The Week of Mayhem

This is such week of hectic a mayhem. After 11 long years, a typhoon visits Manila. This typhoon called Milenyo came to be a nightmare for the capital city and much more for me. Flood lined out my entire route to Buendia. There’s power outage that makes my apartment trapped with no water motor to give us enough water to use. And I am totally stuck living in the darkness. I cannot even take my bath. Much worse, it is just so horrible that one of my windows gave up forcing me to use my savior called “trapal” to prevent me from getting cold or anything worse that what my sinusitis is telling me all throughout the day.

I cannot go to work that day.

And it is not just for the reasons that I stated above. It’s just that I do not want to take my life at risk. PAG-ASA might have been leveled-off the typhoon signal in Manila from level 3 to 2 at 4pm but that’s not a good reason for me to pack up myself (without taking a bath because there’s no water) and walk all my way with all the floods in my way to work. Indeed that Makati is such a modern city with all the streetlights, concrete roads and billboards all over. But what more this modern city would do when nature strikes. Streetlights might fall off, tress might be uprooted, concrete roads might be very slippery and worse than all, billboards might end up my life.

At the end of the day, 18 people were ‘reported’ dead in Manila alone, two of which is in Makati:

“In the Makati business district, the steel frame of a billboard fell on a bus, a van and a taxi, killing the van driver and injuring the driver of the taxi, police said.” PDI, Typhoon batters Metro Manila…09/29/06

See how risky it is during that day no matter what I’ll ride on, a bus, a van, or a taxi with those ‘monstrous’ billboards along the way. There were load of ‘em actually along EDSA that I need to pass and I don’t want to catch them all when they fall.

Sleeping at Work


While I was befriending my computer while at work during night shifts, it is a usual occurrence that I will find myself suddenly struck with a very severe affliction of the 3 to 5 am syndrome of yawning. Much more if you are here seated in this all too remote humdrum, solemn, and floating place we call call center. You’ll definitely feel your eye ‘balls’ drop bouncing a couple of times until you realize you have erroneously done something to your customer's account. And this yawn syndrome” seems to be spreading like an epidemic infecting all of us in just a split of time.

Mapping out the syndrome or should I say, this yawn epidemic before me, I knew something had to be done. Or do you have any reserve energy left to do anything when you’re down like a rotten vegetable in front of your computer. Your competency drops, your concentration weakens, and your eyes will be heavier that you ever felt before. The free coffee at the pantry just gave up on you to give the waking energy. Your world became silent. You became slow and weak. You now have to press ctrl+alt+del and stop working. Your productivity slope drops instantly. You lost the war. You are sleepy. That’s while company's clock is still running.

So, you would absolutely just take a nap. Or later, you will then extend for a couple of minutes of stealing more naps which will turn out to be a nice goodnight long sleep.
Alright. So that’s just the way it is – you are still on the clock sleeping in a nice dark unnoticeable spot, under the cubicles perhaps just beside the toes of your closest team mate. You will then think that this is such an innovative way of having an adequate napping/sleeping spot within the premises of the call center area with no one to realize someone is napping in the grassy warm carpeted floor. Hidden behind that ideal nest, in a dark spot, the location exhibits a soft bed-time experience plus an advantage if you specifically position a working toe at you back - which is an excellent medium to receive alarming kicks for any approaching team leader.

Then suddenly, someone just kicked your back.

Yes. The team leader is coming. And then you tend to wake up briefly quite unaware what is happening with your red teary eyes blocking your view of what is really happening outside until your closest ‘toe friend’ told you that the team leader is looking all over for you. Now you are completely in great trouble.

In the very near end. You arrived at your working spot again; quite comfortable. Your productivity slope goes back in its increasing rate. You are refreshed. You would think that you survive the war after all. Or have you?

I would like to share a reading from a business consultant named “Mistersix” from Contact News Magazine. He pointed out the term “Sacred Responsibility”. It is defined in the article as “a truthful, religious, and unselfish deed quite indistinguishable far more than as a point of personal instinct of doing the right thing even when nobody’s looking.” This is quite a conceptual definition though that it is somehow difficult to apply in a real time scenario where we know that some company don’t have any necessary tracking devise if some point in its time you get out of the premise and spend some time someplace that we would rather not be, and that is to sleep while on duty. And if you are flying high to the clouds while asleep when everyone else is working, you are actually falling outside the criteria of Mistersix’ definition.

I want you guys to read on the exact words of Mistersix in the article and reflect on it completely. He states:

“Work time is not nap time--no matter how you cut it or rationalizes or even argues that you have already done your job, it is still an inappropriate behavior in the work place; a disservice to the employees who are focused on work and it is likewise will be a muddy dirt for a company’s image in the long run…”

“With sleeping while on duty, you are actually stealing your company’s financial compensation budget. I am not talking about the spontaneous naps we have during breaks because they are not paid for but only those silent thieves who sleeps at work then stating that he already have done so much already for its entire shift already. I have no idea what’s his responsibilities are, and I don’t care what are those even though he made it to finish his work faster than anybody else or made it to the topmost list of fastest track and field athletes in Olympics. Why do I care? He’s outside the criteria of sacred responsibility. At the head on the onion, you are being selfish for not offering your hand to your other team mates, and worse, from a strictly ethical point of view sleeping while being paid is stealing.”

Ok. So what is work then in the first place?

Work is simply a productive play of sacred responsibility and it should be personally and financially rewarding, validating and, if your lucky (and perhaps diligent) being part of something greater than yourself treating it as your most valuable property - an asset that needs to be develop.

And any company don’t want to work with a dull, idle, and sleeping/stealing property.

Professionalism

I’d like to share an article from an old business magazine I just read entitled “Being a Professional Being @ Work”. This is written by L. Ron Hubbard. What strikes me most in the article is his thorough and eye-opening definition of Professionalism. We might be thinking that it is just a plain serious way of how we should Team Leaders, clients, and office mates in general like how those busy well dressed people in the higher end corporate world face each other. Well, according to Hubbard, it is not just like that. According to him, it is how we act at work that determines whether you are a professional or not.

It is rather a sad fate for us not to understand the real nature of professionalism. It is true because according to Hubbard our society in itself does not emphasize its importance.
Maybe that’s the reason why people tend to be stocked and satisfied that to believe that being a less professional person at work or Hubbard named as “being an Amateur” is normal and will still be accepted by all as to how our society had built us. We tend to hate people who says “trabaho lang walang personalan” or despise for having such an attitude. Or worse we tend to personally say that he is O.A. or ‘feeling boss’ when we hear them talk about work in a very serious way. Many employees just then accept less-than-good results. I mean, they don’t make their own special way to innovate and improve their usual outputs. And many more amateurish scenario anywhere and anyhow. For instance, some schools let their students graduate even though they knew they still don’t know how to read; there are still evident corruption in our government funds, powerful accused senators and other officials don’t appear in court hearings; a plenty of government employees still sleeps during office hours; there are still fraudulent elections; and some others that may not fit this page. And what society does? Society tends to balance the off-putting result of these scenarios in a way to give more or less out of the worse results.

Are we getting to our goals with their dumb amateurs games @ work?

According to Hubbard, at the time that there are amateur players at work we are actually losing out a way of a better result. We are delaying progress. We are preventing ourselves to improve. We are being selfish. Moreover, those amateurs have a so-called a “Just getting by” attitude to face the world. Bahala na. We are satisfied by how the world is created. We tend to gamble and leave things as it is like joining in with the flow.

Well, what exactly are Hubbard’s differences of being a professional from being an amateur?

A professional learns every aspect of the tasks. An amateur skips the learning process whenever possible

A professional carefully discovers what is needed and wanted for the team. An amateur assumes what he needs and wants.

A professional keeps his or her work area clean and orderly. An amateur has a messy, confused or dirty work area.

A professional is focused and clear-headed. An amateur is confused and distracted.

A professional does not let mistakes slide by. An amateur ignores or hides mistakes.

A professional jumps into difficult assignments, of a more challenging task. An amateur tries to get out of difficult work.

A professional completes projects as soon as possible. An amateur is surrounded by a lot of back logs.

A professional remains level-headed and optimistic. An amateur gets upset and assumes the worst.

A professional handles money and accounts very carefully. An amateur is sloppy with money or accounts.

A professional faces up to other people's upsets and problems. An amateur avoids others' problems.

A professional uses higher emotional tones: Enthusiasm, cheerfulness, interest, contentment. An amateur uses lower emotional tones: anger, hostility, resentment, fear, and victim.

A professional is focused and purposeful. An amateur is scattered and confused.

A professional persists until the objective is achieved. An amateur gives up.

A professional produces more than expected. An amateur produces just enough to get by.

A professional produces a high-quality product or service. An amateur produces medium-to-low quality product or service.

A professional earns the same pay with an amateur and he is happy with it. An amateur thinks he earns low pay and feels it's unfair.

A professional is okay when his salary is deducted with taxes. An amateur thinks a way how to avoid them.

A professional has a promising future. An amateur has an uncertain future.

A professional faces his office mates with respect. An amateur don’t care criticizing them.



I hope all of us will embrace professionalism. Amen.