Seven and the pillow

DayZ - I survived a day.

Day 0

Why are you going? She asked. I told her I was a soldier too. She doesn't like it, disagreeing with the loudest “no” I've ever heard in my life. “You are a doctor!” she screamed at me.

“Yes, but I am also a soldier, I could save lives.”

I don't want to look at her after I said that. I just walk towards the chopper that is waiting for me. It will head to an island near the Russian border. I will not turn. I am so afraid that I would regret, or even change my mind if I look at her face. She must be weeping. I couldn't hear. The sound of the engine is drowning everything else.

The scenes in the television news were too horrifying. People were attacking each other, people with guns were shooting unarmed civilians. Strange thing was that the unarmed people were winning, we saw it clearly from the pictures. Obviously something is very wrong.

I thought to myself, I need to go there and save lives, I'll find out how. I know I can.

Day 1

While I moan in pain, I watch the smoke coming out of a ball of flames, from something I used to call a car just seconds ago. My consciousness is failing me. I can barely keep my eyes open. My legs are soaked in the sea water coming up the coast line but not enough for it to wash me away.

The burning car and the loud explosions are drawing the monsters towards it. None of them seem to have noticed me. What about Shaun? He was in the car with me. What's happening to him? Damn. I need to open my eyes.

Damn...

Day 2

I open my eyes to the sound of the waves, gosh it's not a bit romantic. As soon as I regain my consciousness the nerves are sending me signals that I am hurt all over. The pain is too much to bare but I am so afraid of the monsters so I wouldn't allow myself to let out any sound moaning. This is how it feels to be thrown out from a crashing car. Action heroes from movies don't even get scratches when they jump out. More over they get paid for doing it. So unfair. How I wish this is just a video game, how I could just walk around and explore and get a second life to move on if I die. Half my legs are buried in the mud and grasses of the coast line. I guess I will have to wait until the pain subside.

Feels like mid day. The heat is crazy. I could feel the back of my neck burning. At least the mud smells good.

I could feel the heat that was above my head is now slowly moving towards my left. So that's WEST. Good to know about that but without a map it means nothing. I have no idea how long have passed but I know the sun is about to set. It's getting darker as the sun move closer behind the hills. I could finally feel my neck waking up from the overwhelming pain. I turn slowly to see if there are any of the monsters around, I'm glad I do not see any.

I head towards the burned down car to check on Shaun. There are so many bodies burned inside I couldn't even tell which one is him. Don't think anything useful could have survived that heat too.

Farewell Shaun, you were a good friend.

So now I am hurt, without food, without water and I'll have to walk. What could be worse than a nightmare? Only when you realise it isn't one.

I'll head East I guess, the sun will be setting behind me and should rise ahead of me the next morning. I think. I could find some sleep and in the next morning I will find something useful to last a few more days and figure out how I could get help. Our chopper has crashed trying to pick us up. No big birds will crash unnoticed, I'm sure a search and rescue team is on their way.

Visibility is fading. I am cursing loudly in the realization that the street lights are not going to power up. The whole island is falling into darkness. This is bad. I think I better run. I best stick to the coast line so that I will not get lost in the woods. There's moon light tonight and the sea water will act as a mirror to at least give me some visibility.

Something moved in the distance, it's coming towards me. A shipyard is in the distance but between that and I, there's a moving shadow. Something that looks human that I know it's not. On one hand I appreciate the fact that in the darkness it does not see any better than I do, on the other hand I think I took just one step too many. I dived to the grasses and I tried to move sideways as quietly as I could.

It's no use. It heard me.

As the shadow starts to make a loud growl and starts to sprint towards me, I quickly get up and break into a mad dash towards a rail road not far away. It leads into the darkness without going into the shipyard but it seems to have been built along the coast line. When a man is drowning, even a floating straw could be seen as a life saver. In my situation the railroad is like a path shown by the god, an illusion that all I need to do is run along this railroad and eventually someone will save me. I am running along the railway without hesitation.

I start off with a sprint, I am so afraid of the screams that is let out by the monster chasing behind me. Only less than half a minute later I realise that I am slowing down but the pursuer is still relentless. I know I am in trouble but I have no choice. I have to run.

Never in my life I have needed to go through this, I feel air is being sucked out from my lungs. My lungs feel so empty as if it has started to burn. My legs are failing me. I had my trainings in the army but this is no war. In a war, I could fight back. This is a bully, I have no weapons and only a small backpack with some painkillers, a torchlight and a bandage. All I could do is run. I feel so miserable.

Then a loud sound echoed off my chest. I have ran into a piece of junk metal at full speed. I scream in pain but I know I must get up. I'm right. As I get to my feet I could feel the monster's fingers touched my shirt, almost got a hold of me. The sound of me running into a car has attracted a number of more of the monsters nearby and has joined the chase. I am so screwed.

If only I have a gun, I am thinking, I'll shoot you bastards in the head one by one. If only I have a gun.

Gun shot. I see a muzzle flash in the distance. It's feels like seeing lights at the end of an endless tunnel. I found strength. This is how human beings are, you find hope, you find strength. That gun shot was aiming at me but to me it's the only hope I have.

I scream in the direction at the top of my lungs “Shoot those things behind me! Shoot them!”

Then a second shot is fired

Then the third.

One after another the number of foot steps behind me are reducing but there are still many. Damn, just how many of them are there? As I run pass the man, I could see he is holding an AK47, the most reliable assault rifle in the world. At the same time he let out a full clip of automatic fire at the monsters running in our direction. The bullets are powerful enough to rip through even armored men. Sure enough I witness all of them dropped to the ground. I've saved.

If anything is ever that easy.

I could feel the whole neighbour hood is waken up by the rifle fire.

While the gun was shooting full auto I could see clearly that the gunner is Shaun. He's alive, now he has saved my life. I have no idea how he survived but I'm just glad he did. Before I could greet him or even a small celebration he turns to me and yell at me, “Shut the fuck up, run!”

We are not far from a nearby village. There are screams coming out of it and every second they draw closer. Hungry screams. I know Shaun is right. We race down along the track without wasting another second.

It's now pitch black as we move inland along the tracks. I have to constantly ask Shaun where he is so that I could keep up. He seems to know his way around, last night must have been a rough one for him.

“We need to find you a gun. You need a bigger bag. I also think it's best we find some food and water as we move” He says firmly. I don't like that he is sounding like we are going to be here for a long time. “I think the command center was overrun. I found a radio but no one answers. My guess is we are on our own now.” He finishes his sentences.

I did not respond to him. I have no idea what I should say but only to agree with him.

Hope is fading. Will I ever be home to see her again? Would she wait for me? Questions are beginning to race through my mind.

I don't like this.

Anger strikes me. All this didn't need to happen.

“Calm down! Follow me.” Shaun realised my frustration. “There's a place I call home in the previous night, we should go there.” I have to agree with him. There's no choice.

After a walk that seem to have lasted an eternity we have finally arrived at a town. Shaun turns to me and says “I have stacked up some weapons and food in a super market in the town, let's go get them.” He isn't interested in my answer, he just takes off so I have to follow him. No way in hell I will stand here defenseless.

I found a pistol on our way to the supermarket. I found my courage with the pistol in my hand. Colt 1191, never knew I like this handgun this much. Now I need ammo. There's only half a clip left in the gun, there is some blood stain on the handle. The previous owner is probably now at a more peaceful world. I wouldn't know. I hope so.

Shaun instructs me to stay low, then we come across a few courtyards and go through a few more houses.

A rifle, perfect. The beauty sits right there in the corner of the room, next to a window. Some rounds are scattered on the floor around the gun, surely the owner was trying to reload. Someone must have been dragged away while shooting out the windows. The blood trail that leads outside told the story.

Lee Enfield Rifle, fires 7.62mm rounds, bolt action. It's like meeting an old friend.

I pulled the bolt to put a bullet into the chamber. Good, it's loaded. A shadow is moving outside of the window. I take aim quickly and squeezed the trigger. Blood races into my heart, and adrenaline races down my nerves. Shaun jumped at the sound of the gun. He screamed at me to run. I have attracted too much attention. I didn't care.

I want to kill them all. I will end this now.

The ammo in my bag is reducing quickly. Shaun yells at me every time I reload the gun. “What the fuck is your problem man! Stop it! Are you trying to get us killed!” He's not even asking a question. “This way”, I told him. We head into a building that looks like a school. The monsters can't seem to be able to catch up as we go up the stairs. “Shoot them”. This time Shaun agreed we should do it. One after another Shaun and I drop the monsters. Their heads exploded as our large caliber bullets hit them.

We are not winning. The gunshots are attracting more of them. Just how many more of them are there?

I picked up some road flares as we retreat to the top floor. I found a ladder that leads to the roof top and I signal Shaun to follow. I then ignited 2 stick of flares and placed them at diagonal corners of the roof top.

“You idiot you are attracting all of them with this!” Shaun is very upset with me but he had no choice but to shoot anything that tries to come up the ladders. Then I realised the monsters cant climb.

I feel so much joy, I feel like I'm winning. One shot at a time, I am dropping them, a bullet in each of the heads. I feel like a victor. Shaun is now sitting in the middle of the roof top not knowing how we can get out of this. I don't really care. I'll shoot them all. When they all die, we will find our way out. They die tonight.

Then one of them started climbing the ladder. I feel nervous, I thought they couldn't climb. I can't see him, I need to go closer to the edge. I bend over the edge and try to take aim at its head. I couldn't see it. So I try to reach my body out a little further by going prone. I try to extend sideways so that I can see the head of the creature that is climbing up.

Suddenly I feel I am losing my balance. My body is falling out of the ledge of the roof. “Shit! No!” I imagined there must be a lot of fear in my voice. In the corner of my eyes I could see Shaun got up and is trying to reach me. Then I see him above me and our distance grow.

Pain. It feels so familiar. Just like last night. This time I am losing my conscious even faster. I think I fell on my head, it must have been at least 20 feet high. It can't end like this. No... go away, stay away from me, I don't want to become one of you monsters.

Darkness follows.

What's happening? Damn... I'm losing it again...

Day 3... ?

What are you looking for!?

What are you looking for?

people look for various things in life. some people search for it aggressively while others merely look on for the rest of their life. which category do you belong?

I moved on from my previous role since October last year. officially it's a promotion. how I look at it? I'd like to keep it to myself but here I'm going to talk about how others looked at it.

I'm not a humble person. I know what I can do and can't do and so I will quote my abilities accordingly. I will not hesitate to take credits as long as I rightfully deserve it. on the flip side I will not hesitate to compliment those who have done well because just like me, they deserve it. I do not think I brag about what I do but my girlfriend tells me sometimes I do it without knowing it, probably it's time to control.

Jealousy is such a stupid thing. It's probably not good to attract any. Sometimes a few idiots just aren't happy people found their way up but they ate stuck below still playing the blame game. They don't realise it's them who's gotta change.

once there's a friend I respect a lot have told me, if you choose to stay out of the lime light then you will never be noticed. I think he is most definitely right. there's always two sides of a coin. from my experience I know if you stay in the lime light for too long you tend to be targeted. it's good to allow others to have their turn to bust a groove.

with that said, I know for a fact there are always some assholes in this world that think differently. they would think no one other than themselves deserve credits from other people's good work, no matter how little they have contributed. never hesitates to jump out and steal credits but always try to back down taking responsibilities. some of these people are even slightly more powerful than others and never hesitate to exercise their power to get rid of good people that got into their way. or so they thought.

leadership is a big piece in any organisation, unfortunately bad leadership is also always a big piece in the downfall of an organisation. I have been working in this organisation for 3 years. I have seen my share of inspirational leaders but unfortunately have also seen more than a couple of rotten eggs. I have seen opportunities given to good people but have seen even more good people gotten rid of by bad leaders. leaders who think no one other than themselves are allowed to shine.

I wonder when is this bad cycle going to end, when is the balance going to shift. more bad people need to go and more good talents need to stay. I am lucky I had and still have some awesome colleagues to work with. one of these days I worry that might end, where every new person than comes are nothing but just another zombie, brain dead.

my mentor in the current team is leaving the organisation at the end of this month, one day before my birthday. better opportunity awaits her. I'm glad for her but I cant help to feel sad that another good teacher, good friend and most importantly a great talent have no where else to go but out of the doors of this office. watching people leave is becoming a routine. a routine I hope is going to break.

what are you looking for in your career? money? achievements? or both? I know none of us are looking for happiness, that's for sure. You've gotta be very lucky or unbelievably stupid to try to search for happiness in your career.

I know I'm not.

signing off.

Dust, yucks.

What the little things mean There are so many petty things in life. One of them is cleaning the dust in my room. I can build a computer, I can get the cables settled. However if you get me to clean the dust, it'd kill me. That's how much I hate to do sweeping with a sensitive nose to dust.

All that explains why I feel so touched when I am watching my girlfriend cleaning my room. Cleaning the room for me. She knows how much I hate dust. I worried very much when she climbs on my table trying to reach the upper shelves of my TV rack; when she climbs up my bed trying to reach for the cabinet 7 feet above ground and when she tries to get to the upper levels of my wardrobe. She's proven herself capable of doing so but she's also put in action to let me know she loves me. I'm touched.

Maybe she'd see this or maybe she wouldn't, either way I will prove to her I love her. Maybe one of these days I should tell her. some things are better not left untold. they say it's the end of the world in only a few months time, we don't really have that much time before we die, do we? hahaha.

Signing off.

SMART technologies

I just want to see how this thing links to ever note. Pretty interesting. It's amazing how things are saving people's time nowadays, at the same time it's also taking away the time people spend with each other. What an irony. How is technology benefiting people? I really wander sometimes.

Even for myself, I'd think often whether if I am fully utilising the convenience that technology brings me, or have I became dependant on it?
A question not even myself could answer.

What does it feel like when a place like this makes you wanna break away so much. Feels so under achieved, underpaid, overworked, unappreciated.

hhmmmmmm flash backs...

Many years ago I worked in the warehouse of a reputable media retailer. I worked as a logistic executive hired by them to also lias with their technology provider. My job was to supervise and lead a project of a migration for the company’s stock taking system from a mainframe based, to web based.


It was a challenging job because the data bank for their new web based system was created by a bunch of foreigner s that weren’t even computer literate. Yes, they used the cheap labours that came from Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, and Cambodia etc, to do their data entry. Most of these people didn’t even go to school.

The first day when I did a test on the system I almost fainted. The barcode error rate was as high as over 80%. There’s no way you can use a data bank like this to do your day to day stock taking. So that’s where I came in. I joined their MIS (Management of Information System) team to lead a project of rectifying the barcode data bank so that the whole system can actually be useable. Project timeframe was given a minimum of 3 months.

3 Months was a very long time.

It took me 1 month to rectify the data base and make the system usable again Improving the accuracy of the data base from virtually unusable, to about 85%. I was confident that I could complete the project within time frame and able to complete the migration in under 2 months time.

By the 6th week of the project being kick started, the accuracy of the data base was already around 90%, and so I have advised the manager that all that is left now is to have someone to constantly monitor the platform to ensure further data to be accurate and need a strict control on future data entry, while slowly removing redundant data that are still remaining in the system, whenever it shows up.

So, the project was a success at that stage, until the migration completes, all that was left to do was monitoring the system. My job became easy after the initial 6 weeks of nightmarish OT OT and OT.

One day in the 7th week, a newbie was brought into the department; she was assigned to sit at my place. Yes you read it right, my place. But how? No one told me that someone was going to sit at my place, I was also not designated to a new work station. All of a sudden my workstation was given to another new employee with immediate effect. Where am I gonna sit? I was damn confused. I tried to visit the manager for this matter and find out what’s happening. The manager refused to see me. In 2 days time when this continued, I kinda had a feeling that the manager was being damn cheap and was trying to force me to resign. The project was designed for 3 months time frame, and I have almost completed the project in the 7th week time. The manager got the impression that the job is so damn easy that they wouldn’t even need to pay my salary for this last piece of work to be done, and they can just spent half my salary to hire a high schooler to continue what I have done, and so save a lot of money.

They were trying to force me to resign.

Oh dear oh dear.

Wouldn’t that be shitty.

In the end I didn’t resign, at the end of 2nd month they sent me a letter to ask me to pack up and leave. No reason given, just exercising their rights in the hiring contract. No compensation was given. A bit sad though, I should have read the contract much more carefully. It said if I were to resign I need to repay the company for the salary for the rest of the contract if I decided to end the contract prematurely, but if they were to do so all they need to give me is 1 week notice.

Oh well, lesson learned.

Sky is gloomy, no harm for a little bit of a flash back isn’t it?




P/S: A friend that resigned after me told me that the migration project failed one month later as data bank started to fall apart in the hands of the high schoolers and migrant workers. The project was decomissioned 3 months after I left. The manager was fired. Total cost for that project itself was around half a million. haha... damn my 2 months effort wasted.



Signing off…

Haunted. By a good-for-nothing but morale killing supervisor.

I joined this reputable company about 2 years ago.

I was offered freedom, challenges, and flexibility. All I need to do, is to be as good as I can be at work.

For almost a year, I have good leaders, good work mates. It was like a dream job, besides the pay. The pay was not bad at start, but after 2 salary adjustments and 2 increments that didn’t seem like anything, friends that have started off much later have already climbed beyond my salary level. Being a senior for 2 years but if fresh grads joined the company, they'd be taking the same salary that I’m taking. I can’t help but to start to feel quite disturbed.

Anyways, for almost a year, I have had a job that was quite satisfying, always feeling that I have so much to learn; leaders that I can always look up and depend upon; seniors that are always willing to help. I'm free to do work the way I want it, as long as my performance proves that my way is efficient. I enjoyed so much that I am always at the top of my things and I was always happy to learn or do anything that's not even included in my job description, as long as there's something to learn.

I enjoyed so much freedom, as I am given my task in the morning, and I am free to manage my work load on my own, planning on when and what to finish, when to take a break from work, and lunch time is just a discussion away with my work mates. At the end of the day when I check out how much work I have accomplished, I usually feel proud and satisfied and always would look forward to the next day I could get myself to accomplish more.

Not anymore.


I came across an article on the internet one day; let me paste it here to share a little.

10 ways you know that you have a bad boss:

1. The knot you get in your gut whenever you have to deal with him. You never know which person is going to show up — the nice, benevolent manager or the insane, angry hophead.

2. The feeling you get when you have to get dressed every morning. You know, the sensation that life wasn’t meant to be like this, that nobody knows what the day ahead will hold — and not in a good way, either.

3. He’s either absent — or omnipresent. On days when he is supposed to be there, leading the way, guiding his people with a firm and gentle hand, he is nowhere to be found. Yet on days when everybody is executing the plan with distinction, there he is, standing in the middle of everything, gumming up the works, micro-managing, driving everybody crazy.

4. His word cannot be trusted. He lies when it suits him, and worst of all, he believes his lies once they are uttered.

5. He is never wrong. Sometimes he may be “misinformed,” or “misled by others,” but he is never, ever, wrong. Those who think he might be in error had better keep that opinion to themselves.

6. All credit goes to him. All blame goes to others.

7. His only loyalty is to herself. More times than you can count, you have seen him sell people down the river who used to be his favorites. If there is trouble, he's the first one to throw his colleagues and subordinates overboard into the shark-infested waters. Strangely, he is also the first person to question other people’s loyalty.

8. Work hours are hard to predict. There are long stretches of unmanaged, vague, pointless activity or inactivity, followed by short bursts of frenzy. Weekends are not safe. Vacations are not honored. Your time is not your own.

9. His door is closed most of the time. Particularly after lunch.

10. He's the main topic of conversation. Wherever coworkers gather, all they talk about is what an annoying, hurtful, scary, irrational nutbag the boss is. And when a bad boss goes, he dies unmourned — except perhaps by the one person at the office who did his bidding.


Honestly speaking, I found all the above so true because what’s happening right now is that we actually have someone like that in our department, that met all the above signs. Like, exact match, if you know what I mean. Hooray… but not exactly that’s something to celebrate for, it’s totally the opposite of hitting jackpot.

I’m going through hell.

Honestly speaking, I really dun hate this job. I am reasonably capable of doing what I am doing. I enjoy the people that I work with, minus the person that I am talking about.

The most recent big problems I have with him, is him trying to micro manage every single little thing in the department. Especially micro managing me. I am a living human being, I am not a puppet. In a normal world, no one can stand being micro managed, especially when you are not doing anything wrong but someone is just picking something wrong out of you because everything else you did was right.

Let me briefly describe what he is doing to me.

Imagine someone keeps peeking over the cubical to look at your screen every other minute, to see what you are doing, and whenever you are caught doing something that seems irrelevant to work, he provides a feedback.

Imagine someone keeps peeking over the cubical to see if you are holding your phone, and as soon as you are spotted with your phone, he provides a feedback.

Imagine someone keeps peeking over the cubical to see if your phone is on your table, if the phone is spotted on the table, he provides a feedback.

Imagine someone keeps peeking over the cubical to see if your phone is being charged, if your phone is spotted being charged, even if it’s not anywhere obvious nor you are playing with it, he provides a feedback nonetheless

Imagine someone keeps peeking over the cubical to see if you are reading the newspaper, if you are caught reading your newspaper, even if you have not started working, or you have completed whatever you are required to do for the day, he still provides a feedback.

Imagine someone keeps peeking over the cubical to see if you sitting at your cubical, if you have left your cubical for a tad bit too long by his standard be it your bottle took too long to fill, or you went and get food, or you spent a little longer in toilet to take a dump, he provide a feedback.

Imagine someone keeps bringing up what you just completed a few minutes ago, and questions why you did a BAU task the way you did it, seemingly that he has zero knowledge of the day to day process and why you have done it, even though he is YOUR DIRECT BOSS, and he has been in this company a year and a half, AND HE IS SUPPOSED TO BE AN EXPERT IN THESE. And provides a feedback.

Imagine someone keeps peeking over the cubical to see what you are doing, and you are caught being efficient at what you do, so happens that you have completed your work before the end of the day. Instead of a compliment, he provides a feedback.

I am sorry if you have not been driven insane until reading this point, because I have. This is exactly what is happening to me, only more. I cannot spend more time in listing more because if I continue to do so, I will probably stand the hell up right now, and saw his head off.

I’m not ready to go to jail; I still love my family and my girlfriend.

Lucky him.

I am now so desperate to get away from this. Either I get my work station changed, or I murder him and get him replaced, or I suicide and get myself charged.

Or I quit my job.

Damn. I dun want to pick the easiest option from that list. Not yet.

But heck, day by day he’s driving me up the wall and everyone has got a limit to these kinda shits. Let’s hope I won’t murder him any time soon.

Desperately in need of a session with some friends to bitch about all of what has been happening and let off some steam.

Suddenly I feel a need for alcohol, although I am by no means anything near a drinker.



Signing off…

Rage Quit.

When gamers talk about rage quitting, usually they are referring to people that couldn't stand the way the are being trashed, hence leaving the game prematurely before the game has ended. We called them rage quitters.

In real life there's something of the same nature. Especially at work.

I almost became one of those.

I like to manage my job the way I like it, within the acceptable freedom, of coz. However when things get really tough, like in March, I was totally overwhelmed with work, during working hours at least. I was handling quite a number of extra tasks plus my BAU work load. Some of these extra tasks were taken up by myself voluntarily, some were forced to be taken up because no one else could or know how to do it, some of these were assigned to me. These tasks were supposed to be distributed among 3-4 people. And for shit's sake some loser above me kept sending me emails to me to ask me to deal with some ad hoc non-BAU shitz that are forever complicated and frustrating to deal with. All these added up and impacted my BAU work performances.

I know it has and I know I should voice it, so in one of the meetings I have voiced it so that the whole team knows that what and how I am doing, and I voiced that it's necessary that these tasks are to be shuffled and distributed to different members of the team to share the work load.

Supervisor seems shocked, his newly promoted "expert" at that time seemed shocked too. One of these tasks were supposed to handled by her previously when she was still an analyst. The reason that I took it up is simple.

Because she fucking abandoned it.

Let me describe what happened.

When you are handling a task, and you are going to move on to a different role, anyone with a logic mind would understand that you will need to pass the task to someone so that things are not impacted. This Expert however, seems to live in a different world. First of all, no one knows that when and how she was moving on to her new role, secondly, she stopped doing all the things that she was supposed to do as an analyst, 3 WEEKS BEFORE she move on to the role of that capable senior, as a Subject Matter Expert.

So as expert as she is to be, she just quietly stopped doing all the tasks she had on hand, and also stopped doing all her BAU work, and also stopped taking calls, ALL WITHOUT ANYONE IN THE TEAM HAVING ANY KNOWLEDGE ABOUT. Yes, awesome. I'll talk about what happened to our schedules later. Now let me get back to the matter of overwhelming amount of tasks that i was handling.

So, I was saying, I brought it up in the meeting and made it clear so that everyone understood that these tasks needs to be handled as a team, not for some certain individuals to handle alone. I thought I communicated clearly. So finally I managed to convince most the team that the tasks needs to be distributed. Supervisor was there, the expert was there.

I also made it clear that by handling all these extra things have impacted by performance of my BAU tasks. I made it clear that because the team tasks were so important that i have to give priority to and therefore I have no time to touch many of the cases assigned to me and there's nothing i could do about it. Supervisor nodded and said he understood. I thought he did because all of us were speaking English but then, once again I have over estimated his level of literacy in English language.

2 months down the road and the cases are closed and sure enough some of these cases were not touched and had a negative results to them. Sure enough that my BAU performance have dropped for the month of March, after staying above average for more than a year.

One day a list of cases came in from the back office team saying that 7 of the cases they have capture have not been worked on. 6 of these cases were untouched by his minions, and 1 of them has my name on in. Being an ass he is, he sent an email to me with the following message:

"Please help to advise why this below cases were not worked – I believe we had mutual agreement to update for each cases assigned.

Please response by today."

I frowned and I was quite frustrated. I am a person that is very obsessed when statistics have my name on it. It takes a lot of heart of me to prioritise the team's benefit over my own, and seeing my own stats taking a hit for doing other people's work is a pain. I have already brought this issue up in the meeting and have already made things clear why and how this has happened, and yet a fierce email has ended up in my mailbox. And fuck him for his "mutual agreement", there was never any, he who does not know what his team is actually doing did make that request, we have already given the justification that cases that we did not work on simply shouldn't be updated to seem like we did. Yet he insisted that we should, just to cover his ass. All of the seniors did not agree with that arrangement and did not agree to do such. All his newly hired minions agreed, because they are his minions. duh. However, here he is, "mutual agreement" he said.

Kaaaaatuuuui~!

So what did I do with that email?

I ignored it because I have no reason to reply to his hostility.

Alzheimer's disease did not remember what I said in the meeting and then sent me another email on the following day:

"I have not heard from you yet- let me know if you’re facing any challenges."

OK, FINE.
Since he wants to know so bad, then I'll explain again. Irritated, I replied his email with as much detail as possible of what happened:

"There's no special reason sir.
There was not enough time and that case was simply missed out due to lack of time."

And then I listed out what I was doing (comments in bracket was not included in the email):

"I was doing:

1)Check and forwarding merchant supporting documents in team email inbox. (Which Volume is enough to take up 1/3 of a person's working day;)

2)Assignment of Ad hoc requests that came from other teams. (I needed to screen through and reject inappropriate requests and then assign the valid requests back to the analyst that was previously handling case. And I take up ownership of most of the cases that has no ownership. takes up about 1/2 my day when there's a heavy volume.)

3)Case Assignment, (a weekly activity that downloads a record of cases opened for the markets that we service and then manually filter and then distributes them to each of the team members. Usually takes 2 hours or up to 1/2 a day of my time doing this)

4)Concluding the team's monthly result. (I think most of us can understand, this doesn't look like a normal analyst's task at all. how can i present my own result? Because i can manipulate the outcome if I wanted to, it's non-compliance. I tried to make him understand that his Expert has to do this, but he didn't get it.)

Regards"

and so I sent out the email explaining what CHALLENGES that I am facing and hoping that he can get the email knowing that it's his poor management with me ending up with so many tasks and so he will shut the fuck up.

Sure enough, being an idiot he is, he didn't get it, he replied to my email quickly:

"I totally understand that you’re busy with your daily task and but I believe this would not be a valid excuse.


Please ensure to work on the cases below and make sure to update in The System. Hope you understand the severity of cases not being worked on."

WHAT??? EXCUSES??? ME??? WHY WOULD I FIND EXCUSES WHEN I AM ALREADY DOING MORE THAN I SHOULD? And hell yeah I know how severe when cases weren't work on, why they hell on earth did you think that i brought up the matter when I have not enough time to work on my cases??????

Bloody Idiot.

One thing in me is that I do not like slacking in terms of work because I am very very very very obsessed with statistics that has my name on it, aka job performance metrics. If i were to do something, I will do it as best as I could. Sometimes my best isn't good enough for someone but the effort is always there. Calling me giving excuses not only is an insult to my commitment to what i was doing, it also show that this Supervisor, which is a direct boss of mine does not understand what his team members are doing. I immediately understood from that point onwards that this guy is not someone I want to work under. This guy is not the person that would lead me to an advancement in my career. He is only using all his team members as stepping stones so that he himself can get as much credit as possible, and to please his superiors.

I felt rage, and immediately I fired up Microsoft Word and started typing my resignation letter. I thought to myself although I like most of the rest of the people I am working with, when work is so damn screwed up with a boss that does not know and does not appreciate whatever I am doing, there's no longer any reason I want to stay here in this office. Plus this asshole is harassing me day in day out stopping me from reading newspapers, having breakfasts, checking my headphone, trying to check on how many minutes I went for my toilet sessions etc etc etc etc etc etc. Just because he is fucking sitting next to me. If i didn't know that he is such an asshole he is, I would have thought that he is picking on me. But I know he is just being what an asshole should be doing.
I was doing something that i despise the most when I am playing online games.

Rage quitting.

Shit.


Suddenly a friend that were newly transferred to another position came and visited me. He saw what I was doing and immediately pulled me off my workstation and had a work with me. It didn't matter what he said but what he did was able to give me some time to cool down and calm down.

Shit. I realised I was doing something I despised so much.

Even if I wanted to quit, I have to plan for it.

And so started to plan for it.

signing off...

Promises vs Breaking Promises.

In my previous post I mentioned that I have moved from Part A of the team, to Part B of the team. From taking incoming calls serving angry customers helping them to avoid going into debt; changed to making calls to do debt collection from customers that couldn't avoid their debts.

I know that's confusing but I do not intend to make any clarifications. You're on your own if you cant understand what I said. Read that last paragraph again.

Anyway, how I moved has quite some story behind it as well.


One day The supervisor suddenly pull me off my seat and want to have a quick private conversation. So he walked me to a corner of the office and told me that he is offering me a switch. Switching from Part A, to Part B with the Stonehead (pls see post dated 21 Feb) that he recruited. He didn't explain what was the reason that the switch was needed but we all knew why. Mister Stonehead is doing so bad in B team that he is becoming an exile of the team, and he has so many un-salvagable screw ups that sooner or later Supervisor is going to run out of excuses to not fire him. We know. He thinks we don't.

And so he tried to sugar coat it. He said he was offering me an opportunity, a chance for me to return to my friends in B team. Little does he know that I am friend to most people that I know, regardless of A team or B team, simply because I am not a retard like all those that he hired. I know how to bargain when I have one. So i offered him ONE condition to be met, for me to agree with the switch. Because this switch has totally no benefit to me. It's a switch. not a move, there's no increment, no appraisal, no complement, and I have to learn everything again before I can get back to my most productive self. He wants to make this switch happen just because he wants to save his minion, simple fact being firing someone hired by himself, does not look good for him.

So I told him, for me to agree with that switch I want to maintain my current fixed shift, coming in to work from 7am-4pm, until I said otherwise. He quickly agreed. No dramas there.

I was wrong to believe that he would kept his words.

So my imminent switch was decided. What needs to happen now is to wait for it to happen in about 3 weeks time.

And then, something unexpected happened. One of the top performing guy in A team (let's call him Spikes since he has spikey hair) suddenly announce that he is a successful candidate for a new role under another manager. So he will be leaving the team at the end of that month. In other words, with Spikey and myself both either switching or transferring, he is going to loose the top 2 guys in his A team. Which our scores were the main bragging subject for him in all his management meetings. He panicked. We could all see that because he had started to come to me and tried to give me shit about how is the switch bad for me. We know that he is trying to at least keep a high scorer in A team to keep the average scores high because the minions that he hired, and all pretty much failing in terms of that.

He started to regret that he has offered me with the switch. Yet because he has promised my switch, he is now feeling so regret that he is starting to feel that he is going to loose something that he boasted so much about in his meetings. To top that off, I have been getting top scores for the last 2 months of my move. That gotta make him regret even more.

So being a pitiful asshole he is, he started to throw shits to me on a daily basis about how is it bad for me to move from A team to B team. He has regretted to offer the option to move but instead of being honest he is now trying to con me into giving up the move and stay where I am, so that he can keep the team's score high. Again, He is such a pitiful jerk.

So one day, again, he couldn't stand it any longer because I am either ignoring his obvious hints or have been ignoring him in general, he called me into a room for a private talk again.

Knowing that my condition was to maintain the current shift after moving, he was probably thinking disallowing me to come in on that particular shift is going to have me back down and give up on the switch. He said "Alvin what if I tell you I cant give you that switch that you wanted?" And So as a normal logical human being I asked him why, just to see what justification can he give for eating his own words. And then the next line totally pissed me off.

He said :"I know that you need the 7 am shift but I never promised you anything."

What the fuck? He did fucking promised it. I'll swear to Satan that he did, else he can just go serve Satan forever.

Like hell I'm going to give in to that kinda bullshit.

So I told him, "Yes you did. That was the only condition that I demanded when you requested me to switch with Stonehead. You cant be having memory lost."

He knew that he couldn't get around that, because it was in fact true. He was obviously irritated that I was so calm at what he threw at me. So suddenly he changed his tactic.

"Do you know what will happen if you insist on that shift? I will have to revise the allowance that you are getting, do you know that coming in at 7am will get you a lower allowance?"

I didn't buy it "Come on Supervisor, I have been getting the same allowance from the start, besides all our previous leaders has justified why we are taking full allowance although we are not on rotation."

So he said "You are going to force me to put you guys on a rotation. Do you know that what will happen if you force me to make the whole team B to be on a rotating shift?"

Instead of answering him question, I asked him "Do you know why we are not on rotating shifts, although we are coming in on shifts?" I was angry that he actually touched on my pay, more over the whole team's pay, to try to have me back off on my condition. What a low life.

Let me explain the situation in B team.

I work in a center that has a system of shift rotation for most teams. Basically it means that people that comes in in odd hours gets paid more allowances. However that's intended for voice teams, which means the front office call agents, instead of the back office agents, like us.

We are not on rotating shifts, simply because our team serves a couple of different markets, ANZ, Hong Kong and Singapore. Obviously it requires a few different language capabilities for different markets. Not all of us are equipped with the language skills for all markets. So we can't go on a rotation shift. Further more it's not just about language limitations, it's also about people that come in to handle additional tasks. It's also not fair to have some people to come in later and do more work, and take a lower allowance because it's simply ain't fair. It's also not making sense to make the people that cant speak more languages to come in later because there are simply some markets that they cant touch on due to language limitations. So to be fair, our previous leaders have justified that we are to take all the same full allowances, reason being most of us working on all markets and also additional tasks.

Besides, the same allowance has been given ever since we were hired. After 2 years of hard work, instead of getting a promotion or an increment, he propose a pay cut? He's not insane, He's just simply totally stupid.


Later I kinda worked out that another reason he wanted to put me on an earlier shift was because one of the strong fella in B team has been coming to work late consistently. He couldn't find a way to control that guy so he thought that having me coming in on an earlier shift and have that guy coming on a later shift would solve his problem with the punctuality issues. Well he can dream on. I'm not going to give up what I requested to fix a problem that he couldn't. Because from what I know about that guy, there's no way in hell he will be punctual no matter what shift you put him on. His motto is always to "do the job, fuck the rest". Coming in early just to please the Supervisor? Not a chance.

After he failed what he tried he was obviously upset that I didn't budge on whatever that he proposed or whatever threats about pay cut that he threw at me.

So all of a sudden, he put on a friendly face:

"OK ALVIN! I am your team leader! I will keep my word! I will do what I promised! Dun worry! You know I will always fight for you! I will always do what I can for you!"

So i thought: "yeah fucking right, what were you trying to pull just a couple of minutes ago..."

Before the conversation ended, he asked me again with a hopeful tone:
"So what if I cant put you on the shift that you requested?"

I told him simple answer:
"I'll resign. I'm sure you know why."

"OK, he said"

And there the conversation ended.

What he did later was lame. Because he was trying to keep me in the team for as long as possible, just to get a couple more high scoring calls, and also tried to have me to pass on as much knowledge as possible to his new minions, he delayed my switch for more than a month, after he already switched Stonehead to A team. That means B team has been in operation with 1 less head count for that more than a month. I really dunno what's he's thinking.

And within this month, more things happened. There were more things that have affected my drive to work. Seriously made me ultra disgust with him.

I'll write on in the next post.

Stay tuned.

Signing off...