Supporting a Big Pride

When I left form 6 in the mid-eighties, I worked as a maths and science teacher temporarily while hoping to get a scholarship to pursue my studies. That "temporarily" eventually dragged on to become 3 years. In the end, it became clear that I wasn't gonna get any scholarship. So I resigned from teaching and ventured out to Brunei. I grabbed whatever job I could get. Unfortunately, all I could get was to become as a supervisor of a group of Thai labourers collecting rubbish from the famous Kampur Air in Bandar Seri Begawan.

Rubbish collection from Kampung Air was then a pilot project in Bandar Seri Begawan, and let me not get into the amount of rubbish from underneath the houses and catwalks; let alone the kinds of rubbish you could find there. It seemed impossible to finish collecting those rubbish—not when the residents were so used to throwing their rubbish out of their windows. We worked up to 14 hours a day. It was such a challenging job, I actually caught myself crying while driving home from work one day.

Anyway, although I was only supposed to supervise my men, I spent a lot of the days handling the rubbish myself. The Thais were surprised the first time they saw how I got my hands dirty like that. As time passed, they grew to respect me instead.

Oh those were the good old days; I must make it a point to tell the story in full one of these days...

Some of us have such big pride—so big that we can't even support that pride. Sometimes, we need to come down from our high horses and learn to be humble. We need to learn how to obey orders first before learning how to give orders.

There is this clerk in my company. Her pride is amazing, really. With her kind of pride, she is fit to become the boss instead of a clerk. And her pride is so big that it's too big for her to swallow!

She had a strange habit of coming back late after lunch—at times about half an hour late. But upon being reminded by the secretary that she should observe office hours, she snapped back and said that she's not a robot. She should be allowed some flexibility, you see. I don't know about other bosses, but as far as I am concerned, half an hour is bit too flexible. So we issued her a memo, warning her to observe office hours and other regulations. That shut her up for a while.

Then recently, our "tea lady" had a freak accident over the weekends at home. She broke her hand and was to be out of action for at least 6 weeks. That was a bit inconvenient, because there're about 50 employees using that tea room. Someone had to wash the cups and boil water etc. I am not in favour of asking everyone to wash their own cups as that is not economically efficient. So while we were looking for a part-time replacement worker, we drew out a duty roster amongst the clerks in the office. This was only for about a week or two. After that we should be able to get a replacement (temporary) worker.

I didn't see washing cups as a demeaning task. And boiling water was also no big deal. Honestly, I don't mind to do it myeslf! But then one day, I saw a hand-written notice pasted on the tea-room door. It said:

"Siapa yang guna gelas cuci sendiri. Kami bukan kuli. Gaji dibayar bukan untuk cuci gelas."

Translated into English, it means something like "Whoever uses the cups should wash them themselves. We are not labourers. We are not paid salaries for washing cups."

This notice was written in red ink. A quick investigation revealed that it was the same clerk who wrote that notice. Like I said, some people have very big/high pride, and so had this clerk. But if it bothered her so much, perhaps it was more diplomatic to approach and discuss the matter with me personally. Instead, she went straight to paste that notice on the door.

As a boss, I don't expect my employees to kiss the grounds I walk on (And I say without shame that I am a good boss; I would dare anyone to ask any of my staff for their opinions about me). All eyes were on me. The others in the office were all watching—perhaps in amusement—how I would handle this situation. As a boss, how would you deal with this particular clerk?

At first I thought the best thing to do was to issue a warning to the said clerk. That would probably send out a message to the rest of my employees. But would that be a strong-enough message?

I still insist that I am a good boss, but in the end, I've decided to do the worst thing a boss can do—I discussed the matter with my partner, got his support and then we fired the clerk. I hate to do something like that. But, you know, she should learn to support her big pride. Although she has no job, at least she still has her big pride intact.