Three's Company

#212: Where are the Stooges?

Let me take a break from pretending that I am productive. I’d like to think I am but given my area of work now, I don’t know how productivity is measured. My phone never rings, I never attend meetings, I don’t solve problems or tackle issues. I just sit, research, and try (maybe in vain) to make sense of all the information I’m ingesting. Sometimes, I think I need a bigger brain. But then that would require a bigger head… which is not good to have at all.

I have 3 friends here at work. (It’s my third week. Give me a break. 1 friend a week should be good enough.) One is Gabby – a Filipino, 42 years old, who has worked with Nestle for the past 5 years or so. He has four kids. How someone can have four kids in a country without maids is beyond me. He's warm and welcoming. Very enthusiastic about introducing me to other Filipinos (who always seem un-enthusiastic about having "another one" squeeze into their comfy spot in this company. Or this country.)

The other one is Janet. She’s my table-mate – the one who gets asked where the photocopier is, where the printer is, where the supplies are, if I can borrow her stapler, ruler or red pen. She’s Chinese and very patient. With me, that is. (In my life here in Sydney, I’ve gotten by with a lot of help from patient people.) She’s engaged too. I know because her left side faces me and her rock sends blinding flashes my way.

The third one is Janet. Too. It seems like the department can’t have enough Janets. She’s Chinese. Too. She’s a quirky girl who actually worked a string of odd jobs while doing her undergrad because her parents can only provide for her tuition – not for her living expenses. (What good is education if the person is dead? Well, that’s what I would have told my parents if they tried to do it that way with me too.) But I think that’s a good deal. She got to be very streetsmart and resourceful. She washed hundreds and hundreds of dishes a day at a Chinese restaurant that paid her less than minimum wage. She was then promoted to slicing veggies. I am amazed at her humility and her willingness to “sweat” for stuff. Not many people her age – or our age would want to touch anything blue collar. Now she’s one of the golden girls in Finance going through the company’s graduate traineeship program. She has tried coming to work wearing wigs and weird contacts, bubble skirts with boots – to her boss’s horror, but because of her attitude: that healthy mix of light-heartedness and perseverance, she’s one of those people you look at and say, “She’s gonna be the head of this department someday.

When the day is unproductive, the commute is draining and the future is unclear, I know that there are three good reasons to still be thankful for the workday.