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Dear friends,
Today marks a very dark chapter in the history of Coastal Energy. Some of my colleagues at Bangkok Office are fired. Yes, they are fired.. not for their incompetence, but only because they are of a wrong race. In particular, it is because they are not Spanish.
Yes, you heard it right. CEPSA has reached a new low.
CEPSA has been replacing non-Spanish expats in Coastal Energy Bangkok Office (a subsidiary of CEPSA) with Spanish ones. In past few months, the Spanish have enjoyed flying to Bangkok and living in five-star hotels on a prolonged basis to ensure "smooth" integration. But you know what? Bigger and more sophisticated companies can complete a takeover with greater efficiency. Better documentation, better questions, higher speed, lower cost. A lot of people could have done the job with remote work or teleconferencing, but why should them say no to free holidays in Thailand? Even if face-to-face meeting is preferable, where they could have done the job in a couple of days, they stayed for a month or more, and came back often.
Clearly the Spanish like it here, and they want an easy and sleazy way to get to work here. So they replace non-Spanish expats with their compatriots out of plain favoritism.
One may ask these questions: What do they know about meritocracy? What do they know about rewarding and retaining employees based on performance, rather than race? What would shareholders think when they know this? And perhaps more interestingly, what would mass media in Spain and worldwide do when they can target a big company like a hawk targeting its big, fat prey?
Regardless of the legality of CEPSA's action, this stinks. It stinks so bad that it threatens the job security of other expat employees who still work here. What is their fault for being sacked? Their fault is that they are not Spanish (wrong race) and their companies have just been taken over by a Spanish firm called CEPSA!! (Does IPIC, CEPSA's parent company, know this?)
Believe me, the Thai employees in important positions would have also been sacked if the Spanish could read and write Thai!! (Well, this could just be a matter of time before Coastal Energy Bangkok Office is a Spaniard-only area).
What can I do? What can you do? Not much, unfortunately. Let's note that Thailand's legal system is like a toddler when it comes to issues like discrimination, and CEPSA knows it. So why not exploiting it? After all, in a corrupted country like Thailand, winning or losing a concession is largely based on connections and bribery. I am sure Spanish and European regulators would take great interest in this when they know how much has been paid to bribe the officials here in Thailand. Oh, it is not direct bribery. All the bribes are paid through a consulting firm owned by a good friend of ex-Managing Director's. Out of millions of baht paid for "consultant fees" each month, one can only wonder how much of this goes to corrupted politicians and military and public servants, and how much left goes to the Managing Directors and Tammy and their good friends. Oh, this would be such a delicious, delicious piece of news for journalists. Coastal Energy is a similar but different sort of Enron. Darker. Dirtier. And takes place in an exotic location.
Do you see that between CEPSA and Coastal Energy, the match between an evil parent company and an evil subsidiary may sound like a happy union. But what about the employees, the innocent employees who have no stake in the wrongdoings and evil decisions and can just watch with stunned eyes?
HAHAHA. (Evil laughs) Who cares about these employees?
Who can fight for these employees when they are fired due to no fault of their own, even though the company is EXPANDING?
Where is the HR person who can stand with us when the dark times come? The HR person who is strong in principles and recognizes that employees are the most important asset of the company, not some replaceable parts of a machine. The HR person who, by siding with the best employees, look after the best interests of the company. Where is this noble HR person?
Unfortunately, there is no such person at Bangkok Office.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is my utter disgust to introduce you Tammy, the one and only HR Manager of Coastal Energy Bangkok Office.
She commenced her work at Coastal Energy as a secretary. You may wonder how many secretaries in this world have been promoted to the position of HR manager, looking after the welfare of employees. Not many. Why? HR is not some simple administrative function. If we look at the most admired companies, they have positions known as HR Partner or something equivalent. These people really care about the employees. It is their job to care about the employees, make them happy and productive, and make them feel like home and want to contribute their time to make their home a better one.
If Tammy knows this, she never acts like it.
- She rarely bothers to learn the well being of employees. She acts like she is above them. There is no sign of service mindedness apparent in good HR people elsewhere. She is distant. She is cold. She rarely wants to know more about the people she is supposed to take care of at office hours, lunch time, coffee breaks or after work. She communicates in superior tones, something a stern teacher would say to students to exert power and demand complete servitude if not obedience. And she gives orders and rules without consulting those who are affected. It is like saying that she is the second biggest boss in Bangkok Office. You should be afraid of her!
- Tammy acts as if she knows more than line managers when hiring someone. Often, she does the screening more than asked, like the screening for personality (Heavens be my witness, how can she be a good judge of personalities when she is such a cold and distant person?). To my horror, throughout her career, she has installed a lot of her friends (more like minions than friends) in Bangkok Office in various departments (who could say no to her requests and her judgments?). Yup, this Office has accountants who have never studied accounting at university. We also have engineering assistants who do document work like secretaries rather than useful technical coordinators because they did not do engineering or science at university. Tammy's minions usually graduate from lower-tiered universities in Thailand (If you look at ExxonMobil, where salary pay is not better than ours, they strongly prefer people with excellent profile and academic records -- that place is dominated by Thai students from top universities like Chulalongkorn and Thammsat. 'nuff said). I also heard that recruitment tests are a joke. For example, rather than relying on standardized tests such as TOEIC or equivalent cheaper tests administered by Thai universities such CU-TEP, TU-GET, she wrote/supervised her test questions (and mark all the papers). Perhaps the Devil forbids her from doing the right thing. Embarrassingly, her questions contain shameful grammatical flaws because Tammy's English competency is just ok but not good. If you want to know why Tammy does not ushere job applicants toward standardized English tests, the answer is easy. Many of her minions would fail such a test horribly, and she wouldn't be able to let them see the test questions in advance. So, Coastal Energy Bangkok Office is just a place for her minions (who are incompetent and perhaps a cripple when compared to the people at ExxonMobil in similar positions, who are paid less) to hang out and have fun. And by increasing the size of her gang, she owns a bigger "power network" and influence over the company.
- Unsurprisingly, Tammy has quite a number of enemies in the Bangkok Office. Who? At least the ones who do not invite her to parties, weddings, etc. There are also others who do not voice objections against her openly, since it has been consistently shown what she could do through herself and her mad dog minion, Pung. Examples include red tape and delays and bits of inconvenience here and there, like pretending to forget or be busy to do your simple requests, etc. What a douche!
Let's talk more about Tammy's enemies. What a good HR manager would have done is resolving this conflict through meaningful conversations. But Tammy is not an HR person by heart. She allows the conflict between herself and her enemies to escalate to the point that they do not talk to each other. Sweet Merlin!
And whenever there are serious conflicts between other employees, she sits back and relaxes and enjoys the scene. Well, she may offer help to selected party if this annoys her enemies, like transferring someone with no experience or education in HR to be an HR assistant. This action left some department understuffed, which meant more work for one of her enemies. Tammy has no intention of filling up the vacancy in the understuffed department any time soon. (Seriously, why does Tammy even need an assistant? After all, she used to have so much free time on hand!! If she could spend countless hours shopping for lady bags and shoes with John, the ex-General Manager, during office hours, then she could just work one hour a day now).
- Tammy allows abusive behavior if it is from someone from her gang. She is the head of the gang. The deputy head is the mad dog Pung, who is a then-receptionist and soon-to-be admin manager. You may have observed this pattern from mafia leaders. Mafia leaders do not get their hands dirty. They have right hands who do dirty jobs for them. This relationship echoes what is transpired between Tammy and Pung. Pung is very rude and barks on a regular basis. You do not have to understand Thai to know how ill-mannered she is. There are a few more people in her gang who exerts power like what Pung does. Speaking rudely. Speaking in uncivilized tones. Speaking as if there are no other people nearby. They have lunch together and sometimes talk to Pung in Pung's office or a coffee s
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