Crashing The Pearly Gates II

"Oh, you're going to love me!"

Just once St. Peter hoped he'd hear: "Oh, you're going to hate my sorry ass."

"OK, why's that?"

"I was HR director for a large construction company. Jesus was a carpenter, you know."

"Innocence by association, I suppose."

"Exactly, we were doing the Lord's work and I was caretaker for our company's most precious asset: our people."

"A noble endeavor."

"Indeed! Why, during a tornado's aftermath I helped organize our employees onto buses to clean the debris and help out at shelters."

"Very good deed, no doubt."

"That's right! Other corporations sent money, we sent people! So you see: Jesus was wrong. You can serve both money and God!"

"So your company saw profit in this?"

"Of course! I made sure all our projects were successful."

"But our records show you built a 100 million dollar highway down in Austin that was so detrimental to traffic flow they had to shut it down almost as soon as it was opened."

"Oh, yes, but that wasn't our fault."

"You're saying someone else built it?"

"Well, we built it but we did it entirely according to our high moral code."

"Then how could it have gone so wrong?"

"We were right. It was the truth that was wrong."

"Come again?"

"We had employees who were trying to sabotage the company with their negativity and bad attitude. Naturally, I had to guide them back in line and get everyone on the same page."

"Just exactly what did these employees do?"

"They kept saying what we were doing was stupid. They kept saying the design and our methods would never work."

"Were they right?"

"Absolutely not. Our gloriously perfect VPs had already mandated that it would work. These complainers were being insubordinate and seditious to our great moral corporation. Just think of the executive bonuses they were jeopardizing!"

"But these bad employees, as you put it, could have prevented a monumental blunder and serious damage to the company and its reputation."

"It's absolutely impossible to know if something is going to work or not until you try it. I told those bastards employees right in their face: "You can't say it's stupid!!""

"But why defend the executives since you admit no one had a way of knowing if the mandate was correct."

"HR ostensibly represents all employees of the company (wink, wink) - but our real job is to protect upper management because they truly are the company, not lowlife complainers."

"So it was not your job to serve the truth?"

"In a moral organization like ours, policy is the gospel - and I never violated policy."

"But heaven serves only the Truth."

"Sounds like you need a good HR person then!"

"So the truth is you deserve to be in Heaven?"

"Don't see how anyone could say otherwise (except for those malcontents!)."

"And you still refuse to violate policy?"

"That's the fact, Jack! That would be OUTRAGEOUS!"

St. Peter pulled the lever (as happens all too often) opening the trap door downward as per her inviolate policy. Next in line was another employee of the same company.

"Not sure if you want me. No one on earth did. Called me bad names and accused me of betrayal, saying I was a destroyer of the world because I pointed out the truth. Hardly anyone I talked to thought I was doing the right thing. But those guys are still in charge and I died from exhaustion. Was I a fool to have faith?"

"Of course not, only servants of the truth can enter. Otherwise one will choose Hell while thinking it Heaven. And just so you'll know, your HR lady won't be joining us ever. So many people seek to get into Heaven but all who choose it will."