When they came to the Philippines, several expats were offered salaries beyond their wildest imagination. Here are few examples of what they were hired to do:
One former quality inspector in the Middle East was hired as a manager in one of the production department. His job is so crucial that what he does is just roam around the plant and report those that are sleeping on the job. He did only find three out of almost two thousand personnel. He once admonished another supervisor, hired by the Liquidator [meaning another company], to report to the expat’s boss after the supervisor displayed a news clipping for the benefit of the supervisor’s crew. The expat claimed that it is forbidden to display such news clipping on the plant premises due to its confidential nature!
Another was hired to resuscitate the Plate Mill operations. After four years of roaming around, conversing with people, browsing and chatting on the internet, emailing three teary-eyed goodbye letters to most Lotus users, went home to India a millionaire.
One department head, this one still on the rolls, apparently enjoys being here! His job is very peculiar: testing the resolution of the weighing scale every morning for the last two years! Also, he walks around the plant sporting a sock-with-slippers! He was also assigned to do a revision in one of the mills’ equipment but after delays in actual filed measurements, ocular inspection of the equipment for revision, insisting on quality maintenance activity . . . nothing came of this plan. So, he reverted to what he does best: weighing scale third-party calibration [by his own weight]!
One supply officer, who when he came in . . . his first official order: “make me a requisition for my very own laptop and printer.” Spoke Hindi to his subordinates, then ask “You didn’t understand me?” His job: surf the Internet for porn, which infected my computer which he used about twice a week before he got the requisitioned laptop, with various adware, spyware, pop-ups and popunders and took me three days to clean and exterminate! He also posted a classified ad in one of the website advertising that the company is selling plant equipment and rolls rather than coils, strips or scrap.
Classified Ad with annotations
One system engineer, an expert he claimed to be, his job: secretly smoked Marlboro lights in the hidden parts of the plant, roamed around the plant for five hours each day [sitting and smoking for most of the four hours], instructed a line supervisor to make a design on the transfer of the pinhole detector to another location [which is basically the system engineer's job], asked a list of critical spares but did nothing with it.
Another system engineer, an expert in PLC he claimed, took a stint in one of the production lines. He insisted on doing experiments on the processes and controls, burned one equipment beyond repair but without repercussions, yet received a commendation for a job not entirely his own doing [he was the one who drafted the recommendation]. When a supervisor asked for help in a training on programming for the line’s process computer, he delivered a rather too-simplistic introductory lecture on the parts and their function; and held no lecture on programming, which he claimed that it was reserved for the likes of him: system engineers; that any change of programming was to be course through ONLY to him.
One manager, who insisted that he was the boss, but did not prove he was one; insisted on buying low quality spares then blame it on the operational crew when the purchased spares when installed did not do as good operationally; insisted on using a out-of-specifications catalyst which nearly blew the gas generator up to the clouds. He couldn’t even pronounce correctly “dump truck” which he corrected others that it was rightfully called “drum truck”
One maintenance planner when asked for operational spares, would instruct the shift-in-charge to just withdraw the spares from the shop [which is officially part of his duties and responsibilities]; repeatedly scheduled maintenance jobs while no purchased spares were on hand; issued the same maintenance work schedule [MWS] while only revising the date of implementation, for the whole of four years. When one supervisor pointed out that MWS usually rotate the maintenance activities for each week, he became agitated, and started nosing around on operational activities which were the official duties of the supervisor while neglecting his very own job. He complained to his own boss once that he feeling useless as he was not getting special assignments which he insisted that he is capable of doing. His boss answered: “Do your job first!”
One shift-supervisor, who insisted on making his own shifting schedule then not sticking to it; his main job was to look for missing coils around the plant to reconcile with those on the production monitoring program. He was also has the habit of only selecting good materials for processing then boasted that the shift production yield was higher than that of his colleagues!
One adviser was hired but apparently doesn’t even know the different types of works-in-process in the plant. He once asked a supervisor what one production line was processing: “Is it soft or hard?” meaning annealed or fullhard. Then insisted that the line processed some coils which was impractically impossible due to corrections were needed but heat was necessary. He once boasted that in India they have several annealing bases on continuous annealing. I thought continuous annealing was a processing line rather than the modular base and furnace-bell types!
One production planning manager was hired who claimed that it was not the Production Planning job to know which coils are planned to be processed in one processing line, when one line supervisor complained that Production Planning should know this and charged delays due to poor planning . The manager rather insisted that this was not the milieu of Production Planning as he planning is not part of his job! When his attention was called regarding the rising trend of no materials to process, he immediately blamed Marketing for the poor marketing! When one supervisor suggested that Production Planning should at least devise a weekly schedule on that days the production lines were to operate subject to available works-in-process, he claimed this was not what he was hired to do.
On the first day of his job, one expat called a meeting which even included the Division Head and all Department Heads. After a few minutes, the Division Head sensed that the meeting was nothing but perfunctory “getting-to-know-you” and adjourned the meeting. The Division Head would later find out that the expat who called the meeting was to report directly to him! He was a laborer in the Middle East, claimed one of his co-workers there, then was hired for a local managerial post.
One management initiative executive became too enamored with management, after being sent to Bulgaria. He vigorously defended management on the lack of spares to pursue the TPM activities, castigated personnel on not putting their hearts out to management and helping management pursue autonomous maintenance amidst lack of materials and supply. A month latter he was hired to become the TPM head of another local company.
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Well, all of them came and went. Some resigned after a few years, saying goodbyes to Filipino colleagues and asking forgiveness from others whom they caused pain. Yet, in retrospect, most of these expats were hired at current rates in 2004: about $50,000 or more per month. Thus, in the four years stint of “relaxing” job, they could easily have amassed $2.4 million doing their expert-type of management! In return, what did the company got from them: NOTHING!
Notes:
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