November 24, 2009

They don't make them like they used to...

I was greeted by a sour face of my business partner this morning. As everyone was busy, I didn't know the real story until it was lunch time. It was about the attitude of those girls who are currently in our office doing their attachment or more popularly known as internship with us. They were sent over by their university as a government initiative for new graduates to get some working experience before they started to work in the real world. We don't even have to pay them. They got an allowance paid for by the government. Convenience huh?

Until you hear what we have to deal with....

As they were under supervision by their university, we have to deal with a supervising professor who assigned us whom to send to our office. There were 4 changes of students who were supposed to attach with us ranging from 4 to 5 persons per batch. At long last, after delaying for nearly 3 weeks, 2 girls came to report for duty at our office. One of the girl straight away for two days off as her grandmother had just past away and she needed to attend to family matters. As they are attachments and we are actually giving them a chance to experience working life, we were not too strict and allow it.

Then within the space of 2 weeks, at least one of them would do a disappearing act with excuses ranging from family matters to no excuse at all. One day, when both of them did not turned up, we called them over the next day. Their answer was the dumbest answer any staff could ever give. Ever.

They were stuck in traffic due to some mishap on the road and as they were late, they decided to not come and they couldn't call the office as they did not have the office phone number. That really take the cake.

My business partner who had assigned them some real work was angry at her job, which has a dateline, are being left being half-done. She straight away asked them to be aware of the reason they were sent there and to really act like those who have been given responsibility.

After all that, the straw that broke the camel back for my partner was when today one of them came into her office and asked to not continue the internship at all as she find it hard to get to office everyday as she live quite a bit far from our office. She asked my partner to allow her to do this while she still receive her allowance. And to confirm with her professor that she finished her internship on time.

That was when my partner gave it to her like any good boss can. What really riled her up was when she asked her to take a bus or even a taxi, with the firm paying the fare, this girl said, she never used any public transport and she really doesn't know how to use one.

And these are the product of our local university? No wonder they say there's a brain drain in the country.

2 comments:

Mother Goose said...

I am always amazed at peoples' attitudes. Too many people take no pride in showing the best side of themselves. I have heard some say that it is young people, but that is not necessarily true. The problem is that a person who doesn't take pride in him or her self will not take pride in anything else. It does not make a good outlook for the future of our world.

adahlan said...

At least you know the girls are not going to go far in life with that sort of attitude. The Govt should not really be wasting taxpayers money on such ppl.

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