[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvoYvU1fUAw]
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Note : I almost never put in anything other than my endlessly meandering thoughts, when they strike me as unusual, and otherwise positive thoughts about others. But it wouldn’t be a candid and realistic blog if I didn’t think and relate aloud thoughts about actual face-to-face experiences, good or otherwise, in my migrant adventure right? With that caveat, please read on Precious Reader ! ]
IN ALL workplaces bar none, you spot at least one of them : the oddball, the anti-social, or the non-conformist. Man being the social animal that he is, tends to form gangs, cabals or cliques or at least be aware of these groups, and so the individual who shuns them, or moreover pretends that they aren’t part of modern existence at the very least gambles with the more-or-less positive way with which his colleagues view him, or worse, doesn’t care at all.
What in the world are you driving at Noel? I can almost hear you saying. Well first, you’ll forgive me for feeling that we’ve become good friends by now, so I can tell you about something personal to me, and secondly I constantly live by the blogger’s fear that before I’m able to tell you about something that I feel strongly about, I’ll have forgotten. So there.
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Let’s call him
Genghis, because his actual name recalls one of the most famous pillagers in history, and I can’t very well tell you his real name. His physical appearance is a portent of what he is inside : aloof, unsmiling, totally focused on whatever he was doing, whether it’s conducting tests on the product, monitoring the machinery, or troubleshooting a problem in the conveyor or spouts, it’s almost like he had invisible blinders that prevented him from seeing anything that was lateral to his vision, or for that matter, his work.
And whether or not those lateral things were actual people and co-workers like me did not matter. There are only two occasions on which he would acknowledge you : at the start of the shift, when he would nod or repeat your greeting, or when there was a problem in the site, in which case he would take care of it himself, ask for your help only as a last resort, or give you a withering look as if to say
you can take care of that yourself.
That last quality, I can honestly say 99% of the time he means without malice or annoyance, especially when it involves routine matters which you would’ve learned without consulting him (except as a matter of courtesy, being the supervisor). But faced with a choice between saving face in the form of being cock sure about your areas of responsibilities and machineries, and risking a small unchecked problem growing into a giant, system-wide problem, I’d always opt for his arrogant (albeit unmalicious), withering stare.
Except that it wasn’t the only problem with aloof, unsmiling, socially frigid and arrogant Genghis, who if you can believe it, was otherwise alright to work with. The problem? In so many words, if there was a way to do things that wasn’t right in his books, it wasn’t right. In short, anything that wasn’t the way he did it, was wrong with a capital W.
And in his typical Genghis way, he wouldn’t tell you outright you were wrong. He would say something like this :
Well you can do it the way you like, but I have been doing it for more than 10 years, and besides I do it the way the training manuals describe it. Therefore the odds are on my side, unfortunately for you.
If you’re a fan of popular sit-com
The Big Bang Theory, my co-worker almost invites comparisons to the funny way
Jim Parsons brushes off anyone who doesn’t agree with him with a ruthless show of logic and facts, minus the funny punch lines. Only the straight-faced and unapologetic manner of telling you,
you’re wrong and I’m right. Get over it. In so many words.
He would not countenance the philosophy/s that emerged between the time he started working (more than a decade ago) and now, regarding improved techniques, wear and tear (requiring the relaxation of certain rules running the machinery) and allowing for the occasional discrepancy between theory and practice. Grudgingly he would, but that was a rarity.
From time to time, and especially after awkward talks with superiors, he would concede that an appropriate adjustment to his method of doing things was due, but I suspect he did this mostly to appease egos and to do away with what I think he saw as tiresome discussions after which he would just go back to doing what he was comfortable with.
And to a large extent, he was (and is) efficient and effective in his work. He knows exactly how machines run, how to discern certain sounds coming from the innermost workings, when to replace parts, and when to perform crucial maintenance work. Hardly ever did any of our factory managers interfere with him, and only when production schedules were to be altered or modified to medium and long-term orders would he actually pay attention to how these would affect him.
In only a pair of instances would his stoic, robot like mode of existence vary, and even then it was only for a brief while, opening a very small window into the person inside him.
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For a few weeks now starting just before the Christmas break, we were joined as shift partners as the only two to not take any holidays outside the statutory rest days. During this time I gave him
sushi leftovers that
esposa hermosa would take home after late night shifts. Among all the awkward situations I shared with him, this was the least awkward, as he would mumble
thank you very much and right in front of me consume the sushi rolls with obvious gusto.
I should’ve made the connection. As most of us know, sushi is one of the healthier
Asian foods around, boasting of almost no fat, very lean meat (if at all) and is faithfully served fresh. It is almost always disposed of if not purchased at the end of the day, even if it is safe to consume. Genghis, who is a little older than me, is fastidious in his eating habits and is as fit as a man half his age. It was therefore no big mystery to see him enjoy the food that I offered him.
Even if I am your supervisor, you don’t have to give me anything. Just do your work, he said rather clumsily in a combination of formality and gratitude.
Oh no, it’s no big deal I replied, trying to mollify him and hopefully not wanting to offend.
No one will eat anymore and we have to dispose of it, I’d rather someone eat it, one can eat only so much sushi before you get tired of it, referring to myself.
In that case, thank you was all he said, with what I thought was a hint of a smile.
I told you there was another occasion where he opened up a bit, and it was when we talked about the ethnic cleansing that had gone on for years and years in his homeland somewhere in
Eastern Europe. He seemed to think that everyone else in the world had known about it and continued to be fascinated by it ( I for one definitely wasn’t ), and since it was probably the only time I was going to hear more than one work-unrelated sentence from him in one breath, I let him talk and talk. He unsurprisingly sided with his own
ethnic group, but said that thousands of lives had been needlessly sacrificed for too long, and that was one of the reasons he migrated before his own life was wasted.
That, the fact that he saw his father perish right before his very eyes, and seeing many of his neighbors summarily executed daily, made me realize that his introversion, social detachment and sometime paranoia was not as abnormal as it seemed initially as it was a way of dealing with his former world.
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One of these days I hope, Genghis will look out of the island that is his universe, and start interacting with the people around him. In turn, I will rely on my famous Pinoy smile and win him over.
And who knows? It’s a long shot, but his life might one day be changed by a charming, understanding and patient Pinay
kabayan.
[…] Genghis, the other, infinitely more taciturn among my bisors, neither likes nor dislikes him. But he only manifested his feelings about him one time: when he mentioned that Rasputinseems to be out of touch with reality in reference to the latter’s outrageous (and incorrect) way of doing things. […]
Oh, he is Bosnian.
hahaha, it’s that obvious ha? 🙂 happy new year to you pretty microbiologist 😉