Reference to News 18. An effort by a Mumbai based entrepreneur to create humor backfired when his post on LinkedIn of delaying salaries to learn patience was seen as viral due to all the wrong reasons.

The Post That Started the Outrage

Entrepreneur Parth H posted two-part content saying he had sent an email to his workers to tell them that he was not paying them because it would teach them a lesson on character development. In the post, Parth wrote: I have written a mail to my employees yesterday saying, I am sorry about the delayed salaries. But I added too, ‘It is not delay, it is character development. Since we are not an organization, we are a spiritual venture that preaches patience by the payroll. Investors refer to it as ineffective management. I refer to it as mindfulness at scale.

Although the message by Parth was meant to be sarcastic, the humor was not captured by most LinkedIn users. The post was soon met with fierce backlash, where people labeled it as insensitive and tone-deaf particularly in the country where people are surviving on prompt pay.

Clarification Came Too Late

Parth has since issued clarification that the email was only sent to him and not an employee after getting under heavy criticism. It is sarcasm of course, he explained. Only in a world where the process of identifying an appropriate candidate is as nightmarish, would any organisation dare not to pay salaries? But when he was able to explain, screenshots and reactions had already become viral.

Social Media Reacts: Not Funny At All.

The online society did not restrain itself. According to one user, the message is not funny but arrogant. It has become a habit of taking employees for granted in India. Another one commented, do not waste the time of people with such publicity stunts.

One comment was particularly strong and it said, Trust me it is stupidity. They are not slaves but employees. And when they commit a mistake at the workplace, are they not able to say it is not failure, but learning?

With all the criticism, some users did defend Parth stating how believable the post was. It is insane and sad that so many people were convinced that it could actually happen, wrote one commenter. To this, Parth responded by saying that they never supposed people to take it literally. It demonstrates that salary postponements remain too widespread such that a good number of people thought it was possible.

An Online Communication Lesson.

What started out as a tongue-in-cheek tweet, turned out to be a lesson on how humor can turn so fast in the wrong direction over the internet. The episode shows how delicate the topic of the salaries and ethics in the workplace can be- particularly when the context and the tone become the subjects of lost in translation in the workplace platforms.

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