Hazia’s Reflections

I haven’t written about work for a while but that doesn’t mean that nothing had happened. Every week brought its’ own drama. I’m too tired to even be amused or pressured.

What have I done in my first 6 weeks? Or rather, what haven’t I?

1) Yesterday, I met the Newspaper Man’s niece. Yeah, I arranged for her 3-month internship at my department. Probably both of us are crazy to even think about doing such a thing in the first place. But, it happened really fast. 2 weeks ago I asked for his assistance to look for staffs for me, former journalists preferably. He agreed, provided that I do him a favour too ie his niece. Running an almost one-man show right now, I asked HR to place her under me. Interesting chat with her, I found out that he wasn’t even from the state that he claimed to be, that was his wife’s kampung.

2) 2 weeks ago, I had a shocker with a new staff who was supposed to come on board. After briefing her for 2 hours, I brought her down to meet my customer service staff whom she recognised (the staff didn’t recognise her but she kept on pushing to trigger her memory, God knows why). Then, I caught her lying about being that girl’s husband’s ex-client, when they were actually ex-colleagues.

My staff later found out that the girl had a case with her previous company, they even had to take out her CPU. The case didn’t bother me as much as the lying. It wasn’t done maliciously, but rather ‘un-stable-ly’. Thank God she pulled out after not turning up for her 1st and 2nd day at work and not answering her phone.

3) Believe it or not, I’ve also issued a warning letter to the ex-driver librarian, it was my boss’s idea. Who cares that he had been with the company for 9 years. The issue might be one small daily task, but it was a critical one. He took newspaper monitoring in the morning lightly, and he refused to admit the real reason he couldn’t do it alone. He didn’t have the indusry knowledge but he claimed that it was because he had a lot of interruptions.

When I called him, he started preaching like a politician. He claimed that he could mingle with people from all levels, and he could tell the bosses straight to their faces that they were stupid. 2 days later, he failed to distribute the news clippings that the senior staff had marked. Hence, out came the 3-page Warning Letter. I had to write it in English first, and then translate it to Malay. Imagine! I thought he would retaliate and be outrageously ‘kurang ajar’. Surprisingly, his work got perfect after that. Yesterday, he even monitored the news over the long weekend all by himself (the senior staff was on MC) and distribute internally before I came to the office at 2pm. When he sent the news clippings to my room today, his face was red, he was fuming at me obviously. Now, why did I find that funny? LOL!

In a nutshell, I’m really tired. On top of everything, the gravely tedious task of managing montly overseas exhibition on behalf of all agencies has just landed on our lap, in short on my lap from nowhere. Sure, I get to travel everywhere, but even that didn’t lighten up my mood.

Many times, I felt like quitting. The main thing that is stopping me right now is that… I don’t have a spoiler on my CV yet. And also, there are a handful of people who are really nice and helpful, 1 or 2 especially who have gone out of their way to smoothen my path and take off some of my workload, even though it was beyond their job scope. Plus a few more who came to my room to warn me of some ‘twisted’ external individuals to watch out for.

Even internally, all are not what they seemed to be. I have a pretty good sense of the clerks/secretaries’ 2 separate camps by now, and how unreliable their observations/sentiments were. Same goes for the male managers and above. Mr Nice Guy turned out to be damn lazy while Mr Defensive & Territorial is actually hardworking and would be more beneficial in the long run. Sigh, tired!!!