| Friday, February 29, 2008 |
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i've realized that it is essential to be relevant. Relevant in the conversation, with the times, in fashion, in business and in professional attributes. You get my gist of it: we need to be relevant.
I know this may sound strange especially coming from ms loh soh who can never get to the point. I don't disagree that I go from point A to Z then back to D, 80% of my social life but when it comes to dealing with strangers or even while i'm at work. I'm very very different. i'm sick and tired of people who don't not only get with the program but just don't plain make sense. Its okay if you're stupid. we're all stupid in one way or another. thats not even an issue here. but using your common sense is one of god's greatest gift and to me, in order to stay competitive, we need to make sense. as simple as that.
I've become irritable with a lot of things of late.
for example, there's this girl at my work who makes zero sense. let me give you an example, we need some drawings for a design protection. and we need it in angle A, B, C. These are pre-requisites to even getting them to look at you. But no, Ms girl at work who has 0.05% level of common sense thinks that she's so clever that she can bargain with the lawyers and ask for discounts on their price. in the end, we got dropped, we got re-hired by them, we are currently in a phase where we shouldn't be in IF we did follow the instructions and be... relevant.
So another example of Ms. girl at work. Long long time ago, when we had an Australian subsidiary, we were given the option of changing our webpage domain from .com.sg to a .com. But because ms girl at work didn't want to either (a) deal with it because it was too much work signing the check to pay someone else to get it done or (b) had 0.01% common sense which signalled to her that we should let a subsidiary take total control of our website, we lost control of our website. All the money and time spent developing the website, having searched and passed from web designer to another is now down the drain because our ex partner from our ex subsidiary now owns the domain name because he 1. took the initiative to change it to a .com website and register it under her name and 2. realized that ms. girl at work has 0 common sense and therefore, took it as a sign that he could eventually charge us kazillion dollars for in the future.
another example, is the ongoing Parliament debates. WTF is really going on? because whatever our so called ministers talk about is really nothing but nicely constructed speeches that were so obviously not written by them because they can't pronounce the words! So we can go on and on about rising costs and question how the poor people are going to survive and this and that. but so what? cause really. inflation is up. GST went up. even our simply luxury of after clubbing taxi cab rides are up up up, so seriously, what is the point of all this talk? how are they being relevant? but there's one person i absolutely adore. I love love love LOVE Vivian Balakrishnan. He's like our singaporean version of Obama. Eloquent, smart,calm, extremely witty with his answers and very relevant with the times, his involvements, his projects and just someone who seems so promising. Not some of the useless speakers I watch on TV these past few nights. Some can hardly speak. Well yes, nobody says you need an accent but please, if you want to be a leader, please at least, learn to articulate your words. So that people can understand you. So that you won't seem so prudish and so that you get the attention you deserve.
and finally, my last example of being a irrelevant idiot is this agent who calls me wanting to hire thomas as a French tutor. And initially, it was okay, he said he has a student who wants to take French as an A Level subject and asked if thomas can do it. I said I am not sure but we are 1. willing to do a free trial lesson to see if the parents and the student are comfortable 2. go through the syllabus before hand and plan before hand 3. instead of a 1 hour lesson, change it to 2 hours. So this guys goes on about how its in Yio Chu kang and if they wanted a meet outside they wouldn't need us but would go to a French school. And i casually asked him about how he was going to get paid. (Relevant) his answer was that the parents would pay him so I probed further only to find out that when the parents pay me/ thomas, he gets the first two lessons automatically. If, the client decides that after one lesson, we were no longer needed, then he gets 50% of the fee!!! hmmmmm... interesting detail. Despite the fact that he was a smart ass and was getting on my nerves, i pushed further. In the end, we left it as such, with no agreement because I asked if they were interested in free lesson and he said he don't do free lessons because there was nothing in it for him! I asked bout the welfare of the kid and he kep quiet.
So late last night, Mr. Useless agent of the year calls, after 2 weeks to say that the mother wants to try us out. I told him that we were no longer interested in working with him because :
1. We didn't see the point in paying him ANYTHING when we didn't seek his assistance in looking for a student when we took the time to post ads online.
2. He didn't care about the student and that was something we were not about.
3. He was rude, unprofessional and was plain wasting our time.
He tried to come up with some lame explanation that he is similar to a sales man who knocks on your door and when people knock on your door, then they want you money. Again relevance?!?!?!?!
So at 2.30am, Mr. Agent of the year texted me:
" If you are not happy that people offer their service to you, you shouldn't be offering your tutoring service to other people. Don't be to proud that you have passion in teaching, it is agents who makes a large part of it possible, even the guy who clears the rubbish contributes."
[ oookkkkkayyyyy..... at 2.30am.. maybe he was sore that he lost some money cause we didn't want to do it anymore.. maybe he was drunk... ]
my reply at 6am:
" I'm sorry if we came across as ungrateful. That was never our intention. But your lack of professionalism is something we would rather not be associated with at this point of time. Like how you would msg me at 2.30am. I think this would work out for the better. We love tutoring others and I'm sorry that it didn't come across to you. But thank you for your efforts and I hope that there isn't any hard feelings."
his EXACT reply:
"You may believe in giving free trial lessons or others may even give free voluntary lessons to the poor but it doesn't mean people who don't do so doesn't love what they are doing. I just felt you way if thinking is wrong take care."
and here is mine:
" And your way of thinking isn't wrong? Please stop messaging me because you're just wasting my time. Just because we don't see eye to eye does not mean that I am wrong. I wish you well."
Few things I want to highlight. After my long rant. that 1. if you want to sound smart, make sure you write well enough and not make stupid mistakes which makes you seem like u're an idiot and 2. please SOUND FUCKING RELEVANT!!!
it's been a long day. and if by any chance you know an agent, Mr. Agent of the Year is a chinese ah beng called Jackson!
Nat |
| posted by 3 @ 5:47 PM |
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