It is said that a man's job and responsibility was to supervise the pitchers in a public bathhouse.
He would ensure that they were filled with water so that each person would come and take one of the pitchers to enter the bathhouse.
Then, after he had finished using the bathhouse, the pitcher would be returned to our friend, who would refill it for the next person, and so on.
Once, a person came in a hurry and quickly snatched one of these pitchers and ran to the bathroom.
The pitcher manager shouted at him loudly and ordered him to return to him. The man reluctantly returned.
The pitcher manager ordered him to leave the pitcher he was holding and take another one next to him. The man took it and quickly went to enter the bathhouse. When he returned to hand over the pitcher, the pitcher manager asked, "Why did you order me to go back and get another pitcher, even though there was no difference between the two pitchers?"
The pitcher manager said in surprise, "Then what is my job here?"
This pitcher manager wanted to feel important and that he could control and command. He finishes.
Although the nature of his work doesn't require all this or require complexity, he wants to become the Sultan of Pitchers.
The Sultan of Pitchers is present among us. You sometimes find him in ministries, institutions,
universities, schools, airports, and perhaps everywhere you interact with others!
Hasn't it ever happened to you, while completing a transaction, that your transaction was delayed for no reason other than because you encountered the Sultan of Pitchers? He tells you, "Leave your transaction with me and come back in two days."
He then places it on the shelf while you watch, even though it only needs a quick review.
He then refers you to the next person. But how can he feel important unless his transactions pile up and clients gather around him? He's the Sultan of Pitchers resurrected!
It's a complex of feeling important and an inferiority complex of power and control over God's creation!
The culture of the Sultan of Pitchers also extends to managers and agents.
You find it in their principles, as they believe in sternness, severity, complexity, and centrality.
In order to delude you into thinking they are important, they don't know that their importance stems from their positions more than their selves!
The noble hadith states:
"O Allah, whoever is gentle with my nation, be gentle with him, and whoever is harsh with my nation, be harsh with him."
Yet you are surprised by people's tendency toward severity and to oppress God's servants in every small and large matter.
We don't think about gentleness, leniency, or lowering the wing; rather, we consider these traits to be the characteristics of the weak!
It is a call to simplify matters, not complicate them, to facilitate procedures, not tighten them, and to be gentle with people,
not to oppress them. How much we need to rid ourselves of the Sultan of Pitchers mentality.
...and how many of them there are in this age.
