One Year On

It's been a year since I last blogged. I guess my inspiration to write fizzled - there were other fires to fight. In fact, if we only count quality posts (by that I meant posts I wrote myself instead of piggy-backing off someone else's writing), the last decent ones were actually this and this.

Coincidentally, both posts happen to be about work, which at the time that was consuming my life. Don't be mistaken, I don't mean it in a negative way. I like my work. There was plenty of learning. And there is no better place to learn from than The School of Hard Knocks. I took plenty of beating. No doubt it was painful, but I guess it's a necessary evil. How else do you toughen up? I was like a little fish learning how to flap my fins in the nursery. Sadly, it wasn't too long before I found out I was to swim with the sharks.

I was driven at my work. And I like to think of myself as a good-natured person. Given these two traits, I was on good terms with most everyone in the firm. It was like one big happy family. That was till they got two fresh hires. The driver-less train was hurtling down the tracks at breakneck speed and I was the blind man strolling across its path. I had no idea what hit me. As it turns out, in the working world there exist people who are out to get you.

I was performing well and making good progress. It wasn't long before I was given more advanced work to do, but a senior, perhaps wary of my progress, whispered evil words in the ears of the higher ups. "He is not ready yet", he whispers from the shadows. "Let him build a firm foundation first", he couches his malignant intentions behind benign words. He slithers like a snake in the dark, waiting for his chance to strike. He didn't have to wait long. On an occasion, I independently embarked on business development and won a marketing/networking session for the company. It was an important event because it would mean substantially increased revenues if we can get this client on-board. However, this dude was upset that I did not consult him. He is of the view that I ought to first relay the news to him and leave it for him to 'escalate' the issue up to management. He chided me for jumping the chain of command. Subsequently, he draws the erroneous conclusion that I am not ready for the event. Thankfully, the directors overruled him. Since he wasn't getting any traction with the directors, he hatched a plot to work his black magic on the managing director. And so he jumped the chain of command and got the managing director to get the directors to prevent me from going. Such irony, gerrymandering to get his way. Now his fangs are bared. He has sunk his teeth into the sweet flesh of that unwitting rabbit.

Another fresh hire was the hot tempered dragon lady. She was quite fond of storming up to a junior's table with file in hand, and then slamming it down without mercy. She would then launch into a rapid fire bursts of "Why you never do this? Why you so careless? Why..". I wonder how she expects to get any meaningful feedback that way. In her universe, she thinks that shaming a person is the best way to teach. She is also fond of treating junior staff as her personal 24-hr on call duty personnel, ordering them to go get brochure, put back brochure and fill in movement record book, amongst other more banal tasks. Little wonder then, that she's unofficially vying for the title of the most undesirable person to work under. To give a sense of how dreadful she was, a junior staff assigned to work under her fell into depression and resorted to alcohol daily to escape from the hell she found herself in.

Alas, in the world, there exists people who are less than ideal. That may be an understatement - it is too kind a phrase to use on them. These people have their own personal vendetta and are playing their convoluted politics. These people are your superiors merely by virtue of the fact that they are older than you and have more years of working 'experience' than you have. But if we discount their experience back to the present and bring things up side by side for an apple-to-apple comparison, how pale you find their fruit. They may profess to have the best interests of the company at heart, but really what they're doing is tearing it down from the inside. Interestingly, after I left, an exodus ensued. Five other staff followed suit, one requested to be posted to another department and up to five are prepared to sail off as soon as the next boat comes along. Morale is low.

They dangled a promotion. They offered a fat bonus. They promised change. But I have no use for fancy titles, wretched stipend and empty promises. I left.

It's been close to 7 months since then and looking back, I'm glad I left.