Thursday, May 31, 2007

A Different Light on Public Employees

“Even on Sundays, John still reports for work to take advantage of overtime (pay). Anyway, they’ll just sit there and do nothing. That’s how it is in government offices.” Thus said an acquaintance while talking with my mom years ago, referring to her son who used to work in another department of the same company where I am employed for more than 3 years now.

As far as I’ve known John, he’s diligent, goal-oriented and intellectual so it’s not like him to be the sloppy employee you might think he is even if that statement came from his mother. Yet, we may reasonably assume that the double pay was really among his motivations for working until Sundays.

I am not sure whether it is due to my sensitivity inherent as a Cancerian or it’s simply because I’m employed in the civil service that’s why such negative perceptions affect me somehow. However, it would be dishonesty should I deny the flaws and negligence of public offices and employees. For several times, I too had been annoyed waiting in long lines of government offices which should not have been only if the people concerned have realized more efficient procedure to facilitate business. Sometimes also you are in the convenience of your home or office yet it can get equally frustrating to expect when you shall receive feedback on the status of your transaction. I may not exactly know what “unavoidable circumstances” causes the delay of their services but I believe it would not take an Einsteinian IQ to revise a slow-paced system. Matter-of-factly sometimes practical brainstorming and common sense is all it would take to consider scenarios and identify the weak and maybe redundant parts of the process and apply appropriate revisions to make business easier. Further, I’d be deceiving my self should I deny that in the span of my employment, not once have I had a gut feeling or at least heard of something anomalous in our local offices. It is foolishness to claim that 100% of our colleagues were hired based solely on their competence and attitude. And no matter how seldom I attend to personal matters and charge my cell phone during office hours, I am guilty of violating office rules if not yet classified as corruption.

Corruption – exactly the word that is so commonly associated with our government that it could have replaced Manila as the capital of our country.

The civil service has been my job since I became of legal working age hence my professional motivation could be greatly attributed to it. The keen observer that I am, I have seen and experienced the joys and pains of being a public employee and in the span of my stay, each day gives me realizations that serves as antidotes to the disheartening perception on the system I am part of. Although these are but specks which could hardly be noticed, I’m glad to still find a few in our agency.

First of these things is the dedication of my fellow civil servants to jobs with modest pay vis-a-vis their qualifications. I’ve been told that blogging rules include not mentioning anything about salaries but to support my point, I am citing our senior IT personnel for instance. With their skills and experience fortified with trainings they had undergone, rational and tempting career opportunities for them abound. Yet here they are striving to perform to their duties and make ends meet with their salaries which are tens of thousands short of what people in the same profession earn in private firms. It may be easy for us to shrug this off and say they chose to stay despite having the option to work for employers which could pay them substantially but some simply could not afford to risk the security of their current careers for various and valid reasons. I have a high regard for most of my co-workers who, over a decade ago, started in the company as volunteers perhaps only holding to the hope of securing the jobs they now have.

I believe that being a [truly qualified] public employee requires equally rigid if not more effort. To get an entry level technical position, we got to pass the eligibility examination or at least earn a skill certification. In well-off private companies, you go up the corporate ladder or get incentives when you exceed the standard quota – not the case in a public office. Performance seems to be a secondary criterion for a promotion. To hold a position equivalent to senior supervisor, one must have completed a master’s degree while to be appointed permanent as a manager is either to hold a doctorate or earn an Executive Eligibility, or have both.

Dedication would also imply professional flexibility. This I realized more during when conservation measures were imposed a couple of years ago and among the strategies taken was manpower control by having stiffer criteria in hiring personnel even in renewing contractual employees. Since then, we were compelled to operate understaffed especially that election ban is regulated every election period and we cannot hire additional manpower thus we resort to maximizing our skills even if this means performing the functions of 3 persons but again the salary of one.

Working here also taught us to be resourceful. Often, budget for our operations ends up quite small yet the vouching process could be detestable. And in the end, if the efforts to justify the significance of the acquisition simply did not work or if funds really were insufficient for until an indefinite time, then there’s nothing we could do but make use of our existing resources/equipment to the greatest extent until it is all consumed or becomes completely unusable. For instance, not once had we experienced the absurdity of being in an IT Department with about 30 staff sharing only two printers because we ran out of toner supply yet purchase is “being processed”.

Eventually, some of us became generous due to such instances. Sometimes, we would rather purchase office supplies with our own money than rely to the unreasonably lengthy process of requesting for finance. My officemate and friend often commits this act of charity especially when the item is very much needed within at most 3 days. Just recently, it took almost three weeks for us to purchase 2 reams of paper and few small locks by petty cash. We started with Stock Availability and Purchase Request, then canvassed from vendors, has had budget utilization approved before petty cash was issued. Fact is, that isn’t the end of it. It could have sufficed to submit the official receipts but we still had to show the actual purchases to the Supply Department for acceptance certification. I think this is the effect of the corruption-tainted image of the government hence the strict regulatory measures. Nonetheless, it is tedious.

The overtime pay is now obsolete in our company yet here we are some thousand civil servants still giving extra hours if needed despite some admitted disappointments arising occasionally.

Again, this is not to polish the negative impression that most Filipinos has on or to white-wash the existing flaws of the system in government agencies neither am I trying to convince anybody that we are very responsible workers. Rather, I am hoping to have shone a different light over public employees and although it may not be bright enough to be noticed but somehow I wish with this flicker, we could catch a glimpse of people who, as our HR Department refer to as “A Breed Apart”. MGGM



Originally, this article was intended to be written in early May with relevance to the Philippine Labor Day but I was occupied with a lot of work since the past month and that include that 3 weeks of purchasing the copy paper and the locks. Today is May 31 but I believe there is no such thing as “too late” when you want to uplift something and show appreciation to people hence I persevered to get this published tonight. Name of person involved was intentionally changed to protect reputation


Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Call Each of These, "A Day"

In observance of the Philippine Labor Day, my original plan was to blog something about the Filipino workforce which should have been my first entry for May. However, my weekend turned out quite noteworthy hence could be a good excuse for yet the 2-paragraph draft of the Labor Day article.

Life indeed is full of surprises. With that I mean both pleasant and not-so-pleasant surprises. My recent experiences are like a seismogram showing pleasant-unpleasant-pleasant register.

Ridiculous Allowance

Past office hours on Friday, I was still in a chaos of thoughts. I was exhausted from the day’s work but still attempted to brainstorm a justification to appeal for exemption from the prescribed allowances for external trainings. We are targeting to attend trainings by last week of this month. After weeks of exchanging e-mails with prospective training centers querying for the must-knows and trying to politely deal with their aggressive marketing stratagem (amidst also a breakneck plan we were concurrently working on), my lower jaw dropped to find out how little are the allowances we’re given. We can’t imagine what type of lodging could we avail (if there’s any) for less than half a thousand pesos in the metropolis known to be the country’s business center. Shall we stay in a parking lot and be billed per hour? Hopefully not!

Even the registration fee they are giving us is short by more than a thousand pesos than what was quoted by the training center. Aaargh! I’m just so disappointed with it that’s why I’m drafting this blog tonight rather than the appeal we will be sending out tomorrow…

WORD OF THE DAY: forbiddance (n.) – act of forbidding. variance (synthetic): an amount purposely given as allowance but insufficient for expenditures hence is forbidding rather than allowing.


Stranded in the Rain

Still in great disbelief on our travel allowances, I stayed in the office and unwound by playing The Sims 2 which I learned just recently. By 6PM, it began to rain after a scorching day. I haven’t brought an umbrella so I shrugged it off thinking the downpour shall not last for long just like the previous night. I just enjoyed my game and eased myself knowing that Jing and Doth are still in the other workroom.

Three hours later, Jing and I decided to go home. From inside the office, we hardly hear the rain pour on the roof anymore but looking outside from the corridor, we saw with street lights that the drops are coarse and continuously falling; the type of rain that would not die down in the next couple of hours. We had to make a decision and the only thing we could do is phone for a taxi to fetch us from our building. There are just two taxi operators here and both do not use meters rather have fare matrixes based on zone areas. However, the taxis based outside the Freeport have cheaper rates therefore that must be option A. Jing scrolled through her phonebook for the number of a driver she got acquainted with. She called him using my phone but we learned that he wasn’t on business that time and has nobody to recommend. As Jing was trying to find another contact in her phone, its battery went empty. I offered my phone (it is open line) but as we switched it on, it prompted for a security code which I could not recall until this writing. The last hope was Doth’s. I was left wondering what could be my phone’s security code while Jing went back to their workroom only to return after a few minutes and announce that most of her entries are saved in her phone’s memory. My phone’s battery also was dead already that time *sob*

We were left with no choice but call the more expensive taxis with our fingers crossed hoping that they’ll charge us humanely somehow. P150 was the agreed price from our building to Jing’s residence which, I think would just consume no more that P75 if the taxi is metered at P30 flag down rate. *Tsk! Tsk!*

So we locked our workroom and stood on the terrace keeping an eye for the taxi. Good thing that we did not ran out of something to talk about until we realized that we’ve been waiting for more than half an hour! We had to make two follow-up calls 15 minutes apart, have cited our location from almost all reference points I could remember and joked that Spiderman 4 might have been in theaters already before the taxi arrived.

I got home by about 10PM


Book Shopping Spree

Almost lunchtime on Saturday morning, I went to the local bookstore with the prime purpose of canvassing for size A4 copy paper. After fulfilling my major objective, I browsed through the shelves without anything in mind to buy but I found a paperback copy of “The Devil Wears Prada”. I have long wanted to own a copy and I recall having it in my wish list last Christmas that I informed a friend about it who however seems to have asked with the prime purpose of “canvassing” for wish lists. *sigh* That was the only copy I saw thus decided to buy it thinking that it would take long again before they could restock.

I caught an eye of a sign hanging between a closed cashier lane and the children’s nook. The sign said “65% OFF”. With a glance on the hardbound books, one would think that those were mostly business and technical books. I pulled a few and discovered that those were fiction. Rounding the shelf, I checked some more and found some bestsellers or at least, bestselling authors. And guess what, it’s on sale at P65 (roughly USD 1.35) each! Those were secondhand books with traces of library cards peeled off the back while some just seemed to be inventory overrun all good as new! I searched through the pile and got “The Guardian” (Nicholas Sparks), “Leap of Fate” (Danielle Steel), “Dare to Succeed” (Mark Burnnet), and “The Things I Want Most” (Richard Miniter).

I left the bookstore thrilled with my finds. I think the earliest time I’ll be purchasing fiction books again will be by end of the year.

By the way, I was also glad to find that the bookstore’s management had acted on the complaint I reported to their Main Office via e-mail regarding their defective air conditioning and being understaffed. Although they explained in their reply why they cannot resolve yet the problem with the A/C units, they considered my suggestion of putting up electric fans in the aisles rather than just in the cashier lanes. I’ll try to share details of this in a separate post.


Stand! Err... No, Sit!

We attended Sunday worship in a different congregation. The chapel is at most 20 minutes ride via public transport from the city. Our family tries to visit that congregation at least once a month. The welcome was warm and the service went as usual. In the later part however, particularly during the announcements before the closing hymn and prayer, I don’t know if we’re really absent-minded or it’s something with a shift of the speaker’s intonation that seem to have given a cue, but my sister and I stood up at the wrong time! Fortunately somehow, we’re on the rearmost pew although some still sit on plastic chairs behind us. It’s like in an episode of Mr. Bean where he attended church and was late and sleepy. We immediately sat down and tried hard to hold back our giggles. *blushing*


Delectable Lunch, Frustrating Service

After the Sunday service, we decided to have lunch at The Coffee Shop located two blocks away. The Coffee Shop is its name although it’s more of a restaurant rather than a coffee shop. They are famed in the city for their giant tacos although I hardly recall of having tried it myself during my first visit about 10 years ago.

Anyway, we chose a table outside and were handed the menu. I ordered seafood kebab with fried rice while my companions got for themselves chicken barbeque, sweet and sour fish fillet, and buttered mixed veggies. We all ordered frozen iced tea for our drinks. The drinks were served in less than 10 minutes. Two plates and the utensils immediately followed. But the next half an hour was a complete drag! We anticipated the time it will take to have our food grilled but then we’ve noticed that there are about four batches of newcomers already served. Whatever was left of our frozen iced tea had been like hot tea already.

My patience gauge dropped below the red mark. I went inside the restaurant and confronted the waitress why our order was taking too long. Of course I anticipated the typical pacifying but invalid it’s-almost-done-excuse but I didn’t take my eye off her as she got anxious serving the other orders while I was irritably muttering things like “Wow! We’ve been waiting for almost an hour”. I didn’t go back to our table until I saw her go in the kitchen and put dishes on the tray. A minute later, she followed and served our orders. And hey! My sister’s BBQ isn’t among those yet. She told us that it will be served soon after and I sarcastically said, “Perhaps for another 30 minutes I guess”.

When all were served, we started eating. Testifying about the food alone, it’s really sumptuous. I have this theory though that it wasn’t the preparations that really took long but the lady might just have forgotten us because we’re outside. If it really took long to prepare our meals, then it would have been served hot. The food is already cold hence it could have been left unclaimed on the kitchen counter for sometime.

The waitress might really have felt our ire because she’s hesitant to come near us in a manner that she’s busing the dishes from a point just enough for her to reach it. Of course, a poor service equals no tip.

We bought half-gallon ice cream somewhere else before heading home. Ice cream truly can make anybody’s day; especially it’s chocolate.