All in a day's work in Singapore - real-life office stories as told to me (part 3)

"When the boss addresses you as "friend" at the beginning of a conversation, what follows is usually not friendly."

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"Feel like working in a farm in my company. I can never bring the horse to the water, the cows refused to come home, and my stubborn colleague insisted on putting all the eggs in one basket. I think Old MacDonald had a better life."

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Public holiday on a Friday

"I can never understand the rationale for calling a 4-day work week like this week 'short', which is a mere 20% reduction from a normal 5-day week. Rather than spreading that 20% across the remaining 4 days to cover a week's worth of work, most will in fact, bring forward their lazy Friday mentality to Thursday, making it a 3-day work week. It is indeed a short week. Now I get it."

Working with government

"Working with government agencies can be an exasperating exercise not for the faint-hearted. For a mass public education project, this agency is insisting on cramping the messages in all 4 official languages in a tiny A4-sized poster. Perhaps they are thinking that ‘A4’ means ‘All-4’ languages? For their naivety, I’m giving them ‘A1’."

Working with intern

"I've yet to meet a Generation Y intern who has bowled me over in my company. On most cases, I look at them as the Gen 'Why'- as in 'why can't they deliver?' After a while, I just think 'Why bother'. It is sad that most lacked the 'X-factor' which was in greater supply in the previous Generation denoted by the same alphabet."

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"First time ever that an intern sang at the end of his first day in my dept! (It was 'Singin' In The Rain' since there was a downpour). Either he was on drugs, in which case I shall ask for some tomorrow. Or he knows Someone High Up which means nobody can touch him, in which case I shall be his BFF from tomorrow onwards."

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