Honesty is priceless-诚信无价


Daffodils
Daffodils

The image ifs from https://www.almanac.com/plant/daffodils.

Rice is in her eighties; she lives alone in an old house in a shabby alley in New York. Her husband died more than twenty years ago.

She has developed a peculiar habit which has been caused by her grief and boredom. Every day, she looks through his belongings and carefully cleans his picture. These tasks take up most of the day. She has done this for the past two decades.

One day, it was raining heavily outside. Rice could not sit still and search through her husband’s belongings that day. She was angry because a glove that her husband had used before his death now had a big hole in it, which had been caused by a nasty rat.

Could her relics of her husband survive being defiled by rats?

Worried, Rice scrambled to gather up these precious objects for safekeeping. As she did so, a piece of paper fell out of a large faded book.

Rice picked it up and found it to be a 200-year-old handwritten receipt for a $100 bank deposit. The bank in question was a branch of the Swiss bank.

With nothing else to do at home, Rice took the ancient receipt to the Swiss bank, although she did not have much hope that it would still be valuable.

The staff at the bank branch did not say much after receiving the 200-year-old document, but they did ask Rice to leave her telephone number and home address.

The next day, the President of the Swiss Bank arrived in New York by plane from his headquarters in Basel. He went to Rice’s residence to personally hand over half a million US dollars in interest to her, and rewarded her with an additional 1 million US dollars in compensation.

It turned out that after receiving Rice’s receipt, the staff had immediately reported the development to the branch manager. The branch manager had promptly passed the information along to his superiors.

The president of the bank said that this document for 100 USD is the oldest one of its kind to be discovered by the company.

Many people did not understand the actions taken by the Swiss bank. After all, the deposit was made 200 years ago; many changes have taken place during this period. The bank probably could come up with many reasons to invalidate this document.

In response to this suggestion, the Swiss bank replied: “What we exchange is a promise to our customers. Honesty is the signature of the Swiss bank. If you keep it in our bank, you will never lose your money as long as the earth is still standing.”

This promise, along with this 200-year-old handwritten receipt, is displayed in the hall of the Swiss Bank Pavilion. It is also engraved on the heart of every Swiss banker.

Comments:

I love this story very much, so I took the liberty to translate it and share it with the readers here. Unfortunately, the original text is in Chinese, and the author is unknown. I am not certain if the story is true, but even if it is not, I think that it is worth telling.

 

诚信无价

八十多岁的老太太赖斯,一个人住在美国纽约一条简陋巷子的老宅子里,她的丈夫早在二十多年前就去世了。

或许是对逝去丈夫的思念,也或许是为了打发多余的时光,二十多年里,她养成了一个特别怪异的嗜好——一有空闲就翻出丈夫的遗物,或擦拭他的遗像,一遍又一遍。

这一折腾下来,就是大半天。

那天,正好是一个阴雨天,外面下着密密麻麻的小雨,赖斯坐不住了,又忙着去翻动丈夫的遗物,让她恼火的是丈夫生前用过的一只手套,被可恶的老鼠咬了一个大洞。

丈夫的遗物被老鼠咬了,祖上的遗物能逃过这一劫吗?

出于担心,赖斯又手忙脚乱地将祖上的遗物搬出来,查着查着,忽然从一本褪了色的厚书里掉下一张纸。

赖斯拾起来一看,竟然是一张200年前的手写存单,金额恰好是100美元。开户行,是瑞士银行某分行。

闲在家中也没什么事,赖斯就拿着这张「过期」存单去瑞士银行某分行碰碰运气,她对这张存单能否兑换并没有抱多大的希望。

该分行的工作人员接到这张200年前的存单后,并没有多说什么,只是让老太太赖斯留下电话号码和详细的家庭住址。

第二天,瑞士银行总行行长从总部巴塞尔坐飞机抵达美国纽约,并找到老太太赖斯的住所,亲自将五十多万美元利息款交到她的手中,还奖励了她100万美元。

原来,工作人员接到这笔业务后,马上向分行行长作了汇报。

分行行长十分重视这件事,立即上报总行。总行马上派专人核对存单上的帐号,在公司百年前的老账中,真的查到了该笔存款的底账。

总行行长说,这笔200年前100美元的存单,是该公司到目前为止,发现的前来兑换的存单中最老的一张。

对于瑞士银行的做法,很多人表示不理解:200年前的一张存单,已经物是人非,这期间发生过多少变故,谁也说不清楚,随便找上一个理由,都可以拒兑这张存单。

瑞士银行的回答则是:「我们兑换的是对顾客的一个承诺,《诚信》才是瑞士银行不倒的招牌!存在我们银行,只要地球还在,您的钱就永远不会丢失。」

这句承诺,连同这张200年前的手写存单,被装裱在瑞士银行展馆的大厅上,也刻在了每个瑞士银行人的心里。

评论:

我非常喜欢这个故事,所以我冒昧翻译了它并在这里与读者分享。可惜原文是中文,作者不详。我不敢确定这个故事是否真实,但即使不是,我认为还是值得分享。

 

 

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