True colours

The MD requested about a month ago, to have the office re-painted before second week of April. Our HR was the appointed person in charge for this task.

She finally got the contractor to come into the office last Friday, to take a look at the work that is required. The contractor mentioned to her that he is lack of staff at the moment, he could take up this job two weeks later. The HR insisted that he must get this office painted before 11 April.

The paint job was finally decided, and was announced by the MD while attending conference overseas with Mr. Porche. The email has two lines: The office will be painted on this Thursday. Thank you for your cooperation.

I do not know what kind of cooperation we agreed to give.

Anyway, today the contractor brought two ladies to paint the office. We (myself, Mr. Experience and Ms. Sulky) wondered how these two middle age ladies could move those filing cabinets in our office.

After lunch, Mr. Experience started moving the filing cabinets. I was worried that he might get hurt, so I went and help out. Those filing cabinets are still full, and we need to move them away from the wall for about 1 foot, so that the painting ladies could paint the walls. There were about 10 cabinets, it was pretty tough to move these cabinets on the carpeted office floor.

I guess despite the HR's lack of management competency, we were still cooperative enough to help out eventually -- for the sake of the painters.

Meanwhile, Mr. Decamouth, Cockroach and HR was chit-chatting away in Cockroach's room, seeing us moving the cabinets through the huge glass partition. Ms. AB and Ms. Azrael went to the training room to continue with their work. Ms. Sulky was too busy with the guests visit on 11 April.

After they finished painting that wall, we moved the cabinets back against the wall. I couldn't access to behind the cabinet like when we moved it out. So Mr. Experience and myself each has to handle one cabinet alone.

Decamouth, Azrael and AB was laughing in a circle and making fun of the paint smell and the hard work of being a painter. Ms. Sulky stopped me from moving the cabinets, and asked Mr. Decamouth to come over to help.

As Mr. Decamouth approached to the first filing cabinet nearest to him (it was an empty filing cabinet), he pushed it hesitantly and said, "Wow, how to move all these, it is so heavy!"

If Mr. Experience weren't in my way, I would have taken off my shoe and slapped him with the underside of my shoe. He simply moved things as he like, without aligning them properly. He also made a lot of comments when Mr. Experience asked for his hand. I needed to re-aligned those cabinets that he pushed, so that there would be enough space for us to access to the power point behind the cabinets.

Although their reactions are well expected -- this is not the first time Decamouth and Cockroach refused to help out with physical works. -- I still feel sick seeing their behaviour.