Caught In The Middle

Due to my money problem I am still living at home. It started off being a cultural practice. We live at home virtually till the day we married off. I started off like being at home. But over the past few years, my view changed. Living at home and having to pay no board have a big price to pay.

Yes, in terms of finance, I am so much better off living at home. But in terms of happiness and freedom, it is another issue altogether. I am the youngest of three siblings. My oldest brother, being the only son, he kind of obliged to stay at home even though he is married with a daughter. So yes, I live with my parents, my brother, my sister-in-law and my niece.

I think my world started to crumble down when my sister-in-law enter my life. Don’t take me wrong, I don’t mean her than make my life a hell, but the timing.

I never really understand why she is the way she is. She always screams at my brother and started crying miserably. I never know what’s wrong with the both of them. They never tell me what the problem between them is. All I know is her scream and her temper.

Beside all the post about me being angry, I am actually someone that really hates confrontation. So basically ever since she moved in, I am confined to my own bedroom. Everytime she is in the living room, I’m out of there and into my bedroom. So yes, she has made me into a boarder by definition.

My mum is the same. We know that she likes certain things certain way. So I and my mum don’t even dare to say anything when she decided to rearrange our furniture. We didn’t have much say about the house anymore. And really, we don’t really care as long as we can live happily together.

But I never know why she still always gets upset. I am seriously puzzled. Is my brother really treating her really badly? But how? The only think that I can think of that might be the reason is that my brother is not rich. He is far from rich. But really can that seriously be the reason why they always argue? But she is not making the situation better because she never works a proper job in her life as far as I know (and to be fair to her, I don’t know much about her).

When they just got married and before she got pregnant, she is a full time housewife and never worked, much to my parents’ disapproval. But my brother never said anything about that. He just keeps protecting his wife. To make things worse, she don’t even cook for her husband!!! I mean well, I guess you have two choices in life really (being a female), you either work like you are equal to any men and provide for the family and work in partnership with your husband to make your house a home sweet home. Or you can go the other end of the spectrum and be a traditional female and be a housewife. Hopefully the type that cooks and cleans for your husband. I guess there are also people that get really lucky and married into a rich family and never have to lift a finger anymore if they don’t want to. I guess most of us not that lucky. So I never understand why she is the way she is. She don’t cook for him, and sometimes she don’t even clean for him. She doesn’t even wash my brother’s dishes. And when she got angry, she will throw all their photos out of the house despite that it was raining outside.

So I don’t understand. I don’t understand why my brother’s life is so hard. Maybe my brother is not a perfect husband, but I don’t know what he has done. He works hard, very hard as far as I can see. What did he do wrong? Me being his sister, I am seriously worried sick about him. I hope if he did indeed do something that pisses her off, just stop doing it. And for her, just try to see things from his point of view as well. Of course, I am saying all this from a third person perspective. I don’t know what they are arguing about. No one willing to tell me. But please just work it out. I am sure this is not the life you want for yourself. So either both face it together and try to solve it, or just for sake of everyone, just go your own separate ways. Whatever you think you have to do to make yourself happier.  

Birthday

It’s my birthday today. Hooray! Really? To be honest, there is nothing really to celebrate. What do I have to look back in my life? I can’t think of anything.

All I can think of is my miserable spot in life. After years of hard work studying and working, I am at the worse I have ever been. Work is miserable, life is bad. I can’t really be any worse (hopefully this is the worse I will ever be).

Workmates were nice enough to give me a birthday card. I have to say, they are a good bunch of people to work with. But I guess the work environment sometimes make everything and everyone (including myself) unbearable.

Today was just another day for me. Everything was as bad. Work as unbearable as usual. I have no idea why the bosses choose working hours to do their meeting/discussion. If you really think the meeting is urgent enough, then you should organize someone else to cover your shift while you do your thing! I wish I can say that to them. Wishful thinking on my behalf.

Recession

Life is hard being me at the moment.  I blame it on the fact that I graduated at the wrong time. I graduated on the year 2004, started working at my internship site at 2005. I am no big spender. But I do spoilt myself with a little gadget every now and thing, but never something big. After a few years of saving up I decided to go into property. Started buying one or two properties and guess what? After nearly two years, the interest rate started creeping up and then BOOM, major property crash! Suddenly the whole world is in recession.  Now I am stuck with three properties still fixed at a high interest rate, and no market to sell.

Even worse, due to poor planning on my behalf, only one of the three properties have income. And even that it is not enough to cover the mortgage for that property. So yes, I am in a big shit to say the least.

I don’t know. I have always considered myself to be a good saver. I save most of my income and I thought hey, I can’t just put the money in the bank, might as well invest it. And I chose property. And it’s proven that it is not a wise choice. It’s a stupid choice. Its proven to be my biggest mistake in my life so far.

I guess with this, it does kind of explain why I hate my job so much. I was just thinking the other day, maybe I hate my job so much because I know at the back of my head that my life depends on it. If I lose this job, I will lose everything.  I am stuck at this job whether I like it or not.

So I guess my life at the moment my life is at a standstill for a few more years. I don’t know whether I should try to cut my losses now or hold on to it with whatever I got left? Who knows? I wish someone with any ideas can give me some advice. 

What Do You Know When You Are Not There?

The workplace has gone back to normal staff number. Everyone has come back from their holidays. So at lasts some stability in terms of staff number.

Our boss has been very lucky. Despite the current bad economy, our shop is getting busier and busier. So even though the number of staff is back to normal, we still feel very short-staffed, especially since we have two new staffs that we need to train up. So things are not looking up.

Yesterday for some reason our boss decided to stick around during the “quiet” period. When I mean quiet, it’s actually never been that quiet. Its between 2-5pm. This is the period of time he always go to his office to do his paperwork – and he always thought it is always quiet on the floor. But come on, its never been that quiet . This quieter period is the time we the floor workers wish we can tidy up our paperwork and follow through queries etc. We have no office we can hide away – so this quieter period means a lot to us. We can try to slip in paperwork time in between serving walk in customers. But with the boss away, the quieter period not so quiet for us anymore! This is because we become very short staff again!! The number of staff reduced even further when we take turns to go to our lunch and plus him going away to hide in his office, we reduced our staff number even further that the quiet period become very busy! So basically he don’t give us a chance to do our paperwork!!!

Anyway, so he decided to stick around yesterday and by the end of the day, he commented that it has been busy!! Inside, I was thinking well, it was actually not that busy, it was our usually 2-5pm (maybe slightly busier, but not much different). The only major difference was that you were actually working instead of sitting comfortably in your office!

Give us a break, don’t work us like we are your slave!

The Power of Electricity

Its Thursday today. Yay. Tomorrow is a public holiday which means today is the last day of work for this week for us!! Super yay. The work this week has been okay, beside the fact that our air-conditioner has been down for months and still unfixed!!

We had heard numerous promises from the boss that it will be fixed soon – we were told January. But its February now, and still not fixed. Its in the middle of summer here, and its horribly hot!! I really hope that we will get the air-con fixed soon.

In the meantime we have been using this stand-on-floor fan that is placed in such an awkward place that we need to move it around if we want to grab certain items.  We deal with paper a lot. And since we have been using fan, all these papers such fly around getting messing. Trust me, working in a hot environment is miserable.  I get so sweaty and miserable! Work is already unbearable for me! Now knowing that I have to go to work soon is just getting worse by the fact that the work is so damn hot!!

I have no idea why we are so poor that we can’t even afford to replace the air-con. From what I can see, the shop just getting busier and busier, maybe at the same time the boss is getting greedier and greedier?

Another day

So here we are again. Back to work after a lovely weekend. The older I get, the more I appreciate my weekend. Okay, I still didn’t do anything particularly useful during my weekend, but I certainly appreciate it more.

Last weekend, we went away. It was lovely.  On our way back to our city, the “fear” or “hatred” of going back to work the next day was slowly creeping in. It was horrible!! Whoever that design the idea of employer and employee was a bast*#@!!!

The day back was horrible as usual. But I guess it could have been worse. Piles of things that I need to do since it’s the beginning of the month. On top of that, the work place was a mess. I guess to be fair, it was “clean”. But piles of things that other staff decided to leave for others to do!!!

I can never understand that. How can someone do that? It’s your job, we need to do it on daily basis, otherwise things will pile up and the workplace will be a mess and everyone will get suffocated in the messiness!! It was such a simple common sense. What it is that so hard to understand?

Today, I was being stubborn; there was no way I would have cleaned up after those guys! I am not going to be the quiet one that put away things and clean up after everyone. Sorry, not doing that any longer!

I don’t know who is winning this battle really.

-          I am getting angrier at work due to the stupid work ethics of others.

-          I am getting lazier and lazier since I am trying not to be the bumgirl of the workplace.

-          I feel unappreciated.

-          I am not learning anything

End.

Stand Together And We Will Win!

The economy is going down. The whole world is probably in recession. I am not an economist, so to be honest; I am not sure what’s really going on. What I know is how the whole thing is affecting me. BADLY. The mortgage went to a ridiculous rate last year and as a result my mortgage repayment sky rocketed! BAD. Businesses went down, and a lot of employers take this as an opportunity to take advantages of the fellow workers.

Don’t get me wrong, I am sure there are a lot of businesses that really suffer through the whole economy down turn. But I can also see that some employers are using this as an excuse for everything. Can’t afford this or that. Blah. Just in case they didn’t realize it, we are the workers, we are “on the floor” most of the time, and therefore we can gauge how the business is going. We can see that, and they never fail to boost to us that the business is so good, increased by xy% since last year. However the attitude change as soon as we sit one-to-one in an office discussing about pay rate. What a laugh.

Currently due to some turn in events, our universities are popping up more qualified professions than the country needs! (I guess this is a little biased as rural area probably still in demand of qualified staff). In my city, there are hundreds (my guess) of my colleagues looking for jobs. Things are getting so desperate for some that the newly qualified are offering or accepting to work for a very low rate! Things are just getting to a very annoying stage.

On one hand, I can understand that they need to survive, working for a lower rate is better than being unemployed. But on another hand, do they realize that they are literally destroying their own profession?  THE same profession that they work so hard for? Now, the employers are taking advantage of the whole situation and offering lower and lower rates to their staff.

We as the employees have to stand as one. We can be an oversupplied profession; however there is no need to lower our salary/wage expectation.  We just need to find a better way to stand out in our CV and let them pick us before we are the most suitable candidate. Do not let them win by offering lower rates or accepting their ridiculous offer. As long as we keep saying no, they will back down! At a time like this, we need to be strong and look into the future. Do not let the profession down. Do not lower our standards just because we are desperate.

Stand together and we will survive through this!

Treat Us With Respect!

Back to work after a long weekend. As usual, work sucks. The day started off pleasant enough, until the “boss” told us that he is leaving earlier today (only told about an hour before he leave). Bloody hell. What is happening? Why do we always only told just before he left? Do we not deserve to know?

The thing is if it happened once, maybe I will be fine about this. Maybe. But this is not the first time. Not the second either, it happens more than I can keep a record of.

Our workplace is a very busy place. It feels like we are under-staff all the time. Literally, we are near to running when we are at work.  So it is very unfair when the boss decided to take half a day off and left us to work! Of course everyone entitled to their holiday. What I am unhappy about is this last minute , “I’m the boss”, “I  can go anytime I want” attitude. 

I know I am just a worker, an employee. I know that I can’t say no to him anyway. And believe me, Iif he ask me if its okay, of course, without hesitate I will say ok. I won’t have the temptation to say no anyway. I just want the respect that any human being should get. We are just workers, yes I understand that, but we still deserve the respect.

All I want is to be treated with a little bit of respect. Please tell us a little bit in advance if you want to leave early. Some bosses are really “boss” – they didn’t even roster themselves to work. But in my case, the “boss” is still roster to work. So please, just work your roster like everyone has to. And if you don’t want to work, of course you can. But please let us know. We are your staff – not your slave. We deserve a little respect. A little information on what’s going on – we are not robots – don’t treat us like one. 

I Hate Work!!

This is probably one of the best timing for me to start such a blog. On a Monday night after a long weekend, dreading to go to sleep, fearing what is going to happen the morning after – the D-day of my life – GOING BACK TO WORK!! Sucks!

That is the story of my life. Work, work, and more work. Everyday going to work just to wait for the end of day, then wait for the end of week, then dreading for the end of weekend. Sigh.

I guess a lot of people do hate their jobs. By a rough search on google, I can find numerous sites dedicated to how much they hate their work! I guess I am not alone going through this deep hatred of one’s work.

I have to say I have a pretty good job. Went through four years of university to get to where I am today. The pay is not great, but to be honest, it is a decent amount when compared to a lot of people. I guess – or I am trying to come up with reasons why I should count my blessings. These days, I don’t know anymore, what’s reality and what’s my excuses to make myself feel better about my job.

If anyone is wondering – I am a pharmacist. Yes, the person that wear the white coat behind the counter. Some people like to say we are just glorified sales people. And yes, perhaps we are – but we indeed have to go through four years of university, and one year as a bum boy/girl just to be this “glorified” sales boy/girl. Which I guess make me hate my work even more.

I have been working fulltime for a number of years now. At this stage, I am not sure anymore – do I really hate my current job? Or do I just hate working altogether? Or I hate my profession? Who knows? Unless I quit my job and try out other jobs I guess. But for now I am staying put. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it’s a lack of courage – I’m not sure.

One thing I know for sure – I HATE WORK!!!