Monday, August 17

An employees rant part II

ok... heres the second part of my rant. the disclaimer still applies - stop reading if its sounds too b*tching or over the top.

i thought after a while i will a be little bit calmer but unfortunately i'm still extremely pissed off. Every free moment of my thought is very resentful and malicious, hence making me stressful. So please 'bear' (and not 'bare' - tq AZ for the literature lesson) with me will i let/write it out. Somehow putting it in this blog lets me really sort out my thoughts and documenting my 'emo' moments as future reference.

i realized i forgot to tell how i'm trapped in this unfortunate predicament. So here is the story line:
  • After SPM, i got 3 oversea scholarships offers (alhamdulillah - cause it was kinda difficult due to the 97-98 recession) to be either a Dr (JPA), Accountant (Renong) or an Engineer (TNB). At that time, TNB was a great company.. benefits, pay, progress and all. Therefore i choose it. Flying to US so soon (August after the SPM results after i got an ok SAT + TOEFL result) was also a big plus.
  • After the degree i was bonded for 7 years. The term stipulates if i defaulted i would have to pay RM700k+. A ridiculous amount, mind boggling how much they spend for me. Previous batches had to pay only RM130k max. Furthermore, there is no pro-rate in the contract and the total amount has to paid in full after 60 days of resignation. That is the dilemma. My good friend AZ has calculated it will be another 401 days till our contract date.
  • i didnt mind working my heart out for the company (which i did) seeing how much they paid for me and how they are treating us but the problem is they changed. They like to change the rules in the middle of the game. Our benefits, pay raise, job grade and growth were cut dramatically. Somehow the seniors are having the great deals but not us juniors. As an example medical for the seniors covers till death while we till retirement, retirement benefits gap mounting up to hundred of thousands in difference, having the same accomplishment and service length wont get you as far as it would previously by a mile etc etc. You can argue its due to the economy, but its just not the case since it happened before the crisis and during our profits were increasing.
  • My actual job involves shift work, situation awareness, decision making, crisis management, high responsibility and so forth as we are solely responsible for the integrity of Peninsular Malaysia high voltage electrical grid (blackouts kat rumah not included but kalau satu daerah or mukim - yes). I was satisfied as i deemed it as really powering the nation and being highly technical but like always they changed the rules and transferring job is out of the question because nobody wants to come and replace you (all of us have handed in request - yes all of us). They started reducing our allowances and staffs for the most ridiculous of reasons (CEO went to japan and wanted to emulate them not considering anything else - shallow bugger) .
So thats a little bit of how i came about being in this hell hole. So here are the reasons why i hate being in this scenario (cant help making it long):

  1. Missing weekends and holidays all the time. I really feel this one especially because my wife works weekdays and the only time i see her are during weekends. Weekdays especially nights and evening shift i would barely speak to her. For the past 2-3 months, i only had 1 weekend. Itupun they kept calling me to come back from my Melaka outing. They had the cheek to ask me to take the bus as i used the no transportation excuse. I also envy gatherings during holidays because i am always left out or have to decline their invitations. Another thing about the weekends, one of us is doing masters and his classes are on the weekends. Typically we had to cover his shift, therefore less weekends. He initially was taken out but one other colleague (the least liked) decided to retaliate and threaten to resign. So he was put back in and the retaliater got his way... furthering our misery.
  2. Coming to work during off/rest days. As any of us are unable to make our way to work for whatever reason, somebody that is off will have to sit in. So one 's pleasure (kalau tak MC) is anothers misery and somehow the pleasure is lopsided where some take leaves more than others and some covers more than others. Nowadays i'm doing more, consequently me being to most sour. Currently a colleague has been sick for a number of weeks and not coming back soon (not his fault) but in the end everybody else suffers. It comes to a point that if your on leave and do have a MC, you still have to come to work but if the VP comes to visit they will hide you as not the make them look bad - real case when a friend had his hand bandaged. A real low even for them. Imagining you breaking promises to your children/ change of plans everytime you receive a phone call to come to work. Even the family suffers. I quote my son " Ayah asik kerjaaaa jee, Ayah buang je lah kerja ngan TNB"
  3. Tired all the time. Always sleep deprived and consequently in a bad mood. Most of the time hanging out with the kids i'll be lying down. Even Zara (1+ years old) understands cause she always offers me a pillow when i'm playing with her.
  4. Management attitude towards all this. As long as its not bothering them directly.. the tend to take lightly our situation. Always give excuses even though some are legitimate but not all. 'Its a matter of time' the say before our problems are solved. The thing is its been nearly 10 months.. how much time do u still want taking into consideration we are suffering while waiting. We have given all the solutions but its somehow stuck at their level. Bureaucracy indeed!
  5. Reduction in staffs. The most problems came from this. The brilliant CEO not knowing the impact decided to just cut our staffs and the other higher managements just let it be. They were previous attempts but our previous VP fought it out making the end to all this nonsenses. No, its not cost saving cause ur still employing the others. Its actually increasing cause we started claiming and taking leaves. Just imagine with the same workload a company decides to 1/6 of its employees without taking any other mitigating steps. Thats how its going down.
  6. Entitle to claim. We are entitled to claims but to be fair its ok but not that much. If we follow our hourly rate we should be getting more especially our shift managers. Another thing if we work weekends or holidays the claim is the same... so why do we want to replace during those precious/important days. We have limited off time during holidays as it is. I would rather go out enjoying the time with the family and friends than work.
Theres more to my rant but i'm kinda tired and other things need to be done. I promise theres the next entry will be my last about my ranting and hopefully make me at peace. But heres what i still have left to eloborate:
  1. Doing the managers job
  2. So little pay/job grade for so much responsibility
  3. Same pay/job grade for the less stressful job
  4. No career path
  5. Nobody wants the job cause so pathetic a situation
  6. Overloading of work
  7. Nature of work
  8. No courses or certs
  9. Unfulfilled promises
  10. Benefits taken away




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