Dos and Don'ts when you quit you job

So recently I wrote about things to do to get yourself a job which seems like the most important thing for your career but many neglects the importance of ending things on a good note. Yes, I am talking about what you should or should not do when you are leaving a job.

When you get into a job, everyone see something good just like in every relationship but the different part is that getting a job ain't a marriage and it doesn't always have to be till death do us part. People moves around in the corporate world and everyone is or at least should be mature enough to understand that.

Just in case you are not mature enough or not experienced enough, below are some pointers I would like to share.


1. Never ever quit a job via text message 

And you thought sending a text for break up was bad? This is just as bad and in fact worst. Because you might not meet a person anymore after the text break up but a text resignation means another 30 days or more before you leave.

2. When asked for a formal written resignation letter, it means a LETTER not an email

If you really have no idea what to write, search the internet. You can easily find a proper template that you can copy and paste. You are always at your final step of leaving a place. Why not just do it nicely for documentation sake?

3. When off setting your number of days of leaves, please do remember to prorate the days

For example, if you have 14 days leave and you tender your resignation in July. That means you are entitled to a prorated 14days divided by total months which is 12 and multiply by the months of service which is 7. You are not entitled to a full 14 days because you are not working for August - December.

4. After you show your interest of leaving, always talk to you boss and not take leave or MC to avoid 

Avoiding the talk is easy. Avoiding all feelings is not hard but do remember that after you tendered your resignation letter, it doesn't means it's approved which means there might be some negotiation thus if you wish to leave ASAP, it's always good to ensure your boss or ex-boss-to-be agrees to terms and that means talking it out.

5. You have submitted your resignation but you are still part of the company 

You might hate your job, your colleagues or even just your seat in the office but until the very last day, you are still part of the company. You are not allowed to go MIA on the company or simply come into the office and make it like as if it's your home or even start to talk bad about the company

6. Serve your notice period 

You have endured whatever you hated for however long, be professional and finish the last dance. If it is stated as a month, serve that month unless you are ready to pay out or your boss is nice enough to let you go early. There is no such thing as "I want to leave immediately" because any other company would ask you to pay a sum of money for that and by just forgoing your 1 month's pay ain't a big deal here. Else, do not come in as if the world owes you a living. It's nothing personal, it's just business, don't make things difficult for anyone especially your colleagues who still needs help with ongoing projects.

7. Hand over your outstanding work properly

Imagine you are going to die soon and you don't want people to be at a lost. In fact this point benefits you more then the company. I am sure you do not want anyone to keep calling you and asking you things when you are sleeping tight in your coffin. Write a proper Email send it to someone and not just simply say you have uploaded things onto the server and wait for people to clear your mess.

8. Do not burn bridges 

Work is work and it's nothing personal, do not take it personally and when you are leaving, talk to the people around you including your colleagues. Do not scold people, do not make things difficult for anyone just because you think you are leaving the planet. If someone from the office bought you something, take it along even if you don't like or need it. At least throw it only when you are out of the office.

The whole idea of this article is to remind people the importance of being professional. It's almost like a warrior code that I can't explain everything. There is nothing wrong with doing certain things above but you have to be prepared for the repercussion. I can tell you why it is important to be professional even when leaving, simply because this is not the end. The industry is small, the world is small, you never know when you meet again or when you need help and more importantly we do know some companies call up for referral after your next interview.

I might be wrong, I might have missed out something but here's what I am sharing. Good luck!

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How much are you worth?

(Warning: Wall of Text Post Ahead)

Ever gone into a job interview or sitting on the other side of the interview table wondering how much you are worth or whether this person is really worth what he/she claims to worth? How do we really know how much to ask for or how much to give?

The one job interview we all know someone is getting some.

Business Owner Point Of View

From a business owner especially for a start up point of view, hiring the right person and paying the person the "right" amount is never easy because there is always this "market rate" as well as this "How much I think you really worth."

Market Rate is actually a very bad gauge of how much you should be earning because more often than not you like to put yourself with your peers especially one in the same market. Are you him/her? Do you guys work the same way? Are our company structured the same way?

I've met someone years ago when i was running my own events company, coming in asking for a starting pay of $3,000 as a fresh grad because that was "the market grad for fresh grad".

To me, I am a very fair person, or so I believe. The amount you ask for is never an issue if you are worth that much. So as an events person coming into the company you have 1 basic role - make the company money.

So my question to her was; do you have ready clients? do you have potential clients? So if you think you want to earn $3,000 a month, how much can you earn the company each month? Company gives you what you need to start making money, your lap top, your name card and basically your "overhead" cost. So by investing $3,000 a month on you, what's my return?

BIG FAT ZERO.

Fine, if you can't earn, what about saving me money? Do you have vendors that can give me cheaper deals? Potential vendors? Or at least the required skill to help me handle some current clients so I can create more opportunity some where else? Basically independent enough to service clients?

NOPE. 

So tell me again, how did that number come from if you know nothing about what you are going to do? How did you estimate your self worth? Simply because your peer earns that much? Do you know my grandfather was LKY school mate? You get my point?

And here comes the golden statement

"I have a good attitude and I am willing to learn."

I am willing to learn

Ever been in an interview or at least heard from someone that answer one of those questions saying "I do not know how to do that but I am willing to learn."

This is one of those deal breaker for me. I am not saying that the attitude of learning is bad but generally my point for hiring is

1. I need you to earn money
2. I need you to solve my fucking problem 

So why am I paying you money to learn? I mean, that is what school is for but at work wise, why am I risking my projects/product and paying you to learn something that you are being hired for? Of course, if we talk about being a cashier or we are talking about selling a special product that you need to do some On Job Training it is totally different.

Work-Life Balance is nothing but a Myth

One thing I hate about fresh graduates these days is the fact that they think that "Work-Live Balance" is a truth/ Work-Life Balance only works for people who are already "there".

In life, we make sacrifices especially when you are a nobody. Everybody needs to start somewhere no doubt and everyone need to gain experience. And that somewhere is from the bottom. That is the rule of the game. You don't start a game of snake and ladder from 10 or 20, you start from 0.

From 0, you work hard. Of course, life is no bed of roses and working hard sometimes just ain't enough. Some of your peers might get it easier because he/she knows someone, he/she met someone but chin up and hang in there. It's not over till it's over. In business one really needs more than good attitude or good connections, luck plays a big part just like your dice rolling in Snake and Ladder but yet, good luck ain't everything.

My Story

It's nothing to be proud, I wouldn't say I am successful now but I say I am happy where I am now and it was never easy. One thing young people do not get it these days is the fact that there is no winning it all right from the start. We all make sacrifices.

When I 1st started my 1st job, I wanted very much to be in the events industry. Despite being a part time event manager before my 1st full time job, I know things ain't going to be easy for me considering the fact I am fresh and I do not have a proper qualification nor do I have someone to pull any string for me. Having a computer engineering diploma ain't bringing me anywhere in the field I am interested in, so what did I do to score my 1st job? Sacrifice.

I knew the "market rate" was well a good $1,800 for a poly grad this 10 yrs ago but I know I do not have any upper hand to play so I play the I am cheap card. Probably not the best card to play but I did it and I got what I wanted. I went in with a $1,400 and from the facial expression of the person who interviewed me I know I nailed it. His eye balls dilated almost a good 2mm when I said that.

My point is,

"It's never about how low we start but it's about how high we end up"

I was confident with myself and I took the risk. I know starting low meaning I have a further way to climb up but that only means I can only go higher. I was confident in myself that I will be somewhere and all that is stopping me was to be able to start.

I worked 7 days a week and more than 10 hours a day. I gave my most sincere service to my clients, I do my best to help the company save money. After a good 28 months in the company, I am proud to say that I had some good times and made some good friends. When I left the company I held my head high knowing that I achieved what I set out to do. When I left that place I had 4 (or was it 3) job offers came in from my client end and with that I knew I've done well and I knew my sacrifice was worth it and that is result of my hard work.

We started from the bottom and now we're.. oh wait...

Confidence

Sacrifice to me is a simple test of confidence. If you ain't confident enough in yourself to achieve something, what makes a person who doesn't know you or haven't seen you in action before confident enough to make that bet on you?

A very simple test of commission scheme, if you hit your KPI you get $X + Y instead of you basic pay $X which is actually more than what you were looking at, but $X is actually below your expected pay. I know many will go for a lower but stable pay over a high potential bonus and low basic pay because of "stability" but my point is - not confident in yourself? And instead you wish the company to be taking the risk on your behalf?

Tell me again, if you ain't sure about your capability, why must I?

Are we paying for your effort (which is unmeasurable) or are we paying for your result?

Bottom-line 

What am I rantingsaying here? My point is simple, I am not a Human Resource genius or hiring champion but always ask yourself this question before you step into an interview:

"What value do you as an individual bring to an organization over what an organization can provide you."

I am not saying that you can't ask what the company can provide but you only get that right to put question number 2 ahead when you already have the answer for question number 1.

It is never about the "market rate"...

This has nothing much to do with the article besides me telling you that the choice is yours. 

Mr.Smith, so how much are you worth?

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Back in time...

I woke up to the voice of my brother. It sounded almost like him but a little different, a little younger than I last remember. I open my eyes slowly to see a pair of smaller arms and legs in front of me. The view around me was shocking but surprisingly close to heart.

"Wake up and change, you are going to be late for school."

"School?" I ask myself and I went What the Fuck? School? I look around the place to find myself in a bigger bed room with two beds side by side and a old study table. My brother was putting on his school uniform. That brown secondary school uniform, that's right, that's his secondary school uniform. I look down and realised I was smaller than I could remember myself to be. Did I lose some weight over night? Oh yes I did but that's not all, apparently I lost some height too. I don't know what was running through my mind but the next thing I did was to pull open my pants and look in between my legs.

"huh, no hair... that's weird"

I have no explanation other than it has to be a dream but everything seems too real, it feels more than a dream, more than just memories, I am seeing things from the past. I jump off my bed and hug my brother. Something that nobody does in the family back then. I miss him so much. His voice, his stare, the presence of him that always gives me the feeling that everything is going to be alright because he is there for me.

"What the hell is wrong? Are you okay? Did you have a bad dream about death again?"

That is me. I was or rather still am never good dealing with the thought of death and everyone in the family knows about it. I already started having fear of death at a very young age, I would ask my mum and brother about life after death. What about all my friends, my favourite toys and what about you guys? I will be in a state of nothingness and limbo? Time will stop and I will remember nothing? I will not remember any of you? You guys will not remember me? All the things we achieve, all the good things and all those things we had. This gives me a chill that runs down my spine every time I think about it in details, even today.

"Mummy, I don't want to die. I want all of us to be together forever."

Mummy will explain to me why we need to die. Because life is too torturing to stay alive for that long and also because we need to make space for younger bodies and improve earth. If nobody dies, there will be no space for anyone new. Words of wisdom for my mum like how she see it coming that 1 day Singapore will be overcrowded but I guess she didn't see it coming that it not thanks to our birth rate.

I stop being a baby for a moment and I pretty much guessed it that I have just travel back in time. So many questions were running through my pre-puberty brain.

How did I get here?
How am I suppose to go back?
What year is this?
Will any of my action cause butterfly effect?
Shit, I've no idea what was my action back then, how? I am kinda happy with my life in 2014 and I wouldn't wanna screw anything up.
Oh no, there is no internet and Google right?
NO SHIT! NO FACEBOOK AND TWITTER???

The year is 1993, I was in primary 3 and he was in Secondary 4 taking his O levels. I know how that ended, he didn't get the results he wanted, went to a school he didn't like it, feeling all depressed. Re-took his O levels and got into Temasek Polytechnic and that is where he met my Sister-in-law and had 3 lovely kids.

Can you imagine me telling him that I came back from future and these are my knowledge? What if I told him and he study harder and got into a better school and did not spend an extra year taking his O levels? He might not have met my Sister-in-law right? And there will be no lovely Nat, Abby and Jordan. This is the butterfly effect I am so terrified about.

I snap out of all these thoughts and move my body as if I was a 9 year old boy again. Things feels weird. I remember the number of talks we had talking about how nice it would be if we have a time machine but I was enjoying any moment of this at all. It feels almost like you had a level 70 character in Diablo 3 and next thing you know your account got wiped out and you are playing this level 9 character all over again.

I am short all over again, I am weaker but I still have my brain. I have to sit through the whole day of Primary 3 syllabus again and talking to other 9 years old. It's pretty interesting to see all my old friends that I've not seen for the last 20years and the bonus was they look like they did not change a single bit. They were just like how I remembered them. Despite that, nothing excites me. Everything in class was obvious to me and I took the chance to brush up my basic English and grammar. After a day at school I was pretty sure it's not a dream. It is too real to be one and even if it was, it has to be a nightmare.

I was still thinking hard about how I got here, what was the last thing I was doing before waking up this morning. Was I in a phonebooth? Strucked by lightning? In a hot tub? Driving really fast?

Nothing, I got nothing.

It dawn upon me that in '93, my grand mother was still alive. I went home, picked up the phone and called her. '93, phone number has no additional "6" and it's amazing I still remembers her number after almost 12 years of not able to call her or was that information from my 9 years old brain?

I wanted to visit her but only to realized I've no car and my mum wouldn't allow me to travel alone to visit my grandmother. Time in a day was really slow. I have no internet, I can't go out, I've no money to spend and I have no sex drive. Tv program starts only later in the night, Jack Neo still have his longer hair and nobody knows who Tay Ping Hui was.

I was bored and decided to list down a list of things I could do or probably do.

Since there is no Google, I mean I can be the guy who start Google right? Nope.

I'm only 9 and I'm pretty smart considering I am 9 and I can say things like an adult I could probably be a child prodigy right?

No wait. Butterfly effect... I am a sitting duck. There is really nothing I can go differently besides the point that I have to go through these motion. Even for balling, I thought I should go and train up and play some basketball or run a little bit so I will have better physical foundation but what if I got good and so good that I didn't go to my obese bath during army? I might not be able to meet any of the guys that I did. I might get posted to OCS because I am fitter, I might just die in the training during OCS right?

That's a lot of decisions and risk a 9 years old have to make...

I guess I will just embrace on the fact that my brother is still around, my mum is still young and healthy cooking all the food for us and there is no STOMP or Facebook to distract our lives.

I wonder if I could visit my wife and look at how silly she looks like at the age of 9 or any other of my friends that I only managed to meet later part of my life. But frankly how am I going to go about doing that?

So time traveling ain't exactly all exciting. How am I going to go back? What if I am never going back?

I guess I can only live through my days 1 at a time to get back to where I was... Living your life twice.. Who could have guessed that? But what if my life decides to rewind again when I hit 30 again? It will be like groundhog day the movie but it is 9 - 30 on a loop until I do something "right"?

Or is this just life after death for me where I will just keep looping my life? Is that why I have no memory of how I went back to age 9? Did I die?

Did I?

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Were You On My Train Ride?

How often do you observe people on the train? When an eye candy walks in, do you perk up? Ok maybe not during peak periods when all you can see is another person's nape or someone's earlobe.

But when you're out and the cabin's relatively empty, who do you notice?

I was on the train one day when this really pretty girl walked in. Her skin was a healthy orange and her dark hair was complemented with soft curls. Her almond eyes were made up with eyeliner and lush lashes, almost pin up. She had a nose as cute as a button and boasted small, pouty lips. Her clothes were casual chic - a white tank top and pink shorts that accentuated her tush.

I might have just described an imaginary girl but no, that was how she looked. I noticed her because she's everything I'm not. I admired how confidently she carried herself as she strolled into the cabin and sat next to me.

That's the problem - she sat next to me. How am I supposed to continue ogling when a babe positions herself at a un-oglable angle?!

This would have been the situation if she had set within my line of vision:

But nooooo, it went down like this:

Mehhh.

Anyway, do you know what I really miss seeing in trains? A person reading an actual book. E-books do not count. Eye candy is doubly sweet when a guy has something thick in his hands – more specifically, a novel.

He's not watching a movie, he's not stuck on unlocking achievements and neither is he bent on moving on to the next level. Dude's a cracking bookworm and that's something refreshing.

So yeah, these are the two kinds of people I notice on my train rides – the unconventionally attractive girls and cute boys with books. What about you?

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[Guest Post] How I Met Smith

Who has a last name for a first name?! I thought to myself when I first read of Smith Leong, the online persona I came to associate as the man with 2 last names.

This is the tale of how I met Smith. Where else to meet Smith other than on the web? His online presence wasn't one to be ignored, like virtually in your face. For someone like me who wasn't exceptionally savvy with the web in the past, I can't say I was interested to know more about Smith online. He followed me (it was probably at night, in the dark, when I wasn't looking) on Twitter and liked any girl shouldn't do, I followed a stranger back.

End of story.

Well technically it was because I don't recall us communicating much. Until one day he tweeted that Marshall went missing and that triggered that ignorant in me to transform into OMGSOMEONENEEDSTOFINDHISPUSSY mode. Retweets started and I began to follow the episode of Missing Marshall. Needless to say that I was happy and relived when Marshall returned home!

And they lived happily ever after.

Because we never contacted again. But the following continued on Facebook and Instagram. Mama said I shouldn't talk to strangers but she didn't mention anything about following.

So this year, Smith answered an SOS tweet of mine regarding social media and the need to understand its chaotic ways. We finally met in person at a very memorable location - Coffee Bean. There's a couple of CBs where we were and apparently we were at different ones. Note: CBs may look different but hey deep down, the serve the same purpose - to feed and satisfy.

Anyway, we conversed over food and coffee Smith taught me a lot. About social media. Till today I still am very grateful!

Some time later we met again at a lingerie boutique.

It's the best meeting point because you can't miss La Senza. Then pink, the black, the tiny fabrics! But it was all business at Ambush, where we had dinner. We don't beat around the mulberry bush here. Conversation was trim and we didn't stray. Smith and I adjourned for some fun soon after - visiting the toy shop! Seriously, I never knew how huge certain toys can get, so many shapes and sizes, oh and the games people play! Toy Outpost and Simply Toys blew me away.

Months later we had lunch at a happy place - Le Cafe! Any cafe with free wi-fi is good in my books. Such a cute cafe too! And this is where I'm writing this post. Smith has just returned to work and I sit on my own in this now empty cafe to pen my thoughts. Le Cafe seems to be an appropriate place to write this because meeting Smith was truly a happy event. I'm very thankful for his friendship!

So this is how I met Smith. Hey kids, thank you for being my audience. I don't take 9 seasons, but I did take 9 paragraphs. Until next time!

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Who is Axixe? If you guys have been following my doodle, you will notice the slight resemblance. Of course, she is better at it cause she is the person who poisoned me to do it and of course gave me some tips as well. And why is she writing here? Cause I like her writing and stuff (and her pretty face) and I want her to be part of this too. Anyway, my blog is like a messy table, nothing can make a messy table messier unless you clean it up. 

Find out more about Axixe here.

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A little story.

Someone shared this with me when Will pass on and I thought I would like to share it here.

One night a man had a dream. He dreamed
he was walking along the beach with the LORD.

Across the sky flashed scenes from his life.
For each scene he noticed two sets of
footprints in the sand: one belonging
to him, and the other to the LORD.

When the last scene of his life flashed before him,
he looked back at the footprints in the sand.

He noticed that many times along the path of
his life there was only one set of footprints.

He also noticed that it happened at the very
lowest and saddest times in his life.

This really bothered him and he
questioned the LORD about it:

"LORD, you said that once I decided to follow
you, you'd walk with me all the way.
But I have noticed that during the most
troublesome times in my life,
there is only one set of footprints.
I don't understand why when
I needed you most you would leave me."

The LORD replied:

"My son, my precious child,
I love you and I would never leave you.
During your times of trial and suffering,
when you see only one set of footprints,
it was then that I carried you."

I am not a Christian but nevertheless I think this is a very interesting and inspiring story in its own way. Just like how sometimes children will never see how much the parents have sacrifice for them.

Mr.Smith, always look at the big picture before whining and victimizing yourself. 

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