A story which is really cliche.
Mr Tan runs a business selling plastic toys.
He hired managers Chan and Dick to help run the company.
The production line has five workers: Ah Beng, Ah Seng, Ah Huat,
Muthu and Ali.
As the CEO, Mr Tan pays himself a million dollars a year.
His justification is: "without a good leader, the business will not
be
successful; and you won't get a good leader if you're unwilling to
pay for one."
Mr Tan has never worked in another company before.
Chan had won a government scholarship twenty years ago while Dick
is an expatriate from America.
Mr Tan thinks very highly of them and pays them each half-a-million
dollars a year. As an expatriate, Dick also gets housing, transport
and relocation allowances amounting to a quarter of a million
dollars a year.
The production workers each gets $1,500 a month with $300 going
towards a retirement gratuity that the company would match
dollar-for-dollar.
The business hasn't been going too well. In fact, business has been
downright awful for the last few years.
Consumers seem to prefer the cheaper plastic toys from companies
across the street.
Mr Tan is furious. "These consumers are a bunch of idiots," he
said, "don't they know that the companies across the street are not
managed by talents like Chan, Dick and myself?"
Mr Tan has always been deeply impressed by Chan and Dick.
Chan has the remarkable ability to use words like "synergy" and
"paradigm shift" in every sentence. And Dick? Dick is white.
So Mr Tan got down to some serious discussions with Chan and Dick.
After many hours of brain storming, they decided that they know
what's wrong with the company.
"We don't have enough talents," Mr Tan declared, "we need to hire
more scholars and white men." And he did. So now, there's Ang, who
was Chan's best friend when they were in RI, and Brad, Dick's
brother.
They are hired on the same terms as Chan and Dick. To reward
themselves for coming up with this visionary strategy, Mr Tan
gave Chan, Dick and himself a 10% raise. With the raise and the
hiring of two new management staff, Mr Tan figured
that he had to cut cost. So he laid off Ah Huat, who's about to
retire and receive his retirement gratuity from the company.
The remaining four production workers now have to work 12 hours a
day to cover for Ah Huat.
They didn't get any compensation for this extra work because Mr Tan
told them that this is a difficult time for the company and all
workers have to make some personal sacrifices.
"Luckily, we now have a world class management team and business
will pick up in no time," Mr Tan proclaimed.
However, business hasn't picked up at all despite having a world
class management team. On the contrary, business seems to have
worsen quite a bit.
Mr Tan is now even more furious. He has no doubt that he and his
management staff are world class. So the problem with the company
must surely lie with the blue-collar workers like Ah Beng and his
gang, who hardly have any paper qualifications and speak dialect
and Singlish.
But just to be sure, he engaged the services of a management
consultant firm to confirm his belief.
The management consultant cost Mr Tan an arm and a leg but he
identified the problem: "Your labour cost is way too high.
Do you know that the average annual wage of your employees is more
than $400,000? That's ten times the amount for the companies across
the street."
"Ah ha! Just as I thought," Mr Tan congratulated himself on
arriving at the same conclusion as a world class management
consultant, "Ah Beng and his gang are overpaid."
So Mr Tan reduced the salary of his production workers to $1,000 a
month and abolished the retirement gratuity scheme.
This story is totally fictional. So if any of the characters are
people
that you know. it's PURELY coincidental..........
