C'est la Vie: A Letter To My Company

To my current and future employers and bosses, I hope you learn to listen to the people you work with. You might want to read some of the most common reasons why your employees rant:    


Please urge us more to work harder
Learn to inspire and motivate your employees instead of looking down on them. You should not give up and view your unhappy staff negatively. Find ways to inspire us so we can work harder, keep positive conversation and expect the best, not the worst from us.


Can you at least pretend that you take interest in our career development?
We just don't work for the sake of getting a monthly paycheck. Don't you realize that if we work harder, we get to learn a new skill, which will eventually give us a career? When you create our career plan, do not focus only on those with high-potentials or talented pool of staff. Funny, but there are lots of ‘underachievers’ who need more guidance, so be fair in giving out stretch assignments.


Keep us in the loop
In case you do not know, communication plays such an integral role in good management and business relationships. Lately, it seems that you forget that employees appreciate good communication coming from management. Please remember the following below:

1. Always share information and keep everyone well-informed.
2. Ask good and sensible questions, and be open to opinions and views from everybody.
3. Most importantly, learn to listen to everybody and not just to the few people you like.

If you have changes or updates in any of your rules or metrics, please think about it a hundred times before launching it. Better yet, set a timeline and see if it will work or not. We are not your test dummies so expect and learn to listen to feedback directly from your own employees.


Be Honest
Let us know how well  we are doing our job. We also want to know how we are falling short. We want a chance to improve ourselves. We don't just sit here in our desk and do nothing. We get so disappointed when you are not giving us honest feedback and hiding over problems with comments like “You’re doing just fine,” when clearly we are not. Should there be any sanctions, please be the first person to let us know. It isnt great to hear it from our own colleagues! Honesty is the bedrock of good relationships.


Be sociable  
Do not show favoritism with people you like, which most of them are very incompetent. It's an insult, you know! If you cannot help it, then please learn to be discreet sometimes! Talk to us more socially. Get to know us more personally, even if you probably will not remember us for long. This is the natural way to gain friendship and trust. Your small effort to pay attention of people around you can go a long way.

Most importantly, please evaluate if there’s a need to increase our 5-year old basic pay. I believe that employees are also one the company’s assets, so please take time to review your records.

Before you settle for letting your not-so-happy people continue to go about their job unhappy, and burden the company with expensive unproductive workforce, do consider how you like to be treated by other people. It is not for any one-person sake, it is for everyone else's sake.

A good leader knows to inspire and motivate people, give opportunities for development, and treat everybody with the respect and dignity that each person deserves. After all, a third of your life and more, are spent in the office and workplace.


Sincerely,

Julie

C'est la Vie: I wonder

TWO PINK LINES What comes to your mind first when you hear about these words? Yeah right!  26 years of existence and I’ve heard so many stories about women getting pregnant, most of them are unplanned or/and unexpected. Pregnancy, or shall I say motherhood is never easy. Yeah, I have never been pregnant my whole life, but luckily I have friends who helped me understand and see how it is to become mothers. Personally, I think this is a scary responsibility. Carrying a baby in your womb for approximately 40 weeks is, again, never easy. You have to stop thinking about yourself and you should give importance to the creature inside you. A lot of things to be considered such as your food intake, vitamins, fluids, and so much more stuffs for healthy pregnancy. Not only that, you have to have emotional stability and peace of mind as well, especially those who, unfortunately have to carry the pregnancy by themselves. These, along with so many new things, don’t end on pregnancy alone. Of course, the more challenging things come when the baby comes out. I witnessed one friend when she had a hard time adjusting after she gave birth. I admired her though for her perseverance despite all the odds she has been through. One of my barkada just recently announced that she’s "pregnant". I didn’t know how to react at first since she just broke up with her dork boyfriend, but when I realized that she’s excited about it, I tried to calm myself and eventually felt happy about it. Gee! She’s gonna be a mommy in no time! I'm excited to see her baby bump, swollen nose, and huge legs! My favorite part? It's the thought that I'm gonna be a ninang.. again!

C'est la Vie: She's Getting By

Years have passed and she thinks she’s still stuck! She’s used to pretend that everything is alright. She has even convinced herself then, but hell, she was wrong!

It's been months since the last time they talked and she realized how much she loves talking to him. She sees things differently since she met him. She loves how he smiles at her. She told me how much she loves to hear him laugh. She daydreams about him off and on, replaying pieces of their conversation; laughing at corny things that he said or did. Funny, but she catches herself smiling again at those thoughts.

For once, she doesn't care! She never did! I kept telling her it won’t do any good, but I know she cherish every moment she has with him and I know that this is crazy!

In this weird twisted way, she hopes he misses her, not because she wants to believe it's true, but because he'll never find a woman that can put up with him like she did; he'll never find a woman who will care as much as she did. She has to let go before she does something stupid (again!). It’s sad, but she knows the only way out is to get through it.

She's sick of walking away (again!), but it left her no choice! She has to do it or else, she'll be very sorry. Things are way different now and she can’t stay this way forever. She’ll just have to accept the fact that people just come and go. Some you never think about. Some, you wonder what happened to them. There are some that you wonder if they ever think about you. And then there are the few you wish you never had to think about again. 

One thing’s for sure. She learned that she should never settle for average. It's just as close to the bottom as it is to the top. As they said “it's better to cross a line & suffer the consequences than to just stare at the line for the rest of your life”.