Fear and Loathing in Manager's Office

TODAY when I went to see my manager to discuss (telling me more like it) about what need to be done and who shall I see and submit to various steps of formality before leaving this Godforsaken shit-hole, I saw all these fake..pretentious...nice-in-front-of-me-but-the-hell-with-you-at-the-back or once they are out from the managers' office. It makes me sick looking at these sons and daughters of bitches' hypocrisy. I've been through THAT road before and it is very tiring. Grinning wide (in Malay saying: from one ear to the other) and saying 'Hi!! How are you?!..aww hon, you look great! did you lost weight?'... or...'Darling, you look amazing! what did you do? another visit to Dr. Plastic Surgeon?'...'How you doin' babe? ..hey you know so and so...he slept with so and so..and she found out! it turned out that so and so's wife knew...OMG!'....That were the normal opening phrase when one crew see another crew.

As I was just sitting quietly at one corner waiting to be called...everyone seems to know one another or at least slept-with once or twice...except me. I have been seven years with them and I know no one..NOT A SINGLE ONE. Yeah, some familiar faces one or two, maybe flown together once or twice but cannot make myself strike a conversation with them..because they don't have what I have. LOATHE.

Loathe at the fact that how can one be so pretentious as if everything is fine in the company? Nothing is fine! The company grew too fast too quickly and not anticipating what would happen without proper planning and so on. The moral of the employees goes wary sooner or later. Demotivated because before we used to know one another, say hi at the briefing facility (it was in a portable cabin, alright! Not the fancy office-look nowadays) but we were happy! Genuinely happy..we brushed shoulders from departure and arrival because it was in the same portable cabin, and we calling each other by name and we hugged people byes after a long flight, before jumping on the bus that take us home. Where are those time? It's all gone. Now we are all like robots: sign-in at the gate by minus 100minutes before STD (schedule time of departure, not the sex disease stuff) if you are late by one minute...BEEP! Not allowed to enter briefing room, please report yourself to Stand-By Lounge and marked absent for the flight. They would then be given another duty which normally stand-by or bye bye..go home! depends on the flight duty limitation (how the rest period worked out, depends on duties and flying time). Then since one person down, if they unable to call out another stand-by-ers from the lounge or home...the flight would still go on...with minimum number of crew of course.

During the flight, because of this one-minute-late-signing in, the other person has to work double the weight because passenger demands require certain number of crew, if we don't have enough crew, standard of service may be lower than customer expectation...or sometimes other cabin would come and help (its good if First Class go and help Coach, but if the other way around? It's gonna be a chaos..coz we trained cabin by cabin...junior will climb up to Business or First Class depends on their time with the company) Back to where we were....oh yes, when the service is bad or customer complain on why is he not getting his specific wine and why hasn't the glass changed...WHO TO BLAME?! the crew, because we don't do our job well...HELLO!!!