Wednesday, June 01, 2005

"I DIDN'T LEARN ANYTHING..."

Some time ago, a colleague of mine, being a fresh grad working for about 4 months, lamented that she didn't learn anything. Did I learn something the past 4 months? Did YOU learn anything yesterday?

I can understand fresh grad's mentality. At class, they learn A LOT theoritically. At work, we learn A LOT too, but by experience. She and I are working in sales, which logically involves a lot of phone calls, selling and meeting people. There is a hell lot of things that we learn.

Learning will have these effects: Career Advancement, Self Advancement or both. Most people fail to see that sometimes work cannot bring to career advancement, or even self advancement. Let's go into some examples. From the good to the bad.

Fireman: Heroes. Career advancement - decision making. Self Advancement - courage.Robbers: Criminals. Career advancement - planning skills, research. Self Advancement - none, unless you wanna consider ninja skills like stealth and hiding lah.

My personal belief is that you learn wherever you are, and in whatever job you're doing. Come, show me a job and I tell you what you gain out of it. Lemme talk about my friends who holds jobs that people look down upon (especially if they're to be a son-in-law to someone's mother).

Grocery items delivery man: Muscles (yes, and lean muscle at that!), meticulous. What does this guy know that I don't?? Product markets!! He knows which instant noodle sells better, which drinks sell better. If you're in a product marketing company, you wanna buy market research which may cost tons, or hire this guy who can tell you WHO picks up the drinks or mee while he's delivering and rearranging the items. Hey, advertising can be geared towards what this guy knows, man!

Fine, one example. I don't wanna write too long for this one. One last example. A prisoner locked in a dark room for 5 consecutive days. He learns how it feels like to be near insanity. He can even write a book on "Socialising: Why we cannot be alone." What would Tom Hanks be like, if he didn't have this volleyball friend called Wilson to keep him company? Insane, man! Insane!

That being said, most jobs teaches us patience, same goes for traffic jams, but that's another story. You meet all type of people, from customers to bosses, you learn to be tactful. You learn social skills. There's no such thing as not learning anything.

If you don't learn patience, this is what might happen to you during a tele-marketing call, especially after facing the same thing five times already in the day.

You: Hello, is this AAA company?
Operator: Yes, this is. Can I help you?
You: Can I speak to your director?
Operator: May I know what is it regarding?
You: Err... I would like to introduce a new toothpaste to your company.
Operator: Oh, can you please fax us the details and I will hand it to him.
You: (Wah... so troublesome. I just wanna talk to director mah, why this operator so mah-fan one?) No, no... I just want to set an appointment with him to meet him face-to-face.
Operator: I'm sorry, but we cannot allow that, please fax us the information instead.
You: Oi, I just wanna talk to him for stupid 5 minutes to set an appointment lah. So mah-fan. Duck my sick lah!
Operator: (hangs up)
*Next few days you get fired.

Incidentally, for you minors who are wondering what "Duck my sick lah!" means, it's just to insult someone with an innocent bad grammar. "You are stupid" is a harsh correct grammar. "My sick duck lah" is an innocent correct grammar which does not constitute an insult. Just so you know.

Crap, such a long post, and no pics. Next time will be better.

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