First of all, I'd like to apologize to my readerships about the previous emotionally-charged-uber-disturbing blog post. I was actually so agitated when I wrote that one that I didn't even bother to check for vocabulary lapses. I'm still agitated until now, but not enough not to be objective about the things around me, here at work, particularly.
Have you ever wondered why the phrase "I got the ax" would more often than not correspond to "I got fired"? and people, usually, follow that with a sympathetic question, "oh, what happened?" even if you're holding an actual ax in your hand and is about to chop of their heads for asking stupid questions. I wondered about it myself at one point but the answer dawned on me, or rather the question became important due to a series of unfortunate events (if I may quote Lemony Snicket) here at work.
I'm not a history buff but I know for a fact that succession of kings in royal families had caused so much violence in the past. Loyalists to the incumbent kings were often either beheaded or subjected to other forms of atrocities when a new one is enthroned, particularly if the change of leadership was through a violent war.
A change of leadership at work had resulted to rolling of heads, a cry of "I got the ax!" was heard in every nook of our dilapidated office, it was too loud to be ignored.
When the new director took position, I directly asked him if there's going to be a change in our employment as contractuals. He assured as that our services are needed so neither termination nor change in the contracts will happen. It was therefore a great shock to us when a few days after, the personnel officer approached one of the employees nonchalantly and told her:
"Please receive this."
When my co-employee looked at the paper and read, she was expecting an explanation. Instead, the notice of termination of her service was screaming at her from that piece of paper. What was shocking was that the termination was effective October 1 and the notice was dated September 29 which didn't give the contractuals enough time to adjust and find another job.
No explanation was given verbally. When we asked during the open forum why this was so, they just told us that the notice was written in English and therefore, easily understandable and that there simply is no funds anymore to pay us. But what about the impact of that termination notice to us? Couldn't they care about how we would feel? Couldn't they consider all the accomplishments we made for the office before writing that notice and addressing it in such a "brutal" and inconsiderate manner? It's simply atrocious! I still can't believe how the government agency could hire such incompetent and unprofessional individuals.
And shouldn't they know in advance how the funds are going? What are bookkeeping and auditing for if they keep losing track of all the financial transactions and be caught in such financial surprise? Lack of funds, my ass. In the first place, before we signed our contracts, we were assured that there's going to be enough funds for our salary til end of this year. Where did this fund go?
The notice was addressed to all the contractuals, at that time, all 20 or so of us. 20+ heads rolled across the filthy floor of that office. Because of sheer lack of foresigh, a number 0f families will spend the Christmas quietly, with no festive moods and such. A number of children will cry for gifts and parents will endure these with bowed heads.
Where is justice in that?
In these trying times of global recession and with Christmas time just around the corner, the termination is very untimely.
On the same day, we wrote a letter asking for the union to help us in telling the office to issue a recall because the termination was short notice and simply, unfair. This letter was signed by me and other employees which we decided to send to the central office in Manila for their comments and actions.
The letter shook the regional office like earthquake so the Admin people wrote a retraction letter the next day stating that everything's been settled and that we wish to retract all the complaints in our previous letter. Then they office asked the contractuals to sign. The batch of people who signed the letter to the union, the first letter, didn't sign the rectraction letter of course, except for a few who were harassed into signing. Why won't they sign if they were harassed into thinking that their jobs are at stake here? I can't blame them. But harassing employees like this through blatant manipulation and malevolent schemes, I believe, is against the law.
The following day, a memo signed by the new director was passed around stating that due to backlogs, the contractuals are asked to work til October 15 without assurance of salary.
WTF?!
In the first place, the contractuals (who are mostly young idealistic individuals) were the ones who go 0n fieldworks and accomplish all the targets that the oldies of this office chose not to work on due to plain laziness and sheer incompetence. The contractuals definitely have no backlogs!
And no assurance of salary?! WTF?!
This office is my personal hell.
The last picture is the artist's sketch of the developer's plan for the area. The tall building will be the club house whereas the surrounding buildings will house the future hotels and restaurants. A marina will also be constructed for the yacht's docking space. I believe the architect has a lot of ideas for the site and I'll just cross my fingers.. Hope they don't destroy the natural beauty of the area but enhance it instead. :)
I will never grow old. Nah, it's not what you think. I didn't mean that in the literal sense. If Mr. Scrooge were within earshot, he'd probably say:
