“The Monkey Business” - The Tricky Business that most of us are already doing unknowingly.

Many people are really struggling to hit the ground running this year, and that is because most of us are not taking a more careful look at what we are doing. Now take a look at this story (fictional).

Source

A lot of monkeys lived near a village.
One day a merchant came to the village to buy the monkeys. He announced that he would buy the monkeys for £100 each.

The villagers thought he was mad. They thought how can somebody buy stray monkeys for £100 each?
Still, some people caught a few monkeys and gave them to the merchant and he gave them £100 for each monkey.

This news spread like wildfire and more people caught more monkeys to sell to the merchant. After a few days, the merchant announced that he would buy monkeys for £200 each.

Even the lazy villagers now ran around to catch the remaining monkeys and sold them for £200 each. Then the merchant announced that he will buy monkeys for £500 each.
The villagers started to lose sleep! They caught six or seven monkeys, which was all that was left, and got £500 for each one.

The villagers were waiting anxiously for the next announcement. Then the merchant said he was going home for a week and when he returned he would buy monkeys for £1,000 each.

He asked his employee to take care of the monkeys he bought. The merchant went home and the villagers were very sad as there were no more monkeys left for them to sell at £1,000 each.

Then the employee told them he will secretly sell them monkeys for £700 each. This news spread like wildfire. Since the merchant will buy monkeys for £1,000 each, there is a £300 profit for each monkey.

The next day the villagers made a queue near the monkey cage. The employee sold all the monkeys for £700 each. The rich bought monkeys in big lots. The poor borrowed money from money lenders and also bought monkeys.
The villagers took care of the monkeys and waited for the merchant to return. But nobody came.

They ran to the employee, but he had already left too. The villagers then realised that they had bought the valueless stray monkeys for £700 each and were unable to sell them.

The village people would have avoided buying valueless monkeys for £700 each if they had reasoned why someone would want to buy those monkeys for £1000.

Do not get involved in monkey business this year, welcome to February.