Monday, September 17, 2007

Snake King

You see, sometimes Chinese can speak 'perfect' English while a native English speaker without any knowledge in Chinese will have no clue about what is being talked about. Snake King, both words are standard English words, when they are put together, what do you think it means? King of snakes? Someone who is very good at dealing with snakes? No, no, no, you are missing the whole point.

What are the characteristics of a snake?

Snake is slippery;
Snake is dangerous;
Snake is lazy.

If you fit these characteristics, especially the last one, then you are qualified to be crowned "Snake King".

Everybody will be lazy in some aspects of time, or just some time in life. You see your classmates coming to school with assignments unfinished; colleagues goofing off occasionally at work. It is part of life. However, some just do much better than others, including being lazy.

A colleague of mine, who comes from a 5-star country (being his fellow countryman, I feel ashame of myself), is the greatest ever Snake King that I have ever met in person. He can openly goof off at work, trading his stocks online, reading news, sleeping, and still dares to say he feels guilty that he didn't do any work for the whole day openly to the entire team! Then he continues to tell everybody his attitude is right and adorable because at least he feels guilty, although he is not going to change any bit anyway.

It is the first time that I have such an encounter, and I don't know what is the best way to deal with it. I did consider talking to my manager, but then would it help? I can't do much with this guy, can my manager do anything? Nothing much really. With the current tight labour market, and the low salary this company offers, we had been having difficulties in recruiting for quite a while. The 5-star guy knows this well, too. Before he transferred from our production plant to our department, his Snaking behaviour was even more daring. He himself told us that he usually came to work at 9.30am (while officially it is 8.30am), then went off at around 4-5pm (officially 6pm). He even went for a job interview during office hours without getting any time off or day off. And to make you feel better (or worse), he was praised by his supervisor.

I feel bad that I don't know how to do with it. My incapability to deal with this guy jeopardises other members in the team. Whatever the Snake King leaves unfinished has to be finished by someone. :(

1 comment:

  1. Not wishing anything bad for him I would still talk to your boss about it, just so that he is informed too. And yes, then consider having him change jobs. Set him a deadline to resign or be resigned. Show him that is is not acceptable.
    After all, someone who doesn't do much work will not be missed. At least you can then use his salary to pay the overtime of those who do the work for him.

    m2cw.

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