My Childhood - Part 6

Let me go back to some parts of my childhood that I can remember.

When I was in Primary School, I was mostly in the morning session. And as my parents work, I usually have the afternoon available to play. My grandmother doesn't know much about my homework. I just need to do them and I can go downstairs to play with the neighbourhood kids.

There was this little convenience store that is on a standalone hut near my place. The store sells sweets, snacks, papers, magazines and cigarettes. The store owner is a middle-aged Indian. There are usually a few kids hanging around to read the comics without buying them. I think the owner knows he can't chase all the kids away, so he lets us read as long as we don't damage or steal them. But steal them I did.

At first, I remembered I tried tucking them under my shirt. But of course, got found out. Then one day, I found an ingenious way. You see, beside the stall, there was always planks and other stuff. I would, when nobody is looking, drop a comic book into the stack of 'rubbish' and quickly pick up another copy of the same comic and pretend to read. Then after a while, put it down when the owner was looking at me and proceed to walk away.

Later at night when the owner locked up and left, I proceeded to the pile of junk and retrieved the comic book and stashed it in another location - rooftop of a rubbish collection centre. Had to climb the walls to get up there. No one else goes there and my stuff are safe. I can't bring them back home, cos my dad will notice it.

And so this was the beginning of my stealing days. I am sure almost everyone steals as a kid.. don't you ? ;p

Next instalment - how I steal sweets from supermarkets.

My Work in Australia

My work is in a technical consultant role. It involves traveling around more than half the time meeting customers and all. I also work closely with the sales team, a little like my previous job role in Singapore.

Though I am not involved personally in office politics at the moment (and I hope not ever), I still do hear quite a lot. Friction within the sales team (fighting for accounts, etc), between departments (Product vs Sales), and also office affairs.

Let me talk about the friction within the sales team- its not uncommon in any organization. Everyone fights to earn commissions. Teamwork can only be seen when one person goes on leave and another sales person help out with the account even though she/he is not getting a commission.

Management also plays a part. If the manager doesn't make it clear who owns what accounts, or how accounts should be split, you will have overlaps. The sales team is divided mainly by industries, or so-called verticals. Everyone has a job to develop new customers from within the industry assigned to them.

What happens when a customer can belong to multiple industries ? How then ? Or the dealer (who belongs to one of the sales) happens to get a deal that is in a different industry (which belongs to another sales) ?

If the sales person is tasked to develop a new market segment, what about his/her old accounts that he has taken time to develop ?

All these are probably common in many sales structure. Managing the team well is the job of the manager and I probably have to say in this case, the manager isn't doing a very good job. Worse if she/he is seen to practice favoritism and hides like an ostrich, not solving problems that are brought to her/his attention.

Blatant backstabbing and spreading false accusations about colleagues to management is something that I dislike very much. One person's off my friend-list now.

And what about the problem between product team and sales team ? The sales team wants more information and sell anything that is easy to sell. The product team withholds information from the sales team, because sales team is stupid and cannot be trusted with precious information. Knowledge is king and holding on to information is asserting authority, I guess.

Office affairs ? Haha, I didn't see anything. But a couple is seen coming to office together, etc. Girl's single and available. Boy's having family problems, not sure of his actual marital status.

So there you have it. Nothing as juicy as my previous work environment, but it's getting there...