*As told to Kally from someone who wishes to be anonymous
Short Story: I gave my best to my ex-company but still got stabbed in the back. Long story? Here it goes..
I worked in a logistic company that grew from a small back office with just 10 manpower to 500 employees very quickly within 5 years. The money is okay but the working hours are great for me because I was studying at a night school so my boss, Ricky will give me unofficial time off to study during exam period.
In return, I worked very hard for him and the company. I worked in all areas from customer service, sales, operations, administration. You name it, I have all my fingers in it. So after 5 years, I’m the go-to guy if you encounter any problems and I’ll fix it quickly. When Ricky goes on family vacations, I’ll cover for his absence and make all the decisions. I doubled the company’s profit within 5 years and increased their productivity ten folds. I’ll jump in whenever there are shortage of manpower or take on shifts when someone is sick. I’m like a floater.
The owners are foreigners that we don’t see them at all. The whole company just listened to Ricky. Ricky is a great guy, he listened and he mentored. Those who left the company, will always returned quickly to work for him.
The trouble starts when Ricky retired. The foreign owners decided to come in and take over the whole company but in three months, they left because it was too much for them. They just want to see profits and didn’t care about operations at all. Ricky strongly suggested to them to promote me to run the place. Somehow, they didn’t want that, which was fine by me because I was just waiting to complete my degree before taking a long break and decide what to do next.
The bozos hired some guy (let’s call him Kelvin) who swaggered into the company, belittled everyone especially me and drove everyone nuts with changes that doesn’t make sense.
Kelvin’s first speech to me was “So I have heard about you. You know nothing. You are nothing. That’s why you don’t deserve to be in my seat. With me around, I don’t think you will last. In fact, I hope you will leave soon. That is why you are getting 10% pay cut starting right now.” I complained to the foreign owners but they relentlessly stated that Kelvin was in charge and he has the authority to do whatever he likes. That’s total bullshit. I don’t deserve that at all.
So I started to cut away my hours. You see, I have been putting extra hours and burn my weekends because I enjoyed working with Ricky. Now with this clown, there is nothing worth working for. I started working my assigned hours and doing things that are assigned to my role which is just paperwork.
My coworkers understood and didn’t give me any flake for sticking to my role and not lending a hand. They all hated Kelvin but couldn’t do much because they needed their jobs to feed their families. I’m the only guy with zero financial commitment. My school fees are fully paid for by my family, I’m living with my uncle and the old beat up car that I drove to work belongs to him.
The timing was just right as well. I graduated from my night school with top honours. I saved up a tidy sum from my salary because my parents brought me up to be frugal. I have enough savings to last me for at least a year without a job.
Most of all, I hate bullies with all my guts. I dropped out school early due to bullies in my previous schools. It was when I was working with Ricky that he encouraged me to attend night school.
System started to collapse slowly like dominoes. The changes Kelvin made was hampering productivity with most processes doubled the time and effort.
For example, clients used to be able to call us on urgent notice and we’ll pick up their parcels within the same hour. With Kelvin’s stupid processes, this no longer be possible so we stopped offering it. Ricky used to run through any new processes with me before implementation because he claimed I have “a quick mind” and I can spot flaws in the process easily and make changes before anything is official. With Kelvin, I doubt he wants my advice and I rather not to give him the chance to call me a smartarse.
Shift planning was almost non existent because Kelvin didn’t know how to plan it. The shift schedule will be out so late, people would start calling him on Sunday nights to ask if their shift starts on Monday morning. I used to be the one doing it (extra work) but since it is not my jurisdiction, I don’t care anymore.
During this period, many coworkers raised their concerns with the owners but was shot down one by one. Soon, people left when opportunities arises and Kelvin replaced them with his own pals who aren’t even qualified or competent to do the job. His friends are cutting corners, taking longer lunch breaks and leaving work early. More than once, the office was left unlocked because his friends forgot to lock it. We have clients’ goods that amount to thousands of dollars. If anything was stolen, I don’t think the insurance will cover stupid human error like forgetting to lock up. Sometimes, we will returned to work after a long weekend to find the office littered with empty beers cans and the smell of stale smoke.
Clients started to drop us like crazy and by the time, the foreign owners noticed, almost half of our best clients had gone over to our competitors. Kelvin was sacked on the spot. The owners asked Ricky to come out of retirement but he turned them down. Last resort, they tried to promote me to Kelvin’s position but by then, I had enough of this crap and I had a long vacation lined up for me. So I tendered my resignation.
That was a year ago. The company is still around but it has changed owners. I don’t know what happened to Kelvin and may I never meet him again.
Can’t get enough of Whispers Stories? Here are some of them here: Whisper: I’m Pretending To Be Who I Am Whisper: I Slept With My Bully Whisper: I sabotaged my one of my staff’s career
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