My Boss My hero

That’s not what I’m going to talk about actually.

I feel compelled to discuss about this particular subject because as interns, me and my friends learn about new rules and regulations every day. For instance, in the company I work for, it’s OK to eat in meetings, be it meetings with low ranked workers (ie, us) or meetings with the big bosses. In fact for every meeting, there are 2 types of kuih, fried noodles, tea & coffee and everyone starts poking their forks in the noodle as soon as the chairman says, “Goodmorning everyone”. By the time one person is in the middle of his presentation, everyone will be passing food around the table.

But enough about food.

Every company has it’s organizational chart. Every procedure, plan, implementation must be run through the people in the chart from the bottom to the top. It goes up, if the upper ranks don’t agree, it’ll go down again, then go up until the higher ranks approve.

Funny thing the other day when a bunch of us went for a walkabout around the plant to observe hick-ups. There was me, 2 other buddies, my boss, and a couple of my boss’s boss. Let’s call my boss, Mr Kool (I’m feeling extremely creative today), my boss’s boss, Mr Pringles and two of my friends Hi & Di. Mr Pringles observed something out of place during the walkabout, turned to Mr Kool and said, “Kool, please take note of that.” In which Mr Kool turned to Hi and said, “Hi, please take a look at that.” I thought Mr Pringles could’ve simply talked to Hi directly since he was right there beside Mr Pringles. But No… he had to get all high and mighty did he…

I’m sure if there was something lower than an intern, Hi would probably turn and pass that down but since we’re at the bottom of the ladder, the implementation rests on our shoulders…

The same goes to scolding a.k.a. ‘Fire’. Big-time boss scolds boss for a hick-up, boss then scolds little boss which then scolds someone lower (temporary? interns?). Behold the schematic diagram of the scolding ranks for easier understanding.

In a company, it goes like that. Big-time bosses don’t go around screaming and throwing books on intern’s heads. In fact, they simply know us as ‘interns’, or the 4 interns or those UTP interns. Even if we screw up, they won’t blame us. They’ll blame boss. Boss will then relay messages to us.

I'm abit awed by this system in the beginning because from where I come from, we can go straight to the big guns. I'm also a little bit surprised to see people exercising big displays of emotions at the workplace. Let's face it, when was the last time we expressed ourselves openly to acquaintances ... perhaps in kindergarten. (my grandma told me that I shouldn't be friends with you because you're not fasting; I don't wanna be your friend because you're fat*cringes*. You get the idea.)

So when you hear stuff like, "That skirt makes you ugly", "I'm not a pleasant person to work with, you should've finish it before I come here!" or "Hoi that's dangerous chemical, why the heck did you move it? Don't be stupid" you'll be like, cool, everyone's dissing.

Lesson today: Don’t skip ranks, or you’ll get derailed. And one more thing, always be prepared for scolding that will blow your stripy socks off.

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Side note: I know I said something about taking a hiatus, but suddenly inspiration struck me after witnessing boss scolding little boss. Can't believe an unfortunate event churning an inspiration? Believe it now ;)

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