Sometimes, people with the mildest manners and the mildest character are the ones who can be the most irresponsible.
Got the picture? I am going to complain. This is going to be long...
I have a colleague who is very quiet, mild, unresponsive, hardworking and in a nutshell, totally shut off from the world. Yeah, that's the person (I dun want to name names but let's call this person Mr A). But I never knew that Mr A was so irresponsible too. It all began last week but it dragged on till this week and I really saw his true colours.
Here goes...
As part of a welfare committee, Mr A and my job (together with others) is to organise activities for my department once a month. Now that it is the end of the year, we were geared up for our annual function. The first meeting took place on the second week of Nov and we decided to have a X'mas cum annual function during the week before X'mas. Things got bad last week...
Last Wed and Thu, Mr A was on leave. When I went to work on Wed, I saw that Mr A had sent me a email on Tue evening (apparently, I had left by then, you see, I say he is harrrdddwwwooorking). In it, he told me that the clubhouse had been booked on the last week. As such, we had to bring forward the function to the third week. Fine. So he told me to email my Director's PA to check if he was available on that day. Director was free and so we could have it on the third week. Well, besides minding the Director's schedule, we had to be mindful of our Deputy Directors schedule too. This, I left it to him. Amazingly, he didn't ask about their schedule. Great. But I was not in the loop yet.
Then came this Tuesday...
Director's PA realised that the Deputy Directors were on leave on the third week. One of them would be on overseas leave on the day we had the function. Out of goodwill, the PA called Mr A and told him about it. In this case, he had to check with the PAs of the Deputy Directors right? He didn't...
Wednesday morning...
At 8am, I received a sms from Mr A while I was on my way to work. Mr A said that he had dropped me an email. He told me to read it before he called me at 9am. So I thought "what's so urgent"? It took me another five minutes to realise that Mr A was on leave on Wed and Thu! You mean he went to the office so early just to send me an email?!?!?!
That was just what he did... I reached the office, checked my email and true enough, the email was sent at 7.40am! Hello? Need to be so early meh?! The contents of the email got me boiling... Apparently, there was a miscommunication with the clubhouse and the date that we wanted for the function had been booked by another department. So, what he wanted me to do "in order" (in his exact words) was to call the clubhouse, call the person who had booked the clubhouse on that particular date, plead with the person to exchange with us, booked the Director and Deputy Directors' schedule, get Director's approval to change the date of the function. Last but not least, he wanted me to resolve it at the end of the day.
What was this?! What was it supposed to mean?!?! Resolve it at the end of the day?!?!?! Hey, I am not grumbling about the extra work. It is fine if you want me to do it. But... DO NOT throw things at me when you are on leave can? Just because you are on leave, it doesn't mean that you can shirk from your responsiblity! Aren't you the one who is always not a team player and do your work independently?! Aren't you the one who is always so possessive of your portfolio? Argh... This is ridiculous!
As angry as I was... I did it... Not much of a choice since I am part of the committee...
On Friday...
Mr A was back at work. I came into the office in the morning and all he said was "hi". Shortly after, he sent an email to the committee. He said that the clubhouse, Director and Deputy Directors' schedule had all been successfully booked. The message brought across? He had done all these things himself! Hello?! I am not looking for credit but at least recognise my efforts! Although he didn't say "thank you" in the email but at least can say it verbally! This is really rubbish...
Seen his true colours... Once bitten, twice shy...
