Is grass greener here?

When I entered F&N, I was excited about working in a fast pace environment and learning new things, meeting different people...

Actual fact is, yes it is indeed fast pace.. but also because of this, no one actually have time for me, especially my own boss. My job scope requires me to talk to different people from different department to obtain information for analysis works - new product costing, new account proposals, export pnl.. bla bla bla..

This is a totally new industry to me, so when I was lost, I need guidance! My boss does not spoon feed. She gives you some tips, and let you find your way through. I hate that. Because her tips can be really broadbase, sometimes I got it and started swimming my way through... then last minute she will come in a look at my work and said a different thing!! It would've save me lots of hardwork if she's more consistent with her instructions.... She challenged me not to just sit in my room, but to go out to talk to people, ask around whenever I don't understand instead of kept on referring to her... well ok, I tried. The staffs here are all busy bees! I'm like returning to audit life where I have to approach them, interrupt their work and ask simple questions... some just directly tell me "Sorry I can't help you further, I have to rush for a meeting, I am rushing this job etc etc" *Rejected* There, my self esteem is immediately challenged!!

I tried to maintain good work relationships with the people I need to deal with, especially from other departments like Sals & Marketing people. One morning, this girl from Sales called and asked me to share a PNL with her, so that she can explore more options etc.. I was more than happy to share with her and her boss. At first I thought, maybe I should check with my boss first, but then I heard her talking to someone... I thought this is just a small thing I don't think it's a big problem, so I just cc-ed her so that she's informed who has the information. 2 minutes I sent the PNL, I heard a loud and stern voice at my door "Why did you share PNL with the Sales people ah???!!!" Immediately I knew it was Holy Spirit prompting me to check with her but I took the short cut to decide on my own. :( Boss nagged and nagged on why we should not share PNL with them because it is very sensitive etc.. ended by saying "please bear in mind ok? don't ever send out ah." in a warning tone. Well, ok.. I get it.... -_-

When I send email to department heads, some of them take longer to reply.. I was expected to follow up by phone calls. My boss told me not to use emails all the time because that's a very cold approach, I should try to call them up, or discuss face to face. Ok, I called their extension for an hour and no one picks up. Then my boss asked me to call the admin clerk to get their handphone number, I tried for another hour even admin clerk also has gone home. Finally, my boss told me one of our colleagues here has the lady's handphone number... WAHH!!! That just costed me 2 hours of plainly waiting over the phone!! Another one, my boss did gave me the guy's number and I was told to follow up closely because he tends to delay... ok.. so I called, he's out for 4 days training. Called again when he returned, he said he sent the file to his staffs to fill up the information and can only get back by end of the week. So I called again on Friday 10am, he got fed up with me!!! He asked me not to go after him like this... sigh... did he ever consider who is going after me for the final analysis? *Rejected* again.

Because it is fast pace here, my boss is utterly busy. She will come to me once in a while when she has a pocket of time. Yesterday she told me to have discussion at 5pm. 5pm she was on phone calls, people having discussion in her room etc... I waited until 8pm.. she finally was alone, I knocked on the door, she said "can we talk tomorrow?" She must've sense from my facial expression, she asked "did you waited for me the whole time that's why you haven't gone back?" I said "ya".. so she said "ok la, we discuss now" so it was a quick discussion but she was impatient the whole time. -_- I understand it is late.. but she just failed to recognise that I'm still new to the industry and the jargons she used.... Sometimes language can be a barrier too. She's Chinese educated, but she refused to communicate to me in Mandarin, everything from her mouth to me is 100% english, and her grammar is quite bad, despite her being a super staff here. Her grammar mistakes are such as "if really is she, then you have to ask her" "The system is failed" "You was saying.." Ya.. there were a lot of guessing in my head, and vice versa when I explained a situation to her, she misunderstood me or claimed that I confused her... sighhhhhh... GOD HELP ME!

When I do my work, I hate to be depending on others, for eg. using other's ID and password to enter a system to run report. Arrrghhh... it's so annoying because when I'm running the report, they would want to run report as well. When I want to run report, they would be logged on and I simply could not enterr... is this slowing down my work? YES! And I hate having to beg people to let me use their ID to run a simple report. I got a bit of loud nagging from my boss this afternoon for terminating her log in so that I could enter with her ID to download a report. She ended by saying loudly "you cannot do that again ah". OK.................. -_- Someone told me that I can apply for the report code, so I can gain access with my own ID and password, I thought "OK!" I took the effort to print out the report and brought to my boss's room, for her to sign. Oh guess what, she REJECTED ALL. Said, why do you need this access? This one you definitely cannot enter. No, you won't need this too. I put down 6 and all 6 were banned. Reason given was, "you don't need to see all these figures yet, until a certain level. All these are sensitive information, it's all the profit and loss." Wow, thanks for having so much trust in me. I hated that tone and facial expression. She could've put it in a nicer tone, like, we will see whether you can apply for it after you're confirmed. That would've been so much nicer to hear!

Only God is perfect... this job has its good and bad points. You can tell I have a very impatient and loud boss, but she's known to be very capable. She makes me think and makes me learn on my own and digest information on my own... which is exactly what I didn't have in my previous job.... Currently, some days I can be verryyy busy until I have to keep all gtalk, Facebook, thestar.com.my all closed so I can 100% focus on getting work done. I've been staying up late until 8pm, 9pm.. because that's the only time I can let my boss check my work to ensure I'm on the right track. One thing I don't mind staying late is that I learn new stuffs and I get better at what I do. :)


Grass is greener here.. but just not as green as I expected. Haha.... I got to learn to be tough to survive here! YAH!!