Skip to main content

Absurdity of Work

I remember that Friday evening, fresh into my job, my manager unloading a multitude of tasks on me at the last moment while she quietly made her exit. Sitting there raging over my situation, I had came to a conclusion that perhaps Singapore was not the place for me. The country somehow seemed to possess a backwardness in thought that did not sit well with my ethos and I started making plans for my own exit.
Almost 5 years later, that Friday would repeat. About to wrap up a rather tiring week, out of the blue, my Manager would assign an 'urgent' task without any justification whatsoever, a task that had me raging as it would have me chasing people I have never met to provide me information as soon as possible though I had little authority over these people, which ranks among my least favourite activities. Though this time I was no longer in Singapore but all the way in Berlin, Germany, a country that I had chosen for its reputation as respecting an employees boundaries.

However truth of matter was, sometimes in the way the people thought and behaved in the corporate workplace, Berlin and Singapore did not differ a lot. Here too, I had faced my fair share of workplace politics, bad managers and late evenings. It was not just me. A close friend of mine from the US had dreamt for years to come to Europe and had left her job behind to eventually move here. Just weeks in, she had left her job in the German company due to a toxic work environment, her belief in Europe shaken more than mine.

On hindsight I wonder how much I have been deceived by greener pastures. Perhaps there is no such thing as a perfect workplace, there is no such thing as the perfect job and there is no such thing as the perfect manager. While there are extreme cases of toxic workplaces which we should avoid, we might have to contend with systems and people who might never live up to our expectations. Corporate cultures leave a lot to be desired but its perhaps the price we pay for having that steady income in our bank account every month. The key is to learn to detach from it and go with the flow, learning to never bring work home after the clock out.

How exactly to do that though remains a mystery to me.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Fool's Pride

I was rolling up the sleeve of my uniform, preparing for a call up that might never come, when I realised that somehow I was overcome by a strange sense of pride, a pride that wanted the length of my sleeve to be precise as I have always pictured in my mind. Any longer, I would look shabby. Any shorter, I would look amateur. Then I donned the green, tightened the velcro around my waist and looked in the mirror. It was just like before and the memories started flooding me. I never really liked it when I donned it for 2 years in a row. Then I was in a place where I detested the culture, the harsh discipline, the unreasonable demands and the lack of purpose in everything I did. But now that it was over, when I look back, it was perhaps the greatest time of my life. The suffering, the digging, the starving, the cold, the banter, the rowdiness, the jungle, the marches,the mountains, the food, the stories, the friendships, it was all worth the 2 years. A girl friend of mine once asked
2 comments
Read more

Notes on Friendships

During my NS, I remember the army loved to measure everyone and everything. Even before you enlisted, all your body measurements were taken, your IQ tested and your suitability for each vocation checked through a series of long tiring tests.Once you enlisted, you had fitness tests, weapon tests, SIT(leadership) test and the list never really ended. Though, in my opinion, SAF only got it right with a few tests, out of which the most important was also the one that was more of an unofficial measure. The measure of friendship. The rule was simple. To see who your true friend was, wait until the whole platoon was going through some real deep shit. Wait until you cannot take it anymore. And then wait and see who would come to help you despite the fact that he was going through the same pain. And this test always tended to produce some extremely surprising results, at least in my experience. I remember clearly, during a particular training exercise in Taiwan, I was totally drenched a
1 comment
Read more

On the road to Brandenburg

“Aint no sunshine when she’s gone”. “Aint warm when she’s away”. The music floated from somewhere on the platform as our train paused at the station before it moved onto its final destination to Berlin Brandenburg airport. Up to that moment, the trip at daybreak had been filled with the typical unspoken marital tension. A tension that originated from differing expectations on how to prepare for a trip back home, a trip I had decided to skip this time and a trip that would be her first, alone and across continents. Though like all disagreements, the current one brought up memories of past ones, adding fuel to a fire that if left alone, would have died on its own. As even Winnie the Pooh rightfully knew, “Sometimes the smallest things takes up the most space in your heart”. So the fire persisted silently as terrible May seemed to encroach into June. Till Bill Withers husky voice floated into my ears with the lyrics I had heard countless times before. The only difference being up to then
Post a Comment
Read more