“Amy…”
“Amy.” Javen called out Amy’s name, a few times, while he was driving them to the hawker center for lunch.
Sean, who sat at the assistance seat, heard Javen’s calls. Sean looked at the road scene in front of him and remained silence. This was the first time, both Amy (Finance Manager) and Sean (Safety Officer) joined Javen (Operation Manager), who was also the newly-onboarded colleague, for lunch. Both of them rather caught off guard by this new colleague’s behaviour.
“Hey, stop calling my name.” Amy wanted to stop that annoying calling of her name by someone she didn’t know well. (What’s wrong with you? I don’t know you well. Don’t act as if we are close, okay?) Amy brushed off the goosebumps on her arms. She frowned her eyebrows, starred at Javen, from back seat.
“Why?” Javen asked.
Amy almost exploded with anger. (Still dare to ask ‘why’?) “We are not that close.” Amy gave an honestly blunt reply to Javen.
Javen didn’t respond to Amy’s word but at least, he stopped calling Amy’s name. Javen continued his driving route to the eating place.
That peaceful silence moment only last for one minute.
“How old is Euni? She seems young, and very quiet.” Javen asked Sean,
“Not sure.” Sean replied.
Euni was one of Amy’s finance team members, the youngest in the team.
“I seldom seeing her speaks at work. She’s young, isn’t she? Below 30?” Javen kept asking.
(He’s the desperate type that would do whatever just to get the information he wants, huh?) Amy rolled her eyes. (Annoying.)
In fact, Javen had already asked Amy the same question, two days ago, right after they ended a meeting. Amy told Javen that she can’t recalled Euni’s age and suggested him to go asking Euni directly, instead.
“That’s a pretty sensitive question you’re asking here. What’s more, when it comes to a woman’s age. You shouldn’t ask about that.” Sean politely pointed out Javen’s tendency of poking his nose to colleague’s privacy information.
“Javen, why are you keep asking other people’s age? You asked about your boss’s age and now, Euni’s age. What does that have to do with your work? That’s privacy. If you’re in overseas, you would have been filed with a workplace harassment complaint in HR record already, you know?” Amy added and pushed the question back to Javen.
Javen didn’t answer but put on his usual fake smile on his face. He tried to act blurred, i.e. as if nothing has happened.
(Jeez… I’ve started to regret having agreed to join him for lunch…) Amy diverted her gaze to the busy traffic, the view from the back-seat window.
ii) Is He An Artist?
One week passed.
Javen started to get occupied by the new tasks assigned onto him by his overseas-based manager, John.
Many colleagues were troubled by Javen’s way of doing things. He kept saying that his priority was and would only be on commissioning the machine.
“That’s how I work. I draw a line. The report that you (finance) want was for finance’s need. My priority work is on that machine; so everything else are not my priority.” Javen told Amy at the pantry area. Amy was half-way making herself a cup of coffee to start her work day. And Javen took the opportunity to declare his work commitment.
(How could you say that when you’re holding Operation Manager’s title and roles? What about the sales delivery arrangement, you don’t have to monitor? Month end closing stock report, you don’t have to submit? Wow. Your job must be easy then. Have we (the company) hired an artist that enjoys drawing a clear line at his own will? A line that allowed him to ignore his roles and responsibilities.) Amy was speechless to hear such statement declared by an experienced professional Operation Manager. Not only did Javen’s declared his one-sidedly limiting his scope of work to Amy; he stated the same towards sales team as well.
During the weekly meeting with management team, Javen was asked if he was aware and has his operation team prepared for the upcoming export sales’ demand which has to be delivered by the end of the month.
“I don’t know about that.” Javen replied to the management team. His answer made all our local management team and sales team colleagues fell from their chair. They were shocked by his statement when the export sales’ information has been shared with hm and discussed between the sales and operation team via messenger, during several unofficial meetings.
“How could he have said that?!? The Operation Manager doesn’t know what his team needs to do for the upcoming sales demand? Joke of the day!” Rod, the Sales Director said. Amy didn’t join the said meeting as she was attending the 1-day training course, in town. So, she heard this update from Rod, the next day when she reported back to work.
“I really feel uncomfortable with his way of doing things.” Rod added.
“Have you guys sharing with him the timeline of that upcoming export shipment? Such as the product code and volume needed?” Amy asked Rod.
“We updated it in the Operation messenger group. And, even Timothy told him about it during their short discussion.” Rod tried to recall.
“Oh… Maybe he brushes it off since no official information sent to him? No one tagged his name, something like that? I don’t know him. He drew so many lines about his job scope, himself.” Amy was rather speechless, by Javen’s words, once again.
“I’ve just informed my team to put in email to Javen, from now onwards. No more messages via group chat messenger since he ignored his part of responsibilities even though he read those messages.” Rod gave clear instruction to his sales team, tried to rectify the situation quickly as we (the company) couldn’t afford any risks on the said upcoming export deal.
Rod let out a heavy sight.
(What an odd-character new colleague we have here…) Amy shook her head.
iii) What Value(s) Does He Demonstrate?
Again, Amy continued attending to her work even though it was already after office hour. It was Tuesday, about 6:30 p.m. evening. She paused her work for a while and walked towards the restroom.
(Oh? There’s still a bunch of colleagues at office floor today. Two from the Operation team, their manager – Javen, Sean and even the newly-promoted Sales Manager, Kenny. Are they having a meeting?) Amy thought to herself but kept on her marching steps towards the restroom. (A bit more work. Should be able to finish in an hour…) Amy didn’t plan to stay back too late.
Amy walked back to her office but she heard some serious tones came from those gentlemen. (Wow… What happens? Javen said something with rather straight and loud tone there? But I don’t want to meddle in his work.) Amy sat down and continued her report updating work. Her fingers busy tapped the keyboards. The loud conversation can still be heard and echoed to her office. But Amy put on her earpieces and had the music played.
“Why you talked to Kenny like that?” One of the operation colleagues asked Javen, in loud and clear voice. He repeated his question towards Javen twice.
(My gosh… Are those men arguing? Fighting? Should I close and lock my office door?) Amy’s thought gotten diverted a little while typing the analysis findings into her report. She was the only female employee working late in the office, as most of the time. (Focus, focus… Let me finish this part and go home. I don’t have time for the people.) Amy’s stomach was growling. It’s 7:15 p.m. already.
“Hey!” Kenny who often wore a smiling face on his face appeared in front of Amy’s office. He was about to bid ‘good bye’ for the day to Amy before he left office.
“Is everything okay? It was quite loud outside, just now.” Amy turned to Kenny with a smile, and asked while Amy’s fingers were still typing on the alphabets that she wanted to put into her report.
“Haha…” Kenny returned with a troubled-facial expression.
“What’s wrong? Is that something that can be solved or not?” Amy simplified her question for the issue discussed among the gentlemen just now.
“Well… Maybe I was being a busy-body. A small message has somewhat triggered Javen.” Kenny replied. Amy saw that Kenny was trying to share more about the matter. Kenny seemed helpless. Amy offered Kenny to have a seat.
“You saw the photo I shared on the group chat?” Kenny asked Amy.
“Photo? Not yet.” Amy would only check on her mobile phone after she has done on her task on hand. She was not a ‘must check on mobile phone every minute’ person.
Amy took her mobile phone and tapped into local team’s group chat in WhatsApp. She looked at the photo. “Wow, the cylinders toppled? Hit anyone?” She asked Kenny right away.
“No. As you can see the height of the cylinders was too high and the strap wasn’t able to hold on to them, still. When the truck made a turn, those cylinders were falling to one side, all together. It might cause an accident if the wooden rack at the side of the truck couldn’t support the weight of those falling cylinders.” Kenny added.
“That’s dangerous. So, safety issue, then? Javen commented?” Amy asked while reading Kenny’s message in the group chat.
“He… asked me back why must he or his team go and get a better rack, or better support measures for those trucks? That’s not his team’s job. And why must his team be loading the cylinders onto the truck on behalf of service team?” Kenny shared Javen’s blunt comments.
“Huh? What does he mean? If operation team is not the one loading, then who else to do that? They are managing warehouse. If we hire third party forwarder to pick up the stock from our warehouse, warehouse team would be the one do the uploading or offloading work, right? Unless, the forwarder that we hired has quoted a service fee for uploading or offloading work.” Amy gave it a thought and shared her view. “So, what’s the different of uploading cylinders onto forwarder’s truck and our internal service team’s truck?”
“He said that he saw our service team was doing nothing but slacking during office hour, many times.” Kenny continued.
“Well, that’s for him to bring this topic up with the service team director then.” Amy raised her eye brows a little. (What a way of Javen handling expectation gap with other department.)
“The loading issue was actually happened in the afternoon. And then, just now, that photo of cylinders was the main topic we discussed just now. And all issues was being brought up by Javen, in one go. Headache…” Kenny scratched his head a little.
“I can see that you were suggesting an alternate solution in your message in the group chat. You asked if Javen could help to find a steel cage to put those cylinders instead of just a strap to hold those cylinders. So, was the steel cage not accepted for safety reason?” Amy read through those messages before quoting her thoughts.
“Now, it’s more about who to do the sourcing of the steel cage and who to get the safety spec on those cages. Offsite team or onsite team? Again, he questioned why must his team go and do this request. He questioned me if that suggestion was coming from my boss. I was caught off-guard by his question, I said “My boss? Nope.” I said to him that it was not from my boss. That’s message was from me. But he already made his own judgement and said that it must have come from Rod, my boss.” Kenny clarified.
“Again, that would be for him to go clarify with service team director and define who is supposed to do that sourcing work. But… That’s not even your job or responsibility to request for the steel cage. You were just brainstormed and shared your idea seeking for a workaround solution. It has to be operation team to plan and do something to ensure the product delivery safety.” Amy frown her eyebrows while saying that.
“Yeah, I mustn’t have made that suggestion… I was being a busy body there… And Javen wanted to stop the delivery operation tomorrow until a safer solution is in place for product delivery. When I heard that, I said to him that we have sales target to meet this month. If totally stop delivery operation, who would take the responsibility? I blurted that out instantly. And he… said that I was threatening him. And he is going to write an email to Australia’s top management about that.” Kenny gave a very troubled smile after finished saying that.
“He keep nailing that all of us were attacking him, bullying him. He even quoted that has a family to earn a living for.” Kenny added.
“Who doesn’t have a family to raise? Everyone works to earn a living. Not only him!” Amy can’t take it when she heard such bias and nonsense comment came from Javen! (And to write email to Australia’s top management? To that extend?)
“You are from sales department, of course, your job focus is to achieve the sales target. For you to blurt out that ‘we have a sales target to achieve’, that’s reasonable. But, for the latter, when you asked who’d take the responsibility, that might be tricky. Although that would be the whole local team’s responsibility to answer to top management why we didn’t achieve the sales target for this month. For a sensitive yet not taking responsibility person like him, you’ve triggered him. He used a strong word there ‘threatening’, that would be serious to the ears of Australia management team.”
“If he made a complaint to Australia management team. Then, this matter will be ballooning up. And with ‘safety’ as the reason, Australia team can easily give instruction to our company to fully stop operation for two weeks, or months. They don’t have a tiny stress on whether the local company achieving their sales target or not. It’s not their profit, to begin with. You see?” Amy shared some outcome that might happened if Javen did complain to overseas-based top management team.
Sean passed by and stopped at Amy’s office. Kenny looked at Sean and shared another helpless smile to him.
“Hey, Kenny, what happened there? I was busy working on my presentation slides for tomorrow. I didn’t really pay attention to you guys’ discussion just now. Although I was sitting next to Javen’s workstation, but I didn’t hear all your discussion there.” Sean greeted Kenny.
A quarter to 8 p.m., those three were the last in the office.
“Come, have a seat.” Amy said to Sean and let Kenny brief Sean on that heated-up discussion. Amy focused on finishing her report when Kenny did that.
(Alright, done!) Amy sent out the analysis report that she has to send out by the end of the day. (Now, I can join into their conversation.)
“Kenny, let me share with you what Javen told me afterwards. From what I can see, Javen was so sure that you had a phone conversation with your boss.” Sean wasn’t stand on either party’s side, but being neutral.
“I did have a phone call with Rod but it was on other matter, not this one.” Kenny replied.
“From what I heard from you and the way I observed Javen’s way of doing things… He really going to send an email to Australia’s top management. And you’d better go home and think of what you’re going to explain or tell them tomorrow.” Sean looked at Kenny, with serious expression, as it is not a time for joke. Both Kenny and Sean has been working well and no work clashing issues among them thus far.
“Yeah, I saw Javen made a screenshot of my message. I’m sure he is going to send that email. I have always happy-go-lucky and work with local teams to get things done. This time, this one was blamed on me threatening him…” Kenny added.
“So, now, you stop thinking too much, go home and spend some times tonight, focus on three key points that you’ve quoted in your conversation with Javen just now. “Your suggestion on the ‘steel cage’, ‘your boss’, and your question on ‘who takes the responsibilities’. You’ve got to think of something and how are you going to reply to management team if they ever ask you this. Alright, bro?” Sean sincerely shared his thoughts with Kenny.
(We all work as a team but some people just doesn’t… He drew so many lines, limited his work responsibilities at his own will. Is he a drawing artist, or what? He doesn’t even care about the objectives of local company need to achieve but only on the task his Australia-based boss assigned to him. In fact, who to blame when we have such a rather weird organization chart designed and decided by Australia management team?) Amy shook her head.
“Every weakness or mistake discovered by Javen on local team’s doing, will be his credit. He doesn’t really care about the impact on our company. He only focuses on commands from Australia. Whoo! Let’s go. We’d see what comes tomorrow then.” Amy shut down her laptop and stood up.
“Yeah, let’s go home now. What a day.” Sean added. Both gentlemen also raised and made their way out from Amy’s office.
(In such a small-sized company, we have so many dramas in the office, every now and then…
My comment to these drama kings and queens: “This company might have been too small a stage for you. How about you present that artistic side of yours at the HOLLYWOOD – The worldwide famous stage? It’s where you (i.e. the Drama Kings and Drama Queens from all around the world) belong to?”)