An advice to a friend ~~

--07 May 2009—

It’s a month working at Sentosa Island for Genting IR Project. I’m starting to get used to new system, new colleagues, and new environment. The most important is starting to get used to 15minutes walking to MRT and stand in MRT like “sardine” for half an hour in every morning.

Yesterday chatted with ex-colleague. Since my resignation, she forced to become superwoman - admin, account, HR, quotation, even sometime boss want her to do sales follow up. She always busy till forget to eat lunch, working till 9/10pm… Singapore is a place which stress on higher education level. She’s a SPM level with 8 years accounting experience. She would have a good future if she is a diploma holder. Her English is quite ok, but not up to boss’s (especially boss wife) expectation. Even she put many efforts on work, but still gets scolded that she simply did the jobs. It’s really hurtful. The worst is that she is the one who borrow money to workers and not the boss. The boss is a millionaire, staying bungalow house (A bungalow house costs at least a million and above in Singapore) and driving a new BMW car, yet he replied to my ex-colleague: “Why you no money???” when she said that she doesn’t have money to borrow to the workers. How funny it is….

If she has money, why she comes to Singapore work??? If she has money, why she is still working with a low salary but always gets scolded like hell???

I feel I’m lucky to escape from the company, but I feel sad and pity for her. Since before CNYE, all of us planned resigned. I’m even prepared resume and cover letter for her. But, maybe she had no confident, she feel that it’s hard for a SPM holder to get a job in Singapore, in such a bad recession. Thus, she stayed in the company.

Since I worked in new company, I see much more things. A big company is really different with the previous small company. It’s like heaven and hell (Please forgive what I said but it’s true for my feelings and thoughts…) For example, all of us get scolded for “low class English” in ex-company. I know that my English is not perfect as other English educated person, but my English still ok. The 6 months working make me feel that my English is very bad and is not even up to secondary school level. During my one month working here, I saw many emails from different companies. Some letter had a bit grammar mistakes and yet people is directors or managers from MNC companies. These peoples’ English maybe not perfect as “someone” but they able to expand their business to global. It’s very “feng ci” that “someone” is able to write a long and perfect even advanced English JUST to reply a few sentence email, but only able to do a small business, and even sub-contractor complained that “someone” doesn’t know how to do site inspection; customers prefer to deal with employee compare to “someone”.

I’m not meant to offend anyone here. I just want to express my feelings and thoughts. Even we are Chinese educated and our Chinese is quite “pro” compare to others, sometimes we make mistakes on the Chinese grammar too. There is no perfect person. I feel that a good employer should care about his/her employee, discover their strength good effort, and discover ways to improve employees from weakness instead of blaming who’s right or wrong or blaming his/her employee is not perfect or always scolded about the weakness and never praise on the strengths.

Anyway, not all of the small companies are bad. I worked in an event company during my university life and the lady boss is a very good employer. Just we are not lucky enough whereby we met such not so good employer. In a positive way, the worst will make we appreciate the better, just like what I appreciate my current environment, everyday go work happily, not like last time didn’t want to wake up for works.

Lastly, here’s an advice for my ex-colleague and those who face same problem as her too:-

Since CNYE, I heard many times that you said “wait…after CNYE I only see how” …“wait, after xxx I only see how”…..I know that you have family burden and scare once you change job, it’ll add more burden to you. But, I’m sure that if you still stayed there, your burden is still the same and there is another burden for you – your mental will be “abused” everyday, de-motivated, and you will not happy too. So, why not give yourself a chance, try to search for new career, and maybe can reduce your burden? I know that maybe recession would hard to get better job. But, there are still companies who want to hire people in recession time. Life is like a game, like a gamble. You will never know that it’s winning or losing until you tried it out. You’re still young, or you want to wait till 40’s, 50’s, or 60’s then only want to find a better alternative?

Lastly, good luck for you =)