CEO Of Disgraced Spanish Tech Company Quotes Kipling In Email To Employees
According to a report from Tobias Buck of The Financial Times, Jenaro Garcia, the disgraced founder of Let's Gowex, the Spanish WiFi provider that filed for voluntary insolvency over the weekend, turned to Rudyard Kipling's famous poem "If-" in an email to employees.
"If-" is one of the most famous poems of the 20th Century, and opens with the iconic lines, "If you can keep your head when all about you/Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,".
Buck reports that Garcia's email, published in the Spanish media, says among other things, "I know I have caused irreparable damage to you and many of your friends and family."
Yesterday, we noted that on Twitter, Garcia simply said, "I apologize to everyone. Sorry wholeheartedly" after the company announced it was going under.
Garcia subsequently tweeted that he confessed in court and is willing to face the consequences.
So while Garcia is certainly trying to repair the broken spirits of the company's staff that now find themselves out of a job, perhaps he is also trying to perk himself up.
For inspiration, we've included the full text of Kipling's poem below:
"If-"
IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!