Kultura

I think am loving this aussie carefree attitude, especially at the workplace.  Just now I came from an almost 2-hour lunch break at an Irish pub where I had Irish stew and BEER.  I’m pretty sure you get called to the Principal’s office if you do this in the Philippines.  The work environment here, especially on IT companies, are very tolerant and they just don’t give a crap as long as you finish your 40hr work every week.  Just this morning, I got off the train around 9:30am and although I am already very late for work I am still not rushing at all.  I love flexi time!

So once I get to work, well to my desk for that matter, I first proceed to the kitchen to meet up with my coffee crew.  10 mins of barista time later, I’ll finally go to my desk and browse through my yahoo email to check if anyone has replied to a stupid facebook status I put up last night.  Ok fine, 2 nights ago.  After being disappointed that still only 1 person has replied (my reply still counts ok?!) I’ll then proceed to the little boy’s room for my morning poop.  I don’t wanna go into detail on this one but if you are curious it just usually takes 2 mins for the product to be released but an 8 minute post implementation verification is required or else I’d have to go and re-deploy again once I’ve returned to my desk.  So in essence, I am saving more time.  Even with all of this dicking around at work, still I do not consider myself a slack because I am pretty sure it’s not just me.  People generally start work at around 10am anyway thus I am merely adjusting my work period to align with my colleagues’ as I promote team work and solidarity.

So, experiencing both work environments here and in the Philippines, I don’t think the Filipino work force deserve to live in a third world country.  We work too damn hard and sacrifice too damn much!  I remember my 3 hour over time work which starts at 2am, and still I am expected to work 9am the same day.  Here, management actually encourage employees to take time off once in a while as they are itching to go on theirs too.  And because of utilisation forecast as well.  Oh, and you won’t believe Fridays here.  In some offices, as an inside joke, people get fined when they look busy on a Friday.  And about finishing the 40hr week I mentioned, this flies out the window most of the time.  I know this also happens in supervisorial and management levels in the Philippines, but here it’s from the ground up.

I think that because of this office culture, employers loooooove Filipino workers.  Yeah, I do adapt to the work attitude here but still I don’t mind getting called up at 3am to do support work and it’s no big deal if they ask me to work on a Saturday.  I guess it’s not a big secret that Filipinos love overtime so that they can save extra money and buy that 3^rd car or send the money back home so their Lolo can buy a Videoke slot machine (I don’t get paid for overtime btw, I need to get a life).  People here literally drop whatever they are doing when the bell rings and storm out the door, especially on a Friday!  So if you wanna get someone to finish something, forget about sending it on a Friday.  It just so happens that today is that day!  People are excited for the coming weekend and today we never finish anyth…