Roosters & Car Horns
Saturday, 02 January 2010 at 21:40 |
One thing I'll never forget is waking up on that first morning of work.As I woke up from my bombed-out , anxiety-induced sleep, I could hear and smell my surroundings long before I could see them. A little past 6 a.m in the morning and I could hear a few sounds in the distance. Those sounds would always sum up my Working experience for me - an alarm clock ringing endlessly while up from the road came a cacophony of car horns & engine rumblings. Not to mention, the ice-cold shower and change into a working suit before the inevitable car ride.
The first car ride uptown was memorable for a host of different reasons. One was the rush-hour traffic. Good god was it terrible, one of the banes of my upcoming existence. The other thing I remember thinking was that it didn't look too different.Tiong Bahru looked like any other suburban locale,only with more office workers, smoked glass office towers and, as I may have mentioned, ungodly traffic. Either way though, it was different. My worries about not going to perform well were fading fast - life was definitely taking a turn for the interesting . .
Reality has a nasty habit of whacking you upside the head.We were finally pulling up to "City Plaza" , my workplace-to-be for the next month.I was dropped off in the shadow of the imposing office complex , and gingerly made my way up to the NETS office.
Then it hit me. Hard. I was a long way from home , I didn't know anyone whom I hadn't met within the last 24 hours. I had no job experience and my only prospect of earning that was by doing something I had no clue about - telemarketing.What if I got into trouble? What if I hated it? Worse yet, what if I liked it but they hated me? This was more than some exotic adventure. This was no friends, little money, no prior experience, sink or swim time.
Just when I was about to pack up and make a run for it , I looked at the flip side of the coin. Some company had taken me, basically sight unseen , and given me my first ever job. Now, if that wasn't a risk...
Also on the plus side was that my supervisor,Michelle,seemed nice,as did my colleague,Vanessa.And my previous experience with telemarketers had shown me that One didnt seem to need much skill in this line of work, or even have all one's marbles. It was time to get up and give this a shot.
After the initial introductions though,came my first test to workplace utilitarianism. Vanessa took me down two levels to have my thumbprint scanned for identification purposes by Roger, the chief technical supervisor. Was this an scene straight out of Orwell's *1984* ? There would be a time though, when I would come to appreciate all this finger-jabbing.
" Press HARDER against the glass panel!!!!! "
" Okay, I'll do that"
"Stop TREMBLING! There is nothing to be afraid of , just calm DOWN and relax your hand !! "
" I'll try."
" Oh finally,we have this thumb scanned. Now, the other hand"
Que horrors du horrors! To undergo another orgy of finger scanning , which would take another 10 minutes as per the first hand? The horror!! But it was eventually completed , albeit at the cost of more time and the sight of a bemused Vanessa.
But there was no time to dawdle over such trivial issues.A crash course in Stalinist-style filing soon followed , before I was left to collate the mountain of thick office documents & assorted recipts in alphabetical order , to be sorted out into corresponding folders. Which brings me to say,the folders could be scattered in any of several wall-mounted wind-up safe-like compartments. I swear those safe compartments could have just come out of the dingy vaults of the Bank of England.
I get ahead of myself here.Lets just say the filing continued for agonising minute after minute , dreary hour after hour - until the blessed lunch-time finally came.
Lunch came and went with a hurried KFC meal & a bottle of water, until it was time to start work afresh. By 2 O'clock , the office had slunk into an unnerving mix between total silence ( the kind you would find in a library) and a constant but distant clamour of running feet, ringing phone calls and muffled voices. This was a trait that I would notice frequently over the course of my holiday job, NETS office workers tended to keep to themselves unless absolutely necessary, quite unlike what my other temporary staff colleagues would describe of the varying office cultures in other jobs they had held.
The main focus of my job though, seemed to include the duties of a general purpose office peon. There was the data-entry to be contended with , much time invested in typing the particulars of unknown persons into the system for one purpose or another. Then the classification of those lucky draw contestants into various catagories ( N.M for New Member , I.C for incomplete , A.C for add card, you get the drift..) , but not forgetting the mild irritation at deciphering the scribbling of some unknown person , who seemed to take pervasive delight in making their Zs look like a 2 , and to add in a few mangled symbols or Incomplete bankcard/identity card details.
At 5 o'clock or so though , came a ritual which I have had trouble believing it actually existed! It seemed that the honour of collecting various office envelopes , service reports and one very important Finance Book came to me , as the newest office temp.These were to be sent en-masse to the second level of the building, where they were to be delivered to the customer service agent (service reports) , into a tray labelled FRANKING ( assorted envelopes) and left on the desk of a specific person.(Finance Book) . Next up though, came the *fun* part of this ritual. I would hurry back to my office cubicle under a swaying mass of received office mail and assorted materials. * The T.K post office* would then commence operation , slicing through bundles of envelopes , sorting out their content and sending them to their respective places ( mail to the received mail section , worn-out NETS cards to be shredded, reports into the big yellow Report folder). I managed the entire mail allocation for the level I was on, just as I would imagine some other peon doing so for Post Danmark or the United States Postal Service!
The end of my first day at work seemed to come rapidly after this( the exhilaration of going home was ineffable),followed by a quick car ride back home and dinner, with some free time thrown. That would turn out to be all it took to get me ready for bed. By 10.00 p.m it was light’s out and slumber time until my friendly neighborhood alarm clock heralded in the new day. The remainder of my work days at NETS roughly followed the same pattern, with some variations in between.
Looking back in retrospect,I found my work at NETS to be extremely engaging. Even though it proved to be for a limited duration only , those days spent working injected new meaning into my character and beliefs.No longer would I fail to understand how my Father felt after coming home from his banking job , how precious a lesiurely weekend would be , how hard it would be to earn money & bring home the bacon. Of course,words like perseverance , determination , courage , friendship and grit , would seem much more personal from now on..
Where to from here? Who knows, it's a new day.
The first car ride uptown was memorable for a host of different reasons. One was the rush-hour traffic. Good god was it terrible, one of the banes of my upcoming existence. The other thing I remember thinking was that it didn't look too different.Tiong Bahru looked like any other suburban locale,only with more office workers, smoked glass office towers and, as I may have mentioned, ungodly traffic. Either way though, it was different. My worries about not going to perform well were fading fast - life was definitely taking a turn for the interesting . .
Reality has a nasty habit of whacking you upside the head.We were finally pulling up to "City Plaza" , my workplace-to-be for the next month.I was dropped off in the shadow of the imposing office complex , and gingerly made my way up to the NETS office.
Then it hit me. Hard. I was a long way from home , I didn't know anyone whom I hadn't met within the last 24 hours. I had no job experience and my only prospect of earning that was by doing something I had no clue about - telemarketing.What if I got into trouble? What if I hated it? Worse yet, what if I liked it but they hated me? This was more than some exotic adventure. This was no friends, little money, no prior experience, sink or swim time.
Just when I was about to pack up and make a run for it , I looked at the flip side of the coin. Some company had taken me, basically sight unseen , and given me my first ever job. Now, if that wasn't a risk...
Also on the plus side was that my supervisor,Michelle,seemed nice,as did my colleague,Vanessa.And my previous experience with telemarketers had shown me that One didnt seem to need much skill in this line of work, or even have all one's marbles. It was time to get up and give this a shot.
After the initial introductions though,came my first test to workplace utilitarianism. Vanessa took me down two levels to have my thumbprint scanned for identification purposes by Roger, the chief technical supervisor. Was this an scene straight out of Orwell's *1984* ? There would be a time though, when I would come to appreciate all this finger-jabbing.
" Press HARDER against the glass panel!!!!! "
" Okay, I'll do that"
"Stop TREMBLING! There is nothing to be afraid of , just calm DOWN and relax your hand !! "
" I'll try."
" Oh finally,we have this thumb scanned. Now, the other hand"
Que horrors du horrors! To undergo another orgy of finger scanning , which would take another 10 minutes as per the first hand? The horror!! But it was eventually completed , albeit at the cost of more time and the sight of a bemused Vanessa.
But there was no time to dawdle over such trivial issues.A crash course in Stalinist-style filing soon followed , before I was left to collate the mountain of thick office documents & assorted recipts in alphabetical order , to be sorted out into corresponding folders. Which brings me to say,the folders could be scattered in any of several wall-mounted wind-up safe-like compartments. I swear those safe compartments could have just come out of the dingy vaults of the Bank of England.
I get ahead of myself here.Lets just say the filing continued for agonising minute after minute , dreary hour after hour - until the blessed lunch-time finally came.
Lunch came and went with a hurried KFC meal & a bottle of water, until it was time to start work afresh. By 2 O'clock , the office had slunk into an unnerving mix between total silence ( the kind you would find in a library) and a constant but distant clamour of running feet, ringing phone calls and muffled voices. This was a trait that I would notice frequently over the course of my holiday job, NETS office workers tended to keep to themselves unless absolutely necessary, quite unlike what my other temporary staff colleagues would describe of the varying office cultures in other jobs they had held.
The main focus of my job though, seemed to include the duties of a general purpose office peon. There was the data-entry to be contended with , much time invested in typing the particulars of unknown persons into the system for one purpose or another. Then the classification of those lucky draw contestants into various catagories ( N.M for New Member , I.C for incomplete , A.C for add card, you get the drift..) , but not forgetting the mild irritation at deciphering the scribbling of some unknown person , who seemed to take pervasive delight in making their Zs look like a 2 , and to add in a few mangled symbols or Incomplete bankcard/identity card details.
At 5 o'clock or so though , came a ritual which I have had trouble believing it actually existed! It seemed that the honour of collecting various office envelopes , service reports and one very important Finance Book came to me , as the newest office temp.These were to be sent en-masse to the second level of the building, where they were to be delivered to the customer service agent (service reports) , into a tray labelled FRANKING ( assorted envelopes) and left on the desk of a specific person.(Finance Book) . Next up though, came the *fun* part of this ritual. I would hurry back to my office cubicle under a swaying mass of received office mail and assorted materials. * The T.K post office* would then commence operation , slicing through bundles of envelopes , sorting out their content and sending them to their respective places ( mail to the received mail section , worn-out NETS cards to be shredded, reports into the big yellow Report folder). I managed the entire mail allocation for the level I was on, just as I would imagine some other peon doing so for Post Danmark or the United States Postal Service!
The end of my first day at work seemed to come rapidly after this( the exhilaration of going home was ineffable),followed by a quick car ride back home and dinner, with some free time thrown. That would turn out to be all it took to get me ready for bed. By 10.00 p.m it was light’s out and slumber time until my friendly neighborhood alarm clock heralded in the new day. The remainder of my work days at NETS roughly followed the same pattern, with some variations in between.
Looking back in retrospect,I found my work at NETS to be extremely engaging. Even though it proved to be for a limited duration only , those days spent working injected new meaning into my character and beliefs.No longer would I fail to understand how my Father felt after coming home from his banking job , how precious a lesiurely weekend would be , how hard it would be to earn money & bring home the bacon. Of course,words like perseverance , determination , courage , friendship and grit , would seem much more personal from now on..
Where to from here? Who knows, it's a new day.
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