The Life...or lack thereof
I read with great interest today's Today article by Murali Sharma on "The Story of Workhorse Albert's Life - or Lack of One".
As I read about Albert, a 32-year old driving s snazzy car, I thought, hey, here was a guy who sounded like me. I am a 31-year old lawyer and drive what some friends consider to be a snazzy car as well. As my eyes moved further down the article, they widened as I read about how Albert draws a five-figure salary, and I went, man, I don't earn that kinda money! (I am conveniently assuming of course that his five-figure salary was sans bonus).
What really caught my attention however were the following lines: "He works long hours. Like his colleagues, he reports by 8am and only gets home at 10pm, sometimes later." To be absolutely honest, my off-the-cuff reaction was: "this guy is so lucky! He gets to reach home by 10pm!?!"
And therein lies the warped nature of our working lives. A recent dialogue with a close friend remains firmly etched in my mind. He had invited me to his home for dinner on a weekday at 6.45pm. I found myself stumped and asking when was the last time I had dinner at 6.45pm and I realised it was probably in my lower secondary school years when I lived a mere 3 bus stops away from school and managed to rush home in time for the 6.45pm Chinese drama serials on Channel 8 after the flag lowering ceremony....oh yes, dinner included of course. Almost 20 years later, that memory of a whole family sitting down together on a daily basis for a nice homecooked meal with the sun setting in the background (and not already halfway round the globe) is such a distant fading picture that it takes several crankings of the ol' brain to conjure up.
In my early years of working life, Burger King was the staple for dinner and we, unlike most other pesky handouts of leaflets & pamphlets that we get bombarded with, actually looked forward to collecting the discount vouchers given out by employees. By no means were we earning a pittance by society's standards, even though our hourly wage at one point was less than that of a McDonalds part-timer due to the sheer number of hours we worked. But in some perverse way, the discount vouchers just brightened our day and made it seem a little more bearable.
And so bewildered, I asked my friend, a fellow lawyer with a job no more cushy than mine, how he managed to be home by 6.45pm for dinner, to which he replied that it was just a routine he had. Even in his earlier years when we toiled for the same firm, he, by his own reckoning, needed to eat by 7 to 8pm latest, after which he would trudge back to the office to continue working into the wee hours. I mulled over it for a moment and realised that I too had a routine. I was at work by 9 or 10am latest everyday, would break only for lunch and then continue working till at least 11pm. Head home for dinner at 12am and sleep by 2am. And those were what I considered the good days. For many a times I had dragged my weary body out of the office in the wee hours of the morning, relieved to be finally getting some fresh air, only to find in the distance that even the garish lights along Boat Quay had called it a day. That to me was just dramatic irony. If even the nightspots had closed for the night, it must be really really late.
I am grateful that I do not have bosses from hell like Albert does, which is probably one reason that keeps me going. Our parents who hailed from a generation that helped to transform Singapore into what it is today find it difficult to comprehend working life as it is now. After all, when I first started working, faxes were de rigeur for written communication as most businesses still viewed emails with distrust and even the law had not evolved then to consider whether contractual agreements by way of email could be upheld in a court of law. We used to greet incomplete faxes with glee as it usually meant that we couldn't continue working. In the brief 5 to 6 years since then, faxes belong to the museum and BlackBerries have become the constant thorn in everyone's side, a perpetual reminder that your life and time is not your own.
I used to wonder if it was only us lawyers who worked such insane hours just to pander to client's whims and fanices. On the off chance that I caught up with friends and other professionals, I found that I was often proven wrong. It seems to be endemic to our society. I don't think it is something that the Government can resolve. Society has changed. The modern world has changed. Reality is such that if you do not provide better and faster service, someone else will. I have clients who are sometimes grateful that I pulled all-nighters for them and in the same breath expect me to turn things around overnight. Expectations have changed.
I suppose the only way things might change is if massive numbers of people start collapsing and dying from stress and overwork or a giant meteorite blasts us all back to the days of agrarian societies. Until then, I join Albert, a bachelor with no time to socialise, along with the hordes of others on the same boat, sailing down the Singapore river of 'success', past a Boat Quay that has fallen silent for the night.
As I read about Albert, a 32-year old driving s snazzy car, I thought, hey, here was a guy who sounded like me. I am a 31-year old lawyer and drive what some friends consider to be a snazzy car as well. As my eyes moved further down the article, they widened as I read about how Albert draws a five-figure salary, and I went, man, I don't earn that kinda money! (I am conveniently assuming of course that his five-figure salary was sans bonus).
What really caught my attention however were the following lines: "He works long hours. Like his colleagues, he reports by 8am and only gets home at 10pm, sometimes later." To be absolutely honest, my off-the-cuff reaction was: "this guy is so lucky! He gets to reach home by 10pm!?!"
And therein lies the warped nature of our working lives. A recent dialogue with a close friend remains firmly etched in my mind. He had invited me to his home for dinner on a weekday at 6.45pm. I found myself stumped and asking when was the last time I had dinner at 6.45pm and I realised it was probably in my lower secondary school years when I lived a mere 3 bus stops away from school and managed to rush home in time for the 6.45pm Chinese drama serials on Channel 8 after the flag lowering ceremony....oh yes, dinner included of course. Almost 20 years later, that memory of a whole family sitting down together on a daily basis for a nice homecooked meal with the sun setting in the background (and not already halfway round the globe) is such a distant fading picture that it takes several crankings of the ol' brain to conjure up.
In my early years of working life, Burger King was the staple for dinner and we, unlike most other pesky handouts of leaflets & pamphlets that we get bombarded with, actually looked forward to collecting the discount vouchers given out by employees. By no means were we earning a pittance by society's standards, even though our hourly wage at one point was less than that of a McDonalds part-timer due to the sheer number of hours we worked. But in some perverse way, the discount vouchers just brightened our day and made it seem a little more bearable.
And so bewildered, I asked my friend, a fellow lawyer with a job no more cushy than mine, how he managed to be home by 6.45pm for dinner, to which he replied that it was just a routine he had. Even in his earlier years when we toiled for the same firm, he, by his own reckoning, needed to eat by 7 to 8pm latest, after which he would trudge back to the office to continue working into the wee hours. I mulled over it for a moment and realised that I too had a routine. I was at work by 9 or 10am latest everyday, would break only for lunch and then continue working till at least 11pm. Head home for dinner at 12am and sleep by 2am. And those were what I considered the good days. For many a times I had dragged my weary body out of the office in the wee hours of the morning, relieved to be finally getting some fresh air, only to find in the distance that even the garish lights along Boat Quay had called it a day. That to me was just dramatic irony. If even the nightspots had closed for the night, it must be really really late.
I am grateful that I do not have bosses from hell like Albert does, which is probably one reason that keeps me going. Our parents who hailed from a generation that helped to transform Singapore into what it is today find it difficult to comprehend working life as it is now. After all, when I first started working, faxes were de rigeur for written communication as most businesses still viewed emails with distrust and even the law had not evolved then to consider whether contractual agreements by way of email could be upheld in a court of law. We used to greet incomplete faxes with glee as it usually meant that we couldn't continue working. In the brief 5 to 6 years since then, faxes belong to the museum and BlackBerries have become the constant thorn in everyone's side, a perpetual reminder that your life and time is not your own.
I used to wonder if it was only us lawyers who worked such insane hours just to pander to client's whims and fanices. On the off chance that I caught up with friends and other professionals, I found that I was often proven wrong. It seems to be endemic to our society. I don't think it is something that the Government can resolve. Society has changed. The modern world has changed. Reality is such that if you do not provide better and faster service, someone else will. I have clients who are sometimes grateful that I pulled all-nighters for them and in the same breath expect me to turn things around overnight. Expectations have changed.
I suppose the only way things might change is if massive numbers of people start collapsing and dying from stress and overwork or a giant meteorite blasts us all back to the days of agrarian societies. Until then, I join Albert, a bachelor with no time to socialise, along with the hordes of others on the same boat, sailing down the Singapore river of 'success', past a Boat Quay that has fallen silent for the night.
posted by idea-expression dichotomy | 4:25 pm
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