Staying Employed

When you are too free at work
And you are bored
It is a sure tell tale sign
You may soon lose your job

When you are too busy at work
And you feel you are indispensable
It is a good sign
But where is life

Whether you're free or busy
There is no guarantee
Or permanent employability
So look out and pave
Your alternatives
Your destiny

Busy or Free?

We often complained about being underpaid and overworked, and we envy people who are seemingly quite free at work. Question is, is it better to be busy or free?

In a workplace consisting of employees, productivity is of utmost importance to a business. If a worker is not fully utilized, the business cannot thrive, and if a business cannot thrive, the business will sooner or later die. If everyone else is working hard and there are staff that are not, it is not a sight to admire, because it means the department or the section requires less staff than they currently have. This means essentially some staff are probably destined to be fired because they are not busy enough.

Being busy and overloaded with work often means the need for more staff, but if more staff is added and some become free, it is time for some to move on. I am saying this not without experience, as I have been invited to leave before. When I was employed to provide professional services some years ago, I was trained, certified, and after three months was still not assigned any field job. I knew therefore that business in the area I was trained in was not picking up in the region where I was to cover – South East Asia, and before long, I was given the golden handshake.

That handshake meant almost three years living without income, apart from bits and pieces received from freelance jobs. I have apparently left a 'secure' place to join the corporation because I could see potential in them, but after five months, I was retrenched. To the employer, it seems normal for them to hire and fire, even though all other areas of their business are doing well.

Is it therefore better to be busy or free? Consider now from a different light what it means by being overloaded with work, because it may just be the reason why we are still employed.

Confession of a Pusher

It irks me that I am a pusher and I have to do it daily. It is not as if I am enjoying it, but I don't really have a choice.

Let me tell you my story, how I became a pusher. I work it a place remote from public transport and I have to take a feeder bus to reach my destination. Each time the bus arrives, a huge crowd will gather to enter to a one door entrance up the bus. There is no queue whatsoever nor the cue to know the exact spot where the bus will stop, so everyone will have to move discerningly to position a good spot when the bus is seen arriving.

When the bus arrive and stop, all hell will break lose and everyone will be rushing to get up the bus relentlessly. Some passengers however will be stricken with fear of stampede and freeze without moving forward, and that is where I become a pusher.

I push people to move forward to reach the bus. Many people surrounding the bus will try all angles and means to make their way forward and up, inch by inch, step by step, but with some fear stricken people ahead, there is seldom chance to reach the goal. The only way, therefore, is to PUSH ahead using a finger or one's body, with a stare that can kill, to make sense to the person ahead, to quit being a stumbling block and move forward and up.

This is my story of how I became a pusher, and it is an unpleasant daily experience for me, because I have always pride myself in acting gracefully, but for this case, I do not have a choice, so if you are one of my victims, I hope you will understand.