Khöeeshelle Annn grasped this simple concept very early on in her corporate career. For this, she was very much spared from the disappointments that she would have otherwise endured. With her expectations properly managed, she was actually able to enjoy her work, finding fulfillment in the small triumphs that came out of her day-to-day efforts. More importantly, she met new friends.
They were not necessarily co-employees—not that they needed to be in order to develop closeness with each other—but working for more or less equally profit-eager employers, they all shared similar experiences and professional frustrations.
There was Revvekhah, whose affinity for food was only matched by her high fashion sense; Mimi, who never had a boyfriend her entire life and had a strange but amusing sense of humor; Felibelle who everybody knew would be disgustingly rich one day; and Juleiy who had 2 pairs of every shoes, clothes, and accessories she'd ever owned, and was acknowledged as the most intelligent of the bunch.
Despite these superficial differences though, the girls had much in common with each other. One of these is that they had their own distinct way of getting back at the greedy system for overworking them at only the slightest amount above the legal minimum wage.
Every last Friday of the month, they would put in five minutes less of their required work hours and cap their week in their favorite spot in Ayungin. True, it allowed them to reclaim only a small fraction of their work week, but so what? What was more important here was the idea of cheating their employers, for a change, instead of the other way around—which was alarmingly all too common for lowly workers like them.
It was in a small place called the "Ninth Dash Eatery". It was owned by a distant aunt of Mimi's, and was popular among these chain of islands by the welcome sign hanging by its door that said:
The owner prided herself with some knowledge of recent history, and would not hesitate to indulge anyone who would care to ask how her establishment had got its name. It was a very funny story actually, concerning imaginary dashes and foreign leaders who magically lost the ability to measure.
Too bad, Khöeeshelle Annn and friends had very little interest in recent history. They were instead much more partial to the good food being served in this establishment, good company, and of course the latest workplace gossip.
One such last Friday happened to be Khöeeshelle Annn's payday. She was seated on her usual chair, in her gang's usual corner, and her pretty forehead was knit in concentration—in the way it always was when working with numbers.
"Thrice have I gone over my pay slip," she finally said aloud, "and thrice have I found that something seems not to compute! Why would I earn one thousand less of what I am supposed to receive?"
Revvekhah, who was next to her, couldn't help commenting. "You're not supposed to be paid for work rendered 6PM onwards, remember? So don't expect payment for those nights you stayed up till 1AM looking for sales."
Khöeeshelle Annn's brows knit even closer. "I know. And I know that although I put in fourteen hours of work a day, my computation is based only on as if I worked only for eight. Everything else is OTY."
The girls laughed with minimal amusement, like someone familiar with the concept of OTY would. OTY is a rough transliteration for rendering work with not much as at most a "Thank you" by way of compensation. Like most workers in these labor-justice-challenged times, everyone had experienced working under such terms at one point or another.
Mimi squinted at Khöeeshelle Annn's pay slip. "Didn't you tell us just the other day that you've received a memo about your company introducing an 'improved' allowance policy? What was that again?"
Khöeeshelle Annn thought for a moment. "You mean the one about rewarding employees a full day's allowance if they brought in a solid hundred thousand to the company within a week?"
"Yeah, that one."
"Except that we are already receiving a full day's allowance! There's nothing improved about that policy at all—except an improvement to their money saving schemes perhaps! They are effectively reducing our daily allowance by half. Honestly, who brings in a solid hundred thousand in a week to any company?"
The rest of the girls agreed. Their situations were not so different. Mimi in fact had stopped receiving her monthly living pay starting two months ago, when her employer deemed that only agents who could bring in five consecutive twenty thousand contracts in a week were worthy of it. A centavo less, and it was: "Sorry, girls, but you didn't make us as rich as you were supposed to, and so no monthly living pay for you for this period."
Khöeeshelle Annn continued. "As soon as reading that announcement, I knew that it is nothing but an excuse to reduce the already small daily allowance they're giving us. I'm in the most extreme of luck to be closing a two hundred piece contract at any given day, what more a hundred thousand!"
Mimi understood where Khöeeshelle Annn was coming from, but eventually, she decided they had to get back to the question of the salary calculation. "So your computation already considers this no full day allowance?"
"Uh-huh. I would not be one to begrudge my company all that money they can save by not paying me. I am already resigned to the fate of receiving only half of the allowance I was promised when I've signed up."
"Where then could the one thousand be?"
Until this point, Juleiy had not offered her mathematical expertise to this problem. "Let me take a look at that," she said at last, indicating Khöeeshelle Annn's pay advice.
A very unhealthy yet noneheless delectable dish called "Oil Rig Surprise!" lay in front of Juleiy. In order not to have to move this food away, she simply held up Khöeeshelle Annn's one-page pay advice in front of her face, and processed the figures inside her head.
Although the most basic pay details were on the document, a lot were still not printed there—possibly to save the company on printing costs. Nevertheless, Juleiy had heard enough details from the earlier exchanges in order to deduce the number of days worked, taxes due, overtime pays if any (there was none), and added benefits (also none).
It didn't take her long before Juleiy handed back the paper to Khöeeshelle Annn, and said with finality, "You are right to believe that you should be receiving one thousand more than what is printed here. Your one thousand should definitely be there, but for some reason isn't. I think it's a perfect time for you to call up your HR and ask for an explanation."
No comments:
Post a Comment