A Colleague's Mentality

Side note: "As her soul rises to the heavens, misty dews and rain droplets accompany to soften her journey. The rakyat mourns a compassionate and charismatic mother. A great lady finally home." - Tribute to Datin Seri Endon Mahmood


I reached work at 7:30am this morning because I need to get ready for a meeting at 9:00am. Met a senior colleague telling me that my boss has asked our accountant to brief him on the renewal of a tenant. A few minutes later, this accountant colleague came to me. Conversation went like this....

Colleague: I came to work this morning, there was a note on my desk, saying that Mr Boss wants me to brief him on TenantName's renewal.
Me: Shouldn't be a problem what. Just check the tenant file lah.
Colleague: He (the boss) is longer here what. The tenant also masuk before I came here. Why I have to brief him?
Me: He just wants to know the details lah.
Colleague: He knows where the filing cabinet is what. Check himself lah!

What a way to respond to a director's order. Hehe.... this director has just got himself involved with our work since the past month, of course he's not up to date with tenancy information bla bla bla. That's why he asks for update, knowing very well he wouldn't know where to look in the 50-odd pages of the Tenancy Agreement. I think what my director ask is totally normal, why must my colleague act up?

It's like the boss saying, "Secretary, please make me a cup of coffee." and the secretary replying "You got hands and can walk what, go make yourself lah." I think it's too common that in the white-collar industry, we do not work according to the terms in the contract. Surely we'll have to do odd-jobs for directors. If we were to reply "Eh, you siao ah?! My contract didn't say I need to be involved in preparation of Annual Dinner. Go find someone else.", that's the end of the job.

Sigh... sometimes unwritten terms in contracts really make a person seems to be underpaid. :)