Welcome to the beautiful world of pretence called the Corporate World.

This world usually exists between four walls and most often in highrise buildings in which Corporate People thrive in existence with ice-breathing dragons called air conditioning.

It is powered by piped water, electricity and hypocrisy. If any of the elements go missing, this World usually becomes topsy turvy. If any tribes within this World were to practise a lifestyle without the element hypocrisy, this tribe would eventually perish by way of natural selection or doomed to a limited success of conquering resources for their Business.

Each tribe works very hard to obtain resources of all kinds to ensure their survival. The manner in which they earn survival varies greatly and it is of no benefit to mention them at this point.

As with any tribe, there is a leader who is given a variety of titles. Sometimes, the leader is called CEO, sometimes MD and sometimes President. Whatever it is, it does not matter. The point is that this leader sits at the top of the pack.

For convenience I shall refer to the leader as “It”. It is the most intelligent in the tribe. Its job involves giving orders to tribe members, deciding on the direction of the tribe and ultimately, deciding the fate of the tribe.

To help It manage a large tribe, It has several sub-leaders called Managers. The Managers in turn have assistants and other minions to help them achieve their tasks.

All tribe members who fall under the Manager category have special benefits not enjoyed by minions. Thus, it is natural that the minions strive to gain favour among the Managers and It. Up the tree, the Managers in turn strive to gain favour with It.

During this process of gaining favour there may be some manner of bickering, backstabbing and ass-licking. All of these skills are part and parcel of survival in the corporate world. The most valuable skill, though, is the skill of pretence.

The more one has mastered this art, the more successful one would likely be in this world. These are some of the possible rules to follow for mastery of this skill:

1. Smile when you don’t even mean to.
2. Be friendly with the right people.
3. Never say what you truly mean.
4. Always laugh at meaningless empty jokes made by any of the higher level tribe members.
5. Pretend to be your enemy’s friend.
6. Discard any personal relationship developed as and when convenient.

If you have this skill of pretence, you will be able to mingle with those who you NEED to mingle with for a variety of reasons. Categories of tribe members whom you would benefit from ass-licking are:

1. Influential members of the tribe – these do not necessarily hold high positions
2. Those who are deemed to be close to influential members of the tribe
3. Those who are useful to you
4. Those whom you want to get something from

You would know if you have succeeded in mastering this skill when you are able to put on a plastic smile, as and when necessary, without looking too fake going about it.