When I interviewed for my current job, the CIO told me that the people in this business aren’t nice to the point of being rude. I guess he was using shock tactic. Anyway, I got the job and I haven’t encountered any rudeness so far. But then it’s too early to tell.

A few weeks ago there were a lot of “suits” in the office & there was no coat stand, so everyone’s flinging their coats, macs, and jackets on empty desks and behind empty chairs. Our COO was so incensed he went to the fifth floor (which we don’t own) & dragged a coat hanger from there to our room on the third floor. He placed it near my corner. Now that the suits are gone, my coat is (nearly) always the only one hanging there, as the COO often stays just a few days here.

Across the room from me are the senior management who are always in business attire. I thought it’s only a matter of days & they will take away my precious coat stand (ang babaw ‘no?). It’s been two weeks & no one’s touched it.

Now compare that with my former workplace. There were three coat stands. One, was in the “business development” area so it’s always overflowing. The second was behind the CTO, which he uses to hang his dirty bike gear and wet towels & sometimes even dirty socks! The third was in reception where an umbrella lives. Now at the far end of the room are at least 10 people whose coats are on the floor, on PCs, everywhere. So I approached the office manager to ask if we could have the lonely stand & she said yes. So now we have a decent stand. After a week, it disappeared! I don’t know who actually took it & moved it to the business area near the CTO, CEO and the VP for Marketing. I suspect it’s either the VP or the CTO, as their coats often hang there and CEO really is not the kind of guy to be bothered with such trivial things. I felt really offended but I kept mum about it. What’s the use? That simple act really defines how it was in that old place. As our comptroller told me, she was shocked to learn it’s a boy’s school.

This isn’t my litmus test, mind you. And as I said it’s very early days to say whether I will not encounter bulls and snakes in this place, but I’m just glad I’m out of the pits.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 2nd, 2007 at 8:35 am and is filed under work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.