- Anne Lamott
Today is the beginning of hope for all employees out there that they can finish their pending workload on time so that they can fully enjoy their weekends.
Happy Friday everyone!
I have an unsolicited advice for everyone out there: never ever hire a friend if you don’t want to lose your friendship with the person!
I worked for a talent and events management company. I was the Finance and Admin Officer then. My boss who was a very kind soul thought I needed someone to help me with the BIR requirements we needed to submit for a LOA then. She asked me if I knew someone who would be willing to work for the company even for a month or two. Since I knew a friend of mine who needed work that time, I recommended her to my boss.
She got hired and I told her what she needed to do. The company was very lenient when it comes to work schedule. You could come it at 10am for as long as you didn’t have something to put in early that day. My friend abused this rule. She would come in at 11am or 12nn. After she came in, she would proceed to force me to chat with her. Seeing disinterest, she would go to the IT guys and chat with them. Or she would proceed to open the laptop issued to her and would surf the net.
I was very patient with her because she’s my friend. But if it was someone else, I would have her head for doing such things! Since I didn’t want to reprimand her for fear of us fighting (she’s one of my dearest friends), I opted to keep silent. I even instructed our IT guy to cut her internet connection but since there’s really no valid reason for me to cut it, it was reconnected after a while.
I ended up just letting her do whatever she wanted to do. She was able to complete the BIR requirements for the LOA. But it took her more than two months to do it.
One of my former bosses had this big red couch in his office. Instead of two chairs in front of his massive desk, it’s the big red couch where you had to sit on if he had something to tell you. We all dreaded being asked to sit on that big red couch because it felt like we were being sentenced to our death when seated there! Our boss loved lording it over his subordinates and you could feel it while sitting in front of his massive desk.
I just shake my head whenever I am reminded of those days…
There is something about the color yellow that is relaxing to me. I love some yellow accents in the office or in any kind of setting that requires concentration. I also love a unique office setting actually. A set up that doesn’t look like any of the corporate offices that reek of business deals and nothing personal. I love a place where I can be inspired to stay to finish a job and where I can think of new things I can add to the job at hand.
Before you talk about anything inside the bathroom, make sure it’s only you and the person you are talking to.
I was young and in love. That’s the only excuse I could come up to now. Looking back, I was also complacent because my boss was really a great person. One of a kind when it comes to being a boss. And in a good way!
My friend Sally and I went on a bathroom break. She was teasing me about a guy I was seeing that time. She asked me about our song and while I knew there was another person inside the bathroom that time, I didn’t mind because I thought it was just another staff. I told her that our song was Now That I Have You by The Company. After blurting it out, the closed cubicle opened and out came our boss. She was laughing at us and teasing me about what I confessed about.
Whew!
Just imagine if I had a terror for a boss. Sally and I would probably be reprimanded for using bathroom breaks as gossip time!
I would like to share with you the story of one of my former Accounting staff. Her name is Irish. I still remember clearly the day I pulled out her resume from a bunch of discarded ones in the file of the HR manager of the graphics company I once worked for. Her resume was that of a newly graduate. No work experience, just a list of seminars attended and the certificates she got out of it. I had no basis of choosing her among the many hopefuls that were discarded before. It’s just a hunch on my part that she would be good.
So the HR manager called her up for an interview along with a couple of others that I chose from the file. When she came along she looked nervous just like the others. Job interviews are usually done in English and ours was not an exception. But Irish answered my and the HR manager’s questions in the vernacular. Surprisingly, I wasn’t turned off by it. Normally, I would tell the HR manager to reject those who couldn’t even communicate in English. But then there’s something about Irish that compelled me to hire her on the same day of her interview.
Looking back, I think it’s the determination in her eyes. Or the contagious energy level she’s always in. Even sitting straight, she couldn’t contain her enthusiasm. Even when I was reprimanding her about something, she managed to look like we were just chatting about the weather.
And let me tell you this: it doesn’t matter if the person cannot converse with you in English. If you feel it in your gut that she can perform, trust your instinct. She can do it! Irish may not be able to converse in English well but she was one of the best staff I had. Very hardworking and fast! You need not tell her to do something because she knew what her job entailed. Before you tell her to do it, she’s already done it. She could do her work for half the time a normal person does the same amount of workload. She’s that efficient!
I thanked the day I found her resume in that HR file. She made my horrible stay in that office bearable. We are actually close friends outside the office and even up to now, we managed to stay close. I am godmother to her firstborn. And we occasionally see each other. She’s one of the staff I had that I was happy to have worked with. And I had a handful already.
Irish is now working for a really well-known BPO in the country. She’s now conversing in English with her American counterparts every single day. She works in the graveyard shift and is still as bubbly as when I first met her!
It’s been quite a long time since I posted an update in this blog. Sorry about that. It’s not like I don’t have anything to write here. It’s just that I prioritized another blog over this one. Again, I apologize for that.
I have so many updates to write about. Past and present stories I would like to share.
So anyway, if you feel like it, stay tuned and I will be posting several entries today and the succeeding days.
I have said in a previous post that most Filipinos who don’t work in a corporation or who are self-employed or stay at home don’t have savings accounts to their name. Actually, if I am not mistaken, 80% of working Filipinos use their payroll accounts as their only savings account.
I am one of the 80% Filipinos I am talking about.
Even to this day, four years after I quit the corporate world and started working on my own, I am still using the last payroll account I had. It would have been closed if the people from the last company I worked for are efficient. But I am glad they’re not because I am still enjoying the benefits of a payroll account.
A payroll account is an ATM savings account opened for an employee so that instead of receiving his salary in cash, the employee will instead get it through the bank via ATM withdrawals. Because the company is maintaining a certain amount in the bank per payroll account opened, the account itself has no maintaining balance required and it still earns interest on a quarterly basis.
With that, can you imagine how beneficial it is for someone if he or she can use the payroll account for as long as he or she can?