Private Sector

Today is Saturday - 5th April 2008. Unlike our friends working in the Government sector and the banking sector, and not to forget those working in the Oil and Gas Industries, we unfortunately have to work today.

Working on Saturdays is prominent amongst Private sector Businesses, because to them it's all about money, money and more money.

To these bosses (especially our's), getting employees to work on Saturdays is meant to:

1) Torture employees so that the bosses don't lose money. Because essentially to them time is money. And any amount of time that is lost (if employees don't work), is money (profit) lost. So the ideal is, to make sure the employees spend more of their lives working, rather than living.

2) To ensure that employees spend more time making money for the bosses and less time with their families. Because to the bosses, employees' families (mother and father - especially when they are old and sick; and husbands and wives; and their kids) could be a distraction that will interrupt the work commitment of the employees. Hence, making them lose money. So they cannot allow any of that to happen.

3) Because the bosses are so busy being greedy and wanting more and more, they simply cannot allow their employees to slack off work. So if Saturday was not a working day, then having 2 days off day in a week could potentially result in the employees having a case of "I forgot how to work" syndrome, when the following Monday comes.

I remembered the time when I had to "move" office, because I had my own new office building completed. That was about 3 to 4 years ago.

The thing I remember so much about that day was, each and every one of us employees were told to help in moving the office. We have about 150 staffs in total, so you can imagine the many things we had to relocate - computers, desks, chairs, files, etc etc. It was a daunting task.

Now getting staff to assist in moving is not a problem. We would all be glad to move our things and help the Company. There's absolutely no question about that. I mean, anytime on a normal working day if we all had to dress up in jeans and T shirt to move, WE WOULD.

But wait. The bosses ain't that stupid. So a memo came out saying attendance would be taken on all staffs, hence making it COMPULSORY for everybody to come (kind of a communist tactic). Ok, nobody had any problem with that, actually.

So there we were a couple of days later, in our jeans and T-shirt, moving our things from the office to the trucks repeatedly. And then moving the things from the truck to our new office floors, and arranging our things, etc etc.

The only problem was, it was a FUCKING Public Holiday.

Were we paid for working on a public holiday? No, we were all given pathetic chicken rice for lunch and that was it.

Imagine how much the Company saved on actually paying professional removalist for doing the job we did - Cheap Labour.

No No. Not even Cheap ah. FREE LABOUR lah.