Apparently, the ill feelings I harbor won’t be going away anytime soon. Yesterday morning, as I approached the façade of the Manila Film Center, I thought of the promise my lighting director made that by Tuesday afternoon, the trussing my batten supervisor installed for the MFC stage would have been fitted with PAR 38s and 64s.
I was at the MFC at eight to pick up my staff and stuff for a golf game. Later in the afternoon as we pulled up at the MFC, I was expecting that by then the lights would have been installed and the band set-up back in its place. – It wasn’t.
So I semi-freaked out and called for the lighting department to explain and apparently, the lighting director was not around. So I asked them to install everything or else…
But this blog entry is not about PARs and stuff. It’s about my growing animosity towards everything that’s wrong with my life and the things and people around me.
It’s about rubbers, plastics and anything synthetic that makes me sick. It’s about the concept of “family” and how fake it all is. It’s all about saying “I care” but I don’t, not really anyway.
Now, I’m sitting in the bar I made… literally. I care much about this bar as much as when we were starting Amazing because I know that this will grow big. But that’s the problem; no one thinks the same, not the other managers anyway. Or they simply don’t care… and why the hell should they?
A management author once said; if you don’t give your employees what they rightfully deserve, then they’ll find a way to steal it back from you in whatever form. It may be in the form of actual theft or simply by neglecting their duties and responsibilities.
I have always heard from the past managers how terrible it is for this company not to give rightful salaries for them, and them meaning Koreans. Now for the light of me, I don’t get the logic in terms of the difference between “their” salaries and the locals’ salaries when no apparent skill is seemingly needed in their positions. Not something anyway that I cannot get here locally for less than half the amount.
Take this bar for example, I’ve managed to start it up on a minimal amount and slowly refurbish it without much expense by simply recycling materials, resources and capital goods. But like most business, the most important of course would be the human element to it… those people directly making it run. Bottom line, this place turns out a profit… small, but profit nonetheless.
And yet, I feel so twisted by the fact that we cannot put resources into it -- real resources. And yet, we’ve spent millions on businesses that churned out nothing but headaches and losses - businesses that never went through the tedious process of preparing proposals and studies. And while this bar’s original scale was in the neighborhood of Fiamma and the Embassy, the proposal was lost in interpretation (that’s a simple story that I would not want to expound today) and so I am left with no choice but to start it up on a measly amount and almost on my own.
And as it is taking off, I feel that very soon, this will be stolen from me. Or at the least, it will be put down one way or the other. That wouldn’t be too bad if they’d make it better but the way I see it, no one would want to care about the nitty-gritty details of the business, much like my employees not wanting to discuss with them the details of problems since it might well be lost in interpretation.
Besides, I know the difficulty involved in convincing someone who cannot understand or is uninterested. – “hell, it’s just a job… I’m just supposed to look smarter than the rest, pretend to be interested in this shit and flare up in anger from time to time because I can – I’m the manager!”
And that’s the main difference between us. I have much preferential treatment for the less fortunate many and that is why they were forced to put me in this position. It is to either make me their friend or their foe. For those who chose the latter, they are all gone now...for those who wish to piss me off… good luck.
No amount of Orocans, Tupperwares and plastic balloons could ever replace real people. Only pity could save you now.
Note:
After completing this blog entry this morning, the Chairman arrives at the MFC with some allegations supposedly reported to him by his minions. The not so long discussion ended with him accusing me of not understanding him and not loving the company. Enough said.
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