aahhh... Fridays

I have a love-hate relationship with Fridays.


On one hand I love Fridays because usually it’s such a casual day. Calls at work are usually slow. Pace is slow and relaxing. It’s the end of the week so when the merchants are calling in they are most the time quite laid back. Joking and small talks are welcome as well. It’s cool. Plus the casual wear that we are allowed to wear every week in office, it just adds on to the relaxing weekend mood.

On the other hand I hate Fridays because it’s usually such an anti-climax days for work, because when merchants are trying to settle all the shits before they go and enjoy their weekend, they will try to blame it on us for not being able to settle things because those lazy asses only deal with things last minute just before weekends.

It’s usually the most happening night of the week. There’s no work the next morning, so no one bothers to sleep early. Everything that’s planned usually falls on this last day of the week. That’s something I love because whenever there’s something planned I will almost always have time to go for it. However that’s also something I hate because usually there’s so much going on and very often I have to choose where I want to be.



Anyway, tonight is a buffet dinner night, a pre-wedding dinner for one of my buddies since primary school. Congratulations to her for her getting married. Wish her happy ever after.

Fridays. hhhmmmm

Signing off.

A meeting - What's been heard?

There's so much to write about I have no idea where to start.

About work, about life about emotions. Lots.

It's 3 days since my last entry, I cant really chronologically organize what I've been through. Sometimes when many things happened you tend to only remember the recent ones, sometimes only the more important ones. Sometimes none.

Let's just talk about what happened today.

We had a skip level meeting with our boss's boss today.

A skip level meeting is a special thing for our company. Every quarter we have a meeting with our boss's boss, to address problems that our boss is unable to resolve, and also to address problems about our boss. We had no problems with our first 2 bosses. However in the last 3 quarters, we have been talking about the same matter, our 3^rd boss who is currently still in probation just doesn’t cut it. He's not good enough and he dun seem to ever going to be good enough.

Wonder if you can understand this but let me try and explain my situation before I tell you what happened in the meeting.

I've been in the same company and the same department since end of August 2010. It's already a high profile team when I joined. Half of the team is a risk management team with THE highest record and best result in the world, and a couple of new hires including myself were recruited to form a new department. It's a high profile new department because the company basically fired everyone in Sydney, and then migrated the whole operation to KL. It's the first year of the migration and the success of the team meant a lot for our new team leader at that time as well us new hires, because it will justify our stay, also our future in this company.

We have had 2 Team Leaders before this current one. Both of them were one of a kind. As in, beyond good. The first guy is nice, has an analytical mind, very quick risk judgment, excellent knowledge in what he needs to do in his role. He was an idol for us. All of us new hires grew tremendously while he was leading us in terms of product knowledge, service quality, call handling, escalation handling, analytical skills, presentation skills etc. etc.

However it was unfortunately that he did not have that much of time with us, his time limit was 6 months and he has moved on to a higher management role after he has proven his worth to the company by demonstrating the success in migrating the team from Sydney to KL and also maintained the world class result of the original roster of the other half of the risk team.

Then we had a secondment leader in his absence.

He was a totally different kind, he was quick, analytical and also have excellent decision making skills. He saved our time and thought us efficiency and also judging risk with a broader perspective, for the benefit of the big picture. He was with us only very shortly as he was only our acting team leader.

Then 9 months ago we had a new team leader.

A disaster.

He has no experience in a credit card call center although he was from another call center previously. However what he knew and what we are doing was not the same at all. He was from a servicing line, he wants to please customer. We are a risk management team, half the team does loss prevention, and the other half does loss recovery. In other words, the team controls the company's losses, to keep it to the minimum.

He never adjusted.

He is still the servicing man he was when he joined, he never grasped the concept of risk management, he has a huge problem with decision making, he has a huge problem in gaining the trust of the team after 9 months. Half the team have not many issues with him because we are already tired of raising issues to him because he never sees beyond the surface, half the team has so many issues with him because they cannot do things well without a decisive leader. Problem is that even until today he still has no idea what's going on and no idea what are the problems.

He is still thinking half the team has no problem with him, and the other team have a problem with him just because they dun like him. Like I said, he never understood the problem.

We gave him so much support and patience when he first joined. It was himself that destroyed his own credibility in the beginning. He lied and he did all the petty things and there are also all the things that he just isn’t capable of doing. He became unfavorable for the team and has been that way ever since. He may have gained some product knowledge, maybe some process knowledge but in terms of leadership skills and also charisma in terms of a leader, he's just a failure.

We have 0 respect for him. The reason that we still talk to him politely simply because he is of a higher position and he has the power to mess with our career.

The most motivated team and most independent team and one of the highest profile team will just torn apart and then fall apart. All the hard work in the last 2 years would have mean nothing. It's a little saddening to even think about it.

It's a skip level.

Some of us held back. We who are known to speak what we think, spoke what we thought. We gave our boss's boss the picture, for the 3^rd time, or more. I lost count. The message is simple.

He's not good enough, not even close.

We do not want him as our leader.

End of story.

It was brutal. However we do not know how much have been communicated.

At the end of the meeting we have no idea what he's thinking. We were dismissed because time's up and he needed to attend a call conference. There was no conclusion, just as the last few meetings when we discussed the same matters. I'm not quite sure about him but I think when the same issues are brought up over and over again it means that nothing is going anywhere.

We can only wait.

Waiting is such an exhausting thing to do. To think that this new boss actually has a huge opportunity with staying, it's already disheartening.

We can only hope for the best, and prepare for the worst.

I never believed in any higher beings, but if there are in fact something like that, maybe it's time for you to hear a collective prayers and make something happen.

Oh and if you actually exist, save the people in Queensland. The flood is killing them.

Cheers.

Signing off.

Hanging Out

Hanging out is fun.

What? You dun think? You must be really sad, really really sad.

I mean seriously. Who doesn’t like hanging out with people that they can have a conversation with? Having a conversation is such an healthy thing. No I don't mean debate. No not arguing also. Nah not discussing. Nope I'm not talking your boy/girl/”somewhere-in-between friend.

I mean friends, genuinely friends.

No hanging out does not involve you sitting beside his table playing with your hand phone texting other people that isn’t physically there, that's call hanging AROUND, not hanging out.

No hanging out does not involve you going next to someone doing nothing and saying nothing important just so that you have an excuse being next to him/her. That's called being a pest.

No hanging out doesn’t mean whatever you do in the office. Period.

OK, sometimes it is but not all the time. I take back the word “period”.

I like people that I can have an intellectual conversation with. There are some people on this earth that they are so brilliant that it saves your energy to talk to them. Now that's eco saving, screw the inverters.

Some friends are so awesomely smart when you are talking to them, 3 words into the sentence they start to nod to give you signal of yes he/she understands what you are currently talking about so you dun have to do any pointless elaboration. Sometimes elaborating stuffs are FUN but no not all the time.

My point is, having a conversation involve both parties LISTENING to each other. Not TALKING to each other.

Now now, I understand that some of you might have something to say about that statement BUT I dont care. As long as you do not agree with the statement above, you are wrong, now go back to facebook and continue surfing because reading this blog is wasting your time.

Anyway, back to hanging out.

I've got this friend that we've both been saying “hey let's hang out” for more than a year and it didn’t happen. Due to some change to her career path we cant talk trash in the office anymore because that would involve her calling or us calling her on the phone and we are not supposed to even call each other during work for the fact that we work in a call center. Phew, that was a long sentence.

So, I was saying, it was her birthday a couple of days ago and some of the work mates were meeting up with her to celebrate her birthday. There's something I had to do and I just couldn’t adjust the time to make it happen. So being a total ass I called her a day before her birthday and told her “happy birthday”, and then I asked her to come out AFTER her birthday for a lunch, tea and more-if-necessary hang out session.

I always knew she was smart but there weren't chances for us to talk about anything in length. We had a nice chat today. Having a decent conversation is such a magical thing for you to like a person. I mean of course in the middle of that somewhere it includes about bitching about something that you both hates but hey, there are a lot of other things that you could talk about too. Things that you don't mind sharing because none of us would go around spreading what we talked about. That's a precious thing to have.

So the point this point entry is: People! I know all of us have this person or these persons that you have been wanting to go out with to have a nice chat, go somewhere together, do something together, eat something together or whatever. Give those people a call. Today, now. Who knows, you might discover a better side of your already-good friend(s).

I'd call that time well spent, don't you think so?

Signing off.