APPLE polishing – currying favour through flattery or obsequiousness – is an old practice. Ever since the first animals set foot on the planet and evolved a hierarchical system, the practice had taken hold.
During the Age of Chivalry, court jesters were an integral part of the royal setting. Their specific duty was to provide amusement but, more precisely, to butter their neurotic despots.
Monarchs who ruled by divine right expected nothing less not only from fools or jesters such as Wamba in Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe but also the entire retinue of titled hangers-on.
The inner sanctum of absolute monarchs adhered to the strictest code of dinduct, decorum and speech. Anyone within this kingly circle who so much as appeared to step on a royal toe, could lose his or her head.
“Boss, don’t you think SIX is enough?”
During the reign of the Tudors, questioning King Henry VIII’s intention to take wife No. 7 in such brazen manner was a surefire way to commit suicide.
Those foolish enough to do it would certainly have ended up suffering the same fate as Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife, said to be still haunting the Bloody Tower of London today – with her head tugged underneath her arm.
Egotistical medieval dukes, earls and barons demanded just as much adulation from their henchmen, serves and slaves. Even among the gentry, the harsh exploits of the wicked stepmother are legendarily infamous.
Apple polishing is especially prevalent in high places and corridors of power. And in the hands of shrewd manipulators, it can work with deadly effect.
Human nature being such, people need to feel important and loved. These two great human needs provide fertile breeding grounds for apple-polishing which feeds the human ego in fulfilment of the human need to feel important and loved.
The accomplished apple-polishers will invariably get the attention and business of those they suck up to. And the suckers are usually conceited people who never hear anything but praise!
According to one account, a student discovered that poor performance might be ignored in proportion to the favour presented to the teacher.
As the story goes, in Sumer, an ancient region of Babylonia, the daily life of the Sumerians was well recorded on clay tablets.
One day, while smoothening his tablet and copying his lessons for the day, the student appeared to have done something wrong and was repeatedly flogged.
In desperation, he asked his father to invite the teacher over for an evening meal. The father agreed – and the teacher was dined and wined and even given a new garment.
The scheme worked. As he was leaving, the teacher, beaming from ear to ear, said the boy was already “becoming a man of learning.”
Scientists, translating the tablet, refer to this account as the earliest case of apple-polishing – at least 4,000 years ago.
Apple-polishing has been variously defined as beggarly, bootlicking, grovelling, slavish and synophantic.
A couple of local definitions are tripod and three-legged horse. Another one, coined by an ang tau chendol seller at the old Open Air Market at Power Street, Kuching, consists of three Teochew words. They are impolite to divulge. I will give you a hint – the initials are LPK.
The polishers will ingratiate themselves to get what they want such as job promotions, business deals and benefits in some other forms while the polished will purr at each shower of praises, even if delivered in snivelling manner, as it fulfills their need to feel important and loved. The mode of conveyance matters little.
Apple-polishing can also be said to be paradoxical – some just love doing it and are so good at it that they move up fast in life while others puke at the mere mention of it and are such a disaster at it that in the boss’s books, they will not get to pass Go nor get out of jail free.
On the scale of 10 – by the boss’s reckoning – the opportunity for the latter to attain their full potential will at best hover around one or two. Any further movement up or down the scale will depend on whether or not they choose to continue playing hard ball.
In the corporate world, some call it managing up but kissing up is better known. As one of the most intractable problems of corporate culture, kissing up can move the goalposts and alter the playing field.
Some of the polished get so intoxicated with the praises showered on them that they hardly notice they are being rolled while the polishers climb the corporate ladder and saw off the rungs behind them.
One behaviour analyst sees corporate scandals like harassments, bullying or wrongful dismissals as associated fundamentally with the kissing up culture.
The victimised are usually those who know the emperor has no clothes but refuse to cover it up.
“Even the biggest CEOs need to be loved. But expecting praises as of right from your subordinates can be like a virus. If carried too far, it will poison your judgement and debase your character,” the analyst said.
In Bhutanese society, apple-polishers are categorised into three groups – the shakam (supplier), the omnipresent (yes boss) and the sneaky informer.
According Norbu Wangchuk, a Bhutanese writer, the shakam (supplier) will not miss any opportunity to make gifts to the boss. He will know the sixth birthday of the boss’ fourth son. He will also make sure he buys a present for his boss on his return from a visit in Kuala Lumpur.
The omnipresent (yes boss) will stick like a leech to his boss. He will be the first to pull the chair for the boss and will wish the boss “good day” a dozen times a day.
Wangchuk says: “Shoving aside the personal secretary and the security, he will rush to open car door and straighthen his boss’s kabney (a silk scarp worn as part of the gho, the traditional costume of Bhutan) and patang (a type of Asian sword traditionally produced in Bhutan).”
There is nothing he will disagree with the boss over. Black is white and white is black – yes boss, if you say so. Everything the boss does or says is perfect. The omnipresent (yes boss) will gladly exchange his soul with a place in the boss’s good books.
As for the sneaky informer, he is like a serpent which occasionally finds a hole to squeeze himself into the boss’s chamber.
“He wields classified information on the conduct and performance of other workers. He thrills the boss with what others in the organisation think of the boss and what they would do and not do.
“He will even have access to the thoughts and expectations of his boss’s boss – which comes as a vital weapon for his boss,” Wangchuk adds.
The sneaky informer is ably portrayed in movies by thespians such as Hong Kong actor Paul Wei Ping-ao who is adept at playing the typical kan syn (hyprocrite, brown noser, sycophant) on the silver screen.
Fortunately, as Wangchuk points out, boss-employee relationships, driven by ulterior motives and hidden agendas, are superficial and soon exposed and weakened because they are based on flimsy foundations which are antithetical to the long-term organisational goals.
But if there is a clear understanding of the boss and the employee as being two imperfect and fallible human beings with their own personal and organisational goals, then there is a better chance of approproate relationships being established that will enhance productivity and effectiveness.
Wangchuk’s characterisation of the apple polishers fits snugly into the psychological niches of most western and Asian societies, especially in the political arena and from both sides of the political divide, including ours.
Running after the higher-ups for favours will only entrench the culture of apple-polishing. This, in turn, will render business communities spineless and retard economies over the long term.
A man of lofty principles will not stoop to underhand methods. But not all men – regardless of their positions in society – are endowed with the mettle of staintly righteousness to take the moral high ground and such inadequacy of character gives apple-polishing a strangehold on mankind’s destructive character flaws such as vanity, ego, self-centredness and greed, and allows the practice to perpetuate.
For after all, what employee would not relish being the apple of the boss’s eye or what second in command would not love being the blue-eyed boy of the commander in chief – even if it takes apple-polishing to get there.
Both genders do it and though the practice is, generally, looked upon with contempt, even by those being polished, if it’s overdone, it’s still the most favoured weapon used to manipulate and titilate the ego.
There are few exceptions, if any. The underlings polish the higher-ups with sugar-coated embellishments, never taking the eye off the pie, while the latter enjoy the polishing, ready to share the pie if it has a generous spread of butter. Such is human nature.