Monday, September 22, 2008
13:52 by FoxTwo
Today's rant is partly inspired by a plurk thread here by XinYun. She was talking about calculative people who whine about being shortchanged (or being asked to pay more) a couple of dollars. Yeah these people probably scored distinctions in maths back in school.
In the plurk thread, xinyun was complaining about people who whine about having to pay $2 more than they originally calculated. However I'm going to rant about a few other kinds of people.
First off - those "call me back" people. In Singapore, all 3 mobile phone providers offer post-paid plans which include free incoming calls all day (yes I believe it's unique only to Singapore, or at least, this region of the world). In other words, you pay NOTHING when people call you on the mobile phone. So, they get the cheapest plan available, which may offer nothing more than 50 to 100 minutes worth of "free" outgoing calls.
Now, what irritates me is not really that they call me and tell me to call them back. Well it does irk me a little though. Come on, everybody has free incoming calls. Why should I not enjoy the free incoming calls?
What really irritates me is that these people REFUSE to call out to vendors or support personnel when the shit really hit the fan and we need network/tech/whatever guys onsite NOW. All they do is send SMSes and then they complain about how slow the response to their SMSes are. These guys also refuse to let the company "pay" for the bills because that would mean that now they are supposed to be "available 24 hours a day".
Sorry to break it to you guys, but IT people are, by default, on call 24 hours a day. With or without company paying for the bills. Just because it doesn't happen very often in this company doesn't mean it will never happen, or that if things really get bad, that you won't be called back.
Then there are even those even more extreme people. They charge their phones (and PDAs and MP3 players et al) using company electricity. "Why should I charge at home when charging at company means it's free for me?"
These are also the same people that will complain that the plate of chicken rice costs $3.50 in the city because it's supposed to cost only $2.50 back in the heartlands. By the gods, it's only $1 difference! Whatever you do, don't invite these kind of people out to a group function or something. They will whine about the cost of the bill and will squabble about even the cents portion of the bill.
Which reminds me of a particular incident which happened pretty recently. Something needed to be done on a server offsite, and we didn't have the right parts. We called back to HQ and the guy that answered the call was one of these kiam ganas. When we told him that it was pretty urgent, please take a taxi down, he said no. He would need to submit an expense claim, and it would take a couple of weeks to be processed and reimbursed. Thus, he will take a bus instead because it's cheaper than MRT.
After much cajoling, we told him we will pay for his taxi fare and we'll submit an expense claim for it later, that he agreed to take a taxi down to deliver the item. When he did arrive, the first thing he asked for was the money for his taxi fare, before even handing us the item we needed to fix the problem!
13:52 by FoxTwo
Quirky Singaporeans - Kiam Ganas
Today's rant is partly inspired by a plurk thread here by XinYun. She was talking about calculative people who whine about being shortchanged (or being asked to pay more) a couple of dollars. Yeah these people probably scored distinctions in maths back in school.
In the plurk thread, xinyun was complaining about people who whine about having to pay $2 more than they originally calculated. However I'm going to rant about a few other kinds of people.
First off - those "call me back" people. In Singapore, all 3 mobile phone providers offer post-paid plans which include free incoming calls all day (yes I believe it's unique only to Singapore, or at least, this region of the world). In other words, you pay NOTHING when people call you on the mobile phone. So, they get the cheapest plan available, which may offer nothing more than 50 to 100 minutes worth of "free" outgoing calls.
Now, what irritates me is not really that they call me and tell me to call them back. Well it does irk me a little though. Come on, everybody has free incoming calls. Why should I not enjoy the free incoming calls?
What really irritates me is that these people REFUSE to call out to vendors or support personnel when the shit really hit the fan and we need network/tech/whatever guys onsite NOW. All they do is send SMSes and then they complain about how slow the response to their SMSes are. These guys also refuse to let the company "pay" for the bills because that would mean that now they are supposed to be "available 24 hours a day".
Sorry to break it to you guys, but IT people are, by default, on call 24 hours a day. With or without company paying for the bills. Just because it doesn't happen very often in this company doesn't mean it will never happen, or that if things really get bad, that you won't be called back.
Then there are even those even more extreme people. They charge their phones (and PDAs and MP3 players et al) using company electricity. "Why should I charge at home when charging at company means it's free for me?"
These are also the same people that will complain that the plate of chicken rice costs $3.50 in the city because it's supposed to cost only $2.50 back in the heartlands. By the gods, it's only $1 difference! Whatever you do, don't invite these kind of people out to a group function or something. They will whine about the cost of the bill and will squabble about even the cents portion of the bill.
Which reminds me of a particular incident which happened pretty recently. Something needed to be done on a server offsite, and we didn't have the right parts. We called back to HQ and the guy that answered the call was one of these kiam ganas. When we told him that it was pretty urgent, please take a taxi down, he said no. He would need to submit an expense claim, and it would take a couple of weeks to be processed and reimbursed. Thus, he will take a bus instead because it's cheaper than MRT.
After much cajoling, we told him we will pay for his taxi fare and we'll submit an expense claim for it later, that he agreed to take a taxi down to deliver the item. When he did arrive, the first thing he asked for was the money for his taxi fare, before even handing us the item we needed to fix the problem!
Labels: quirks, Rant, Singapore, Singaporeans
