Work, work and more work...

Finally a real update on my blog instead of just quick posts consisting of just pictures. I've been wanting to do some rambling for some time but I just couldn't find anything substantial to rant about. Right, onto my rambling...

The title itself is a giveaway of what I'll be blogging about this time around so its no surprise that I'm going to be talking about my current workplace. If you hadn't already known, I've recently started working but if you don't already know, don't worry because I don't believe the whole world needs to know that I've joined the local workforce. That's why I'm not bothered to tell anyone about it and I don't appreciate others bitching behind my back about being mum about it since you couldn't be bothered to ask me directly.

Anyway, on the first day of work, I turned up at early and eager to kick start my first day at work. I reached there expecting a classroom training on site but in the next 15 minutes, everything was turned in a state of disarray. Soon I found myself clucthing a a diary with the company's logo emblazoned on it with a post-it note with an address scribbled on it while beeing shown the exit into a waiting cab on the driveway of the premise. Thankfully I wasn't the only one in a bind as I was sent off along with another bloke who also didn't seem to have the vaguest clue from the get-go. We got off at the given address on the post-it without an inkling of where we were, what we were supposed to do and how to get back home especially since I had parked my car at another place... With nowhere to go but straight ahead, we trudged along to our respective department where I met another soul who was also in a similar circurmstance. The only difference was that she was knew what she was in store for while I wasn't. I finally found out from her that the classroom training was only scheduled to start next month and we were here to do our compulsory rotation across the various departments in the company.

I got assigned to a department called special asset management. From the namesake, it sounded as if it would be about managing 'special' assets such as intangible assets such as goodwill, patents and the likes. No such luck. A debriefing from the department head finally sheded some light on what the department actually did. It bascially handles the company's non performing loans and turning them around by recovering part of the loan a.k.a. debt collection. Holy crap! I'm now going to be a debt collector albeit a legal one rather than those illegal money lenders mushrooming about who more of then than not regain their loans through underhand tactics such as spalshing your house with red paint, harrasing your family members and so forth. Images of yelling down the telephone line demanding to either be paid up or have their pants sued off them raced through my mind. It didn't help that I heard someone hollering on the phone down the hallway about needing something done pronto. Yikes...

We were dismissed later on and I started running various scenarios through my mind on how best to extort (for the lack of a better word) money from defaulters without using any invectives. There were so many "what if's" until my head started to ache from all that thinking so I just gave up and just settled on beating the defaulters into a pulp with words of course. Physcal harm won't do the company's image any good although I do admit that one would need to apply a certain amount of intimidation to get some results...

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My current cubicle.

A brief chat with one of my colleagues soon allayed most of my fears. According to them, they usually try to restructure or negotiate with the defaulter before taking any legal actions are getting them to pay up through legal means is more tedious and costly. However I wouldn't be chatting up with any defaulters anytime soon since I haven't got any experience. Unfortunately, because of that, I had to start reading up on the procedures and previous cases to get a rough gist of the workflow in that department. The size of the files would scare most mortals but having worked as an intern before, I was hardly intimidated by it because in comparison, I have handled files that were double or even quadraple those files. But the moment I flipped open the files, I was suddenly thrown out of my comfort zone. Jargons and acronyms started to leap out at me and to make matters worse, I had to go through a stack of legal documents as well. If you ask me what would be the best nightcap, I'd say lay off on the booze and grab a copy of the S&P agreement instead. ( S&P stands for Sale & Purchase; see what I mean about the abbreviations jumping out?)

The trip home was courtesy of a white van which appread to be operating illegally since
it didn't have any proper permit to pick up and drop off people. Given the situation, I didn't have much of a choice and decided to huddle along with a bunch unknown people. Ironically, a few minutes before I hopped onto that van, I actually waiting for a standing at a taxi stand which taxi's didn't want to stop to pick passengers up. Pretty soon I found myself hurtling down the road with the van driver deftly weaving in and out through the dense KL traffic at break neck speeds. Fortunately I got to my destination unscatched although I must say that I was amazed at how fast I got through that gridlock and also at how cheap the fare was compared to taking a cab back. I would've given it two thumbs up if not for the fact that getting caught by the authorities could get one into serious trouble...

The rest of the week went without much hiccups as I slowly got round to deciphering those acronyms and getting a foothold in between all those paperwork. Only time will tell what other surprises that department has in store for me... Now if you don't mind, I'm going to hit the sack. It's been one hell of rollercoaster ride for me all rolled up into one week and that's more than enough to throw my life out of sync.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

george,
all the best in ur new job...
just hang in there...u'll make ur mark...

mH3nG said...

Haha thanks a bunch.
Hopefully I'll leave a 'George was here stamp'. =P