i) They Said That I Was Too… Dreamy
“I went for the premier of the anime last year. That was my favourite comics ever.” Annie proudly shared with her colleagues during their coffee break. Movie was the topic they entered into and Annie was brought to her memory last year.
“Are you into comics? That’s so unlike you.” Bernard raised his eye brow while giving such a comment on the strict Finance Manager, Annie.
Annie: Ha-ha… I am.
Annie laughed it away.
Annie: You won’t be able to image the feeling I had that day, in the cinema.
Annie browsed through three of her colleagues that sat at the same coffee table, next to the reception area of the office. She caught their attention.
Annie: Usually, when we go for a movie at the cinema, we would stay silence throughout the movie, right? Same goes for the rest of the audience. But in that premier show, the ambience was totally different. Most of the audience that went for that anime movie was the loyal fans of that comic. That includes me. That storyline of that anime movie was re-presenting certain episodes the story from another angle, meaning from the view of another character in that comic. When some of the familiar scenes presented on the huge screen, for instance the funny act from the anime character, the blood-heated scene when the anime character successfully shot the basketball and gained points during the match, the audience cheers. The whole cinema was filled with cheers and applause from the audience! Can you imagine that? I was so touched by that and I was so happy that I went for that premier show.
Kath: Wow… Sounds wonderful.
Annie: He-he…
Arthur: Then you might like those opera show then. There’s one in Singapore now. I saw it from the brochure.
Annie: What’s the show title?
Arthur: Something about the witch? The Oz?
Annie: Oh… I don’t really like ‘Alice in the wonderland’ since childhood. I like those opera show with a lot of singing scenes. Oh yeah, movie musicals. They called it movie musicals, right. Those performers really have good vocal and it’s really a great enjoyment to hear it live. If you guys have the opportunity to watch the movie musicals, of course, only if that’s your interest, go for it.
Arthur: I watched the ‘Lion King’ before.
Annie: I haven’t watch it. How’s it?
Arthur: Brilliant. I love it.
Bernard gave a little smile and took a sip of his cup of coffee.
Annie: I watched the ‘Beauty and the Beast’ musicals when I was on London trip.
Bernard: ‘Beauty and the Beast’? Huh…
Bernard smirked.
Annie: You know why I picked that musicals? I wanted to know how are they (the crew members) going to present those magical scenes, live, on the stage. And I was amazed with their lighting’s technology, those wiring-lifting work, and sound effects that brought out the best for every scenes. Love it.
Bernard: You’re a dreamy person. Comics, and those fantasy movies… I remember you once said that you like those hero movies as well, ‘Avengers’ right?
Annie: …
Annie paused for a while and gave some thoughts on Bernard’s comment.
Annie: Well… yeah, you can say so. There’re too many ugly truth and evil acts that we have in real life. I don’t like to gangster’s movies, murders, set a bunch of cunning acts onto others just to be the winner kind of shows. I have seen those in real life. Enough of that. Let me have some fun in watching something nice. Hero? How many real-life hero do we have around us? It’s hard to find or spot one. So, I look for them in the fantasy land.
“Let me be~ let me be~ let me be, Oh, let me be~” Annie sang softly while turning away to wash her coffee cup at the pantry area.
Annie sang a golden oldies song with its lyric tweak a little. All four of them dismissed with a smile. Coffee break session ended and they went back to their own workstation, respectively.
i) They Said That I Was Too… Demanding
a) Morning
‘Tink.’ The glaze door was unlocked right after Gina placed her staff ID card towards the door access sensor. Just like every other workdays, she arrived at the office around 8:25 a.m. and then walked up the staircase to the office level.
“Morning!.” Gina greeted her colleagues that were seated closer to the walkway.
“Good morning.” Those colleagues that were seated further from the walkway and happened to make an eye contact with Gina, returned her greeting, with a smile on their face.
But it was silence treatment from those colleagues that seated closer to the walkway. Their eyes were latched onto the monitor screen in front of them as if they have to submit an urgent report in the next minute. They have neither shifted their gaze a millimeter towards Gina nor nodded their head or whatsoever body gesture as a response towards her greeting. Gina’s greetings was as if it wasn’t happened; her existence was transparent, not being seen at all.
“…” Fine, then. Gina thought to herself.
With the knowing that those colleagues chose to be unethically giving her silence treatment and showing their work attitude at times, Gina can’t bring herself to link the terms of hardworking, work enthusiastic in them. It’s rather hard to convince anyone that they could be in such a busy mode and concentrated at their work in the early morning, to the point of unable to return a greeting and answer question during a meeting.
That wasn’t the first time, Gina encountered such phenomenon from these small group of colleagues. She just couldn’t understand why would they do that though. They were Gina’s lunchmates most of the time, and they have shared conversation laughter during break times. So, why such a need to give silence treatment to one’s morning greeting? They wasn’t only doing this to Gina but to everyone that gave morning greetings, just to start a good vibe to start the day in the office.
A bad hair day? Not only Monday Blues but ‘Everyday Blues’? Whatsoever…
Gina would still continue to send her ‘Morning’ to all her colleagues the moment she arrived at the office level, every day, without fail. That’s a little commonsense and manner she has practiced throughout her life. She won’t change it just because of someone didn’t return the same.
By not returning one’s greeting, would that bring them any privilege feeling that goes by ‘Yes! Others are greeting me. I feel good. So, continue to greet me as if I were a millionaire and I won’t be returning any.’? Gina wondered.
Well, every day, the more these people gave a silence treatment to others, the more they were presenting themselves to the world that they has no-manners, low EQ, a professional worker that doesn’t know what the basis of office etiquette one should demonstrate in a working environment. What’s more?
In contrast, Gina found that silence treatment quite entertaining too.
It’s fun to witness those who claimed themselves as professional but can’t demonstrate the basic professionalism in them, every day.
Gina settled down herself with a cup of hot coffee and focused at her daily tasks. Later during lunch break, those people’s attitude will change 180 degree anyway.
Can’t they just maintain the positive manner throughout the day or at least most of the time?
That’s a question with no answer to it. Gina didn’t even bother to ask them.
b) Afternoon
James: Just get the girls to check.
Gina went to look for the two girls that have been working for the company the longest period of time (so-called the pioneer team) as compared to the rest of the team member within finance team (including Gina herself). A lot of the historical information, Gina would still need those two to do but, now, both of them has already left the office. They left office way before 5 p.m. when the official working hour ends at 6 p.m.
Gina: They have left. Can we do something about this? Like get them to save those information or files onto the share drive; so that we can retrieve the information anytime we need it.
James: No rush. We can get them to check and answer tomorrow.
There he goes again… Double-standards in treating the team members. Gina stared at James on his reply as such.
James and Gina were in the midst of preparing a reply to the management team. Usually, James would attend to management’s request as soon as possible; but for that moment, the information to form an answer required the team member to check and confirm beforehand. He compromised to delay the respond to the management team.
Towards the pioneer team members that hold an Accounts Assistance post, he gave them so much flexibilities at work. And due to that privileges the Head of the Department, James, has openly given to them, those two girls dare to report to work late, yet, leave the office before the end of business hours, i.e. 5:30 p.m. On top of that, from time to time, they headed out for late breakfast for an hour or so, then upon return to their work station, they continued to follow with the official lunch break half an hour later. This pattern applied to tea break some times. They totally ignored the 1-hour break as set in employee handbook.
Although nowadays, many companies opt for flexi working hour where their staff is allowed to work from home, come to office late, leave the office earlier, as long as they complete and deliver their work on time.
But those two girls completed some of their jobs and left a bunch of unattended emails to the rest of the team members. Why so? Reason being those two girls often busy chatting with other colleagues or among themselves and busy playing games on their mobile phone, openly at their work station, during office hours.
Gina: James, this would be difficult to monitor the team like this. How should we tell the newly joined team members that have been reporting to work on time and contribute their very best to work during office hours? If you allow one to be on such flexible at work, those new ones would find this as an unfair treatment and they might do the same too, sooner or later.
James: Let me say this once… their salary is quite low and we couldn’t get any replacement to join us at that kind of salary.
Gina: The new hirers won’t know such info. What they and all other colleagues can see with their very own eyes are the way the girls come and go at their own wish.
James: If they (i.e. colleague from other departments) dares to challenge me on this, I’d ask them if they could get me someone new at the same salary. If they can’t, then they’d better keep their mouth shut.
“…” Gina.
How can you do that, James…? Gina let out a heavy sigh while walking out from her boss’s office.
Salary range in the market changes, and you ignore the needs for an employee. Yeah, you might be able to save some insignificant amount for the company by keeping these low-salary employees in your own team while other departments were successfully fought for a budget to hire a bunch of highly paid professionals. But, is this really good for those two pioneer team members that are still at their late 20’s? For one at such a young aged employee to have the false mindset that they were so important to the company to the point that the boss allowed them to do things as they wished without acknowledging company’s practice, frankly, I pity them. Those two girls even demonstrate their arrogance towards the newly hired team members. “The file is there, go understand it yourself.” Gina even heard such words from those two girls towards the newly joined colleague who wanted to learn working on the file. What was it in you that makes you feel or supports your arrogance at work when in reality, your knowledge and working experiences stayed the same since you’ve joined this position three years ago?
If the management ever asks me to cut headcount or restructure finance department, I won’t hesitate to voice up my thought of replacing those two girls for new candidates. For one, new hirer will be clearly informed to deliver their job scopes and comply to company policies. Secondly, the attitude in those two girls was terrible. I would rather guide one that is ready to learn, willing to do more, and able to work with the team. Those two didn’t demonstrate any of these values.
Gina has once heard the shareholder said to the CEO of her former employment, “We are not a charity body. We are not to teach them how to do the work, they should have the capability when they applied for the job.” At that heated-up shareholders’ meeting, Gina witnessed the awkwardness and the humiliating comments yet the ugly truth her former CEO has to take from the shareholders.
I hope, we won’t have to face such comments from our current board of directors and shareholders.
‘We don’t keep lazy member in the team’ was a clause from netizens that rang behind Gina’s mind. Having incorporative members in the team would literally, burden the rest of the team members as the rest of the members has to cover for the extra workloads, put in more time and efforts to retrieve information in order to get the job done.
One day, the HR executive approached Gina for the attendance issue in those two pioneer team members. Gina clearly stated that she wasn’t agree to their way of doing things but James allowed it merely because of their low salary. The HR executive couldn’t say much since that was the CFO’s decision.
Gina looked at the direction those two girls sat and said this in her monkey mind: To those two girls, you’d better not go overboard when comes to delivering the finance work assigned. I have low tolerance in that. Just like all the other team members, you’re expected to deliver the job, as required, on time. Any issue faced or foreseeable, one has to raise it, discuss it with their team leader and/or among the team members, and solve it as soon as possible.
We (employees) are here to work for a living.
You (employee) are hired to deliver the job assigned by the company.
As simple as that.