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Everyone laughs and says I'll get frustrated trying to work here in the
Philippines. "You know, things have a way of, uh, reverting back. A
lot of Americans have a hard time dealing with the quality of Filipino work,
and of course everybody and every thing is late." Well I have news
for you; slipshod, late work is a new international phenomenon.
Yesterday I got a big packet from DHL filled with my US mail from the last
three months. It took that long because the Post Office in Culver City (LA)
was incompetent about forwarding my mail to my partner's house, despite
numerous written requests. A lot of the mail was bills sent to the wrong
address, despite reflecting payments made that I know for a fact included
letters with my new address stapled to the checks. Some of course didn't
reflect the payments that according to my bank statement had been deposited
a full two weeks before. My bank statement itself had made my overdraft
protection account shrink in half (to $12.50) for no reason. I of course
rapidly sent out a torrent of stern letters consisting of a dry restatement
of the facts and a dry insult or two.
Even Japan, that clean, productive anthill of hard working responsible citizens
is fraying a little around the edges. When the "bubble economy"
popped, people returned home from work a little early and found that their
children had turned into aliens. They call the new MTV generation kids "UFOs,"
for Unidentified Flying Objects. these videogame playing, skatepunk cyberkids
have little interest in computers that don't come equipped with joysticks,
and time will tell if they buy into the overworked lifestyle of their parents.
That overworked lifestyle is what kept the parents from spending enough
time with their kids to ingrain their work ethic.
The US and Japan are suffering from the opposite extreme that we do. The
employees that have managed to weather the recession that started almost
a decade ago now are doing the work of their fellow workers that were let
go. One brilliant way to increase the efficiency of a company is to overwork
the employees. These burned out drones then go into a trance, removing carefully
typed out sheets of important information stapled to checks so that they
can stick them into the slot in the machine.
The results approach that of indolent third world workers who know that
their employers will never pay then enough, whether they do good or bad work.
We're all in trouble. We're all doing shoddy work and meanwhile we destroy
the environment, stockpile radioactive slag, and let economic inequities
get more severe. Our cousins in Bosnia slaughter each other and in Tel Aviv
bombs go off in malls. It's sad and I try to laugh, because at a certain
level, that's all anyone can do. But I'll do more. I'll be patient, to some
degree, and draw the line when enough is enough. I'll roll up my sleeves
and do my best. Maybe somehow I'll help a few other people open their eyes
enough to see that every effort that's worth doing is worth doing is worth
doing right. I'm not ever going to let creeping incompetence become anything
I contributed to, whether here as a Filipino or abroad as a foreigner.©1996
Peczon
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