissed from his position because he repeatedly received “intangible rewards” from a female office worker in a hotel. The thing is, this person had made outstanding achievements in “cultivating” that beautiful employee throughout his work, so he was given a “hot reward” by her! Yes, there are “rewards” that have been preserved intact since the primitive times. Sarcasm and distortion, filth and disgrace, no different from the case of a provincial official last year whose title of hero was stripped by the president. Not only that, in the past few days, there was even a defendant who went to court still carrying the title of hero. Spicy as chili powder!

What is praise and how should rewards be given are questions that are not difficult to answer but not easy to implement. Former General Secretary Truong Chinh once wrote: “Rewarding is a matter of social science. Rewarding and punishing is a matter of implementation that arises and exists in the process of human development”. The purpose of rewards is to encourage and properly arouse people's motivation to work. More than 600 years ago, Nguyen Trai wrote: “A state that rewards more than punishes is a prosperous state; a state that rewards and punishes strictly is a strong state; a state that punishes more than rewards is a declining state”. President Ho Chi Minh also affirmed that “In a country where rewards and punishments must be strict, then the people will be at peace, the resistance will be victorious, and national construction will be successful”, “Rewards must be given for achievements, and punishments must be given for mistakes, rewards must have the effect of educating, motivating, and setting an example...”.

The principle of rewards is “Accurate, public, fair, timely”. Rewarding the wrong person is not only ineffective but also extremely harmful. Knowing is knowing, the theory is so excellent, but unfortunately, in many places, for many years, praise must be “distributed” from top to bottom. The lower the position, the more remote the opportunity to be rewarded. Let me take an example in a locality known as a “livable city” to illustrate: In one year, the title of emulation fighter of the city was “given” to subjects doing management work (heads, deputy heads of departments, divisions, units under departments, branches, associations, unions, People's Committees of districts and above) for 83 people, reaching a rate of 87.4% compared to 12 people directly working for the subject, accounting for a rate of 12.6%. The City People's Committee Chairman "gave" the certificates of merit to 849 managers, accounting for 62.0% of the direct workers, accounting for 520 people, accounting for 38.0%. That alone is enough to confirm the gap between the "hoe and shovel" class and the "milk and sugar" class. And that is in a "livable city", in other localities it would be "difficult to live"! For direct workers, rewards are still a game of hide-and-seek in which they are blindfolded. If they just click their tongues "Times - times - times must be like that", then "Losing" is obvious!

Rewards are closely linked to competition. Karl Marx said: “Competition develops in the process of labor cooperation, in the common activities and plans of people with social contact creating competition and special elevation, the lively willpower increases the individual willpower of each person”. If rewards are not given to the right target, competition will be eliminated. All movements launched are just formalities. There is only “development” but no “movement”, only “elevation” but no “elevation”, just “determined” then “paralyzed”!