NIKHIL ARORA

I was training with PwC this past week in LA at the Intercontinental Hotel. It’s an absolutely stunning hotel, with awesome service and a history of housing ‘A-list’ people, whatever that truly means. Anyways, on Wednesday, word quickly spread that the Emperor of japan was arriving in the evening and would be staying at the hotel for sometime. All the hotel staff was frantically arranging themselves in a proper lineups to adequately greet the Emperor. When the Emperor finally came, he was preceded by 2 SUV’s filled with dozens of brief case carrying asisstants and secretaries all hurrying to be in position as well before the Emperor stepped out of his own vehicle. Upon arriving, he was quickly ushered into the hotel/elevator/suite. That itself was awesome to witness (how often do you see a legit ‘Emperor’ these days?), but the highlight was the attitude of some rich business men nearby.

The hotel had four elevator shafts, three of which were temporarily reserved for the Emperor and his people so they could quickly get through the crowd and to the privacy of their rooms. This left one elevator for a busy building with many floors, causing a significant delay on the ground floor. While waiting for the elevator, there were two other businessmen/executives waiting as well – both clearly extremely wealthy and successful. Clearly not used to waiting around due to other people taking more importance than them, they were complaing in a conversation between themselves: “I can’t believe we have to waste all this time waiting for this elevator because they reserved the others for him (stated with clear disdain)…” I had to literally bite my tongue to not laugh outloud, as all I could really think of was cocky these guys must be. That’s awesome if you’re super successful, wealthy, rich, etc., but when a man is called “Emperor” and sits on a throne that literally gives one the status of God amongst his people, you must understand your place.

We all like to think we’re special/great/deserve attention, but sometime’s life just slaps you in the face and forces you to learn your place. I hope those businessmen learned theirs that day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_of_japan for more information.