A boy lost twenty dollars.
A family lost their certainty.
A system said, “This is the record.”
But somewhere between procedure and people, something else was lost.
A reflection on trust, power, and the quiet weight of decisions.
☕ KopiTalk with MHO | MIB Management 101
I heard a little story recently that stuck with me longer than I thought it would.
A 16-year-old kid just landed his first part-time job. It wasn't anything fancy - fast food, long hours on his feet, figuring out how to show up on time, and learning the ropes of working life for the first time. At the end of one week, he noticed something strange with his pay. Twenty dollars were missing.
He went back to ask about it. The company said the system didn't show he had clocked in on one of the days. The kid insisted he did. In fact, he mentioned he often clocked out later than he was supposed to. A friend of his lost a day of pay, too. Clearly, something was off with the system.
But the answer he got was pretty straightforward: the record is the record.
So, he quit.
It wasn't really about twenty bucks. It was about something deeper. In Islam, we call this amanah - a trust. Not just with money or data, but with people's time, effort, and dignity. Once you see it that way, you realise this story isn't just about a system glitch. It's about a broken trust.
It wasn't really about twenty bucks. It was about something heavier. It was a first lesson that sometimes, in the working world, truth can take a backseat to procedure. And when that happens, it's not just money that gets lost. Something inside a young person goes missing too.
I thought about that kid for days. About how easily we accept systems as neutral, as if they can't be wrong. About how convenient it is to hide behind screens and policies when the human story in front of us is messy.
Then, I couldn't help but think about bigger issues.
Not long ago, a corporate decision was made somewhere - neat, technical, probably well-justified on paper - to review a housing allowance policy.
On spreadsheets, it seemed like a smart move. A cost adjustment. A rationalisation. But on the ground, it turned into something else entirely.
For some families, especially those living on a single income, it meant sudden panic. A recalculation of monthly survival. A quiet anxiety that doesn't show up in boardroom presentations.
No one meant to hurt anyone. I truly believe that. However, that's how many injustices occur - not from malice, but from a lack of awareness or distance.
From decisions made far away from the lives they end up affecting.
From what some people call decisions made from the menara gading.
In both stories - the boy and the allowance - the pattern is all too familiar. A system speaks. A human voice gets pushed aside.
And when systems get too loud, people learn something dangerous: that fairness is optional, and being right matters more than being just.
In our last chat, we talked about adil and ihsan - about justice and compassion, not just as buzzwords, but as real values. This is where they stop being concepts and start becoming uncomfortable.
Because adil isn't just about rules. It's about whether those rules still serve the truth.
And ihsan isn't just about kindness. It's about whether we still see the person in front of us, not just the paperwork in our hands.
A system that can't question itself will eventually let someone down. Sometimes it's a kid. Sometimes it's a family. Sometimes it's a whole generation of workers who quietly learn that effort and honesty don't always count.
And the saddest part is this: none of this looks dramatic. There are no raised voices. No scandals. Just a slow, quiet erosion of trust.
People stop arguing. They start adjusting. They learn to keep their heads down. They tell themselves, "That's just how it is."
Until one day, they stop believing that work is also about dignity.
In a Negara Zikir, this should make us uneasy.
Not because every policy has to be flawless, but because every policy needs to remember it's affecting real lives.
A young kid's first job.
A family's monthly budget.
A worker needs to feel recognised.
Adil and ihsan don't require us to ditch systems. They ask that we never worship them.
They challenge us to stay human, even when managing structures.
And maybe that's the quiet question we should sit with today:
When a decision is technically right but humanly tough, do we still take the time to ask who's bearing burden?
Because in the end, organisations don't fail only when they lose money.
Adil and ihsan guide our actions. But amanah is what holds us accountable. Without amanah, systems turn into excuses, and power creates distance.
They fail when people stop believing that fairness is still alive there. (MHO/01/2026)
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