HR

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, companies used to believed that "HR" stood for Human Relationships. They didn't see their employees as merely a resource that is quantifiable, and measurable, or dispensable, or "anyhow sell them a career proposition and make them work for as long as possible-able".

Then one day, some smart ass HR consultancy firm, in order to make their solutions and business scalable, decided to tell everyone that treating employees as merely as resources and impersonal- is the "in" thing in the market ("everyone's doing it!"). In order to build up their credibility, they named themselves after some quack guy from the USA, who was a friend of a friend who was a PHD, who allowed them to use the name for a price and some fame. And they made their reports rather expensive. And they treated their reports and information with a lot of secrecy and "hush hush" and discouraged further disclosure, even though the information was rather standard, and they just copy and pasted recommendations, and switch inputs to the "to-field" in their emails. And like how the tailor sold the emperor his new clothes, the companies bought it, one by one. In this way, companies started to treat their employees as a resource - Human Resource as opposed to natural or mechanical resource - except for one company.

They renamed their "Human Relationships department" to "HR department", and that was pretty much it. What people from HR did was to sit around with their employees, and replied to their queries, called them to chit chat, arranged gatherings, went drinking with them, entertained them, and went to visit them when they are in hospital, went to pay respects to their parents who just pass away, talked to them, and told them that the organisation valued them, listened to them bitch about their boss, in confidentiality, be their friend, told them that life is never ideal, take it easy, told them to leave the company if they were truly unhappy, remind them the advantages of staying, smsed them gong xi fa cai, and remember their children's birthday, and talked to their bosses if about how they were managed, bring them home when they're drunk from going out drinking together...

All the other companies who switched to Human Resources pointed their fingers at this Human Relationship company and laughed. Haha, they thought, human relationships can never be scalable! And they are so expensive to maintain! Human Resources are so cost efficient! We'll be rich and you can smell my fart!

But the Human Relationship's company never waivered. The management enjoyed having HR to talk to, in times of woe and appreciated their empathy. HR was often one of the reasons for their own retention. Despite not being scalable, everyone in the company was making good money. Being scalable was over-rated.

The companies which adopted the Human Resource approach never doubted their choice. Everyone in the company was making good money. If they had any problems, they talked to their families or friends, if they were unhappy, they either left or suck it and worked harder, nobody went to their parents' wake, and those who did had the look of obligation on their face, but it's okay, they didn't want to see them too, they only liked the "white-gold" (condolence money) they gave. Making friends at work was over-rated, one should keep work and personal relationships distinct.

The bosses of the consultancy firm laughed their way to the bank and back and spent all their money and went bankrupt and haha whatever who cares everyone just left and switched jobs.

...

1000 years later, all the companies collapsed due to the natural course of things. Everyone who ever cared about Human Resources or Human Relationship was dead and turned into dust. The question of which was a better model for your company was asked by nobody.

Grandmother (3)

As I was sitting on the toilet bowl, incubating shit, I recalled my grandma telling me that constipation strained her heart, and it occurred to me that, one day, I, too, might grow so weak that just shitting would excite my heart to beat harder, and perhaps so much harder, that it would be too much harder and kill me.

Edward

Edward had been working overtime for the sixteenth day straight (over weekends), and he lacked sleep and energy to do anymore "brain work" tonight. He thought to go home, but it was still one hour away, according to the company policy, before he qualifies for the overtime transport allowance, so he thought he might as well wait and then he would go home on a taxi cab. In the meantime, he decided to do some filing and went to shred away his unwanted documents. It's a good time since there was nobody around to annoy with the noise.

Ah, it's quite therapeutic... to just destroy copies of the paper and data reports that he spent nights and weekends preparing for nobody to read... (Kudos to the management for simply asking for a verbal summary at the meeting and made the decision from there...)

Edward zoned out and at how the shredding machine eat up the papers fed to it. Whatever life dealt the shredding machine with, it just shred. Except for staplets. Please remember to remove them. Other than that, perhaps he had a lot to learn from the shredding machine... just suck it up, Edward, just suck it up. But what would be the "staplets" in the analogy here? Edward wondered and watched the shredding... Suddenly, Edward noticed something written in a blue pen that was not his handwriting. Oh no! It was a signatory of his boss's boss's boss! For the approval of some decision that was relevant to some other decision that he was referring to in his report!

Without second thoughts, Edward fought with the shredder to pull out the paper halfway and lost... his fingers!

His immediate response on seeing the bloody stump that used to be his hands was "fuck, now how am I going to use the computer?"

Xiao Bai and the man

There was once a man who had a friend in his pick up truck which was white in colour and was named "Xiao Bai" meaning little white. The man worked as a fishmonger and drove Xiao Bai everyday from home to the fish market and here and there to collect and deliver goods. The fishmonger worked hard and had an optimistic outlook in life. His dream was to earn and save up enough money to travel by road to the Sea of Japan which he had a picture book he read about when he was little. The picture book was second hand and when it had words, they were in Japanese, which he did not understand, but he learnt much about the fish of the Sea of Japan which was what the book was mostly about. He liked the book a lot not because of any particular reason except for that particular affinity that one sometimes develop for things for no particular reason.

When, the day came when he finally had enough money, the man ran around making exciting arrangements about the route and finding somebody to take over his business during his on year of absence. The preparations geared Xiao Bai up for the excitement of the adventure that it had heard about since the first day the man bought and drove it around.

At the end of the first Lunar month, the man and Xiao Bai took off. They wanted to travel during this period so that they would not experience winter in the middle of their road trip. They drove across different countries, and they saw landscapes that they've never seen before, experienced wilderness they've never had before, and felt loneliness like they had never felt before. When they reached the sea of Japan, they travelled along the coast for a month. They saw the different fish, some kinds of which they imported and sold, and had a good time watching the sun rise many times, and counting the number of fishing boats they could find. Looking at the fish at the fish market, they wondered what kind of life the fish must have lived, and how much more of the Sea of Japan it must know than what the man or Xiao Bai ever will.

When the time was up and the amount of money left was down, they turned around and headed back. On the way home, winter was harsh and it was difficult to drive around on the slippery roads and in the cold. The man couldn't spend the nights in Xiao Bai as he usually did, because he would die of the cold if he did, so he didn't. Xiao Bai was alone in the carparks and the man, in his rented room. The nights were dreadful and sleepless for them who were conscious of how the trip was nearing its end.

Finally, the day came when they reached home. After a heated rush of administering the everyday life to set mundane routines into motion again and mastering them. In between, they reminisced about the road trip.

The man concluded that his favourite part of the trip was seeing the Sea of Japan and seeing the fishing boats unloading the fish he recognised from the picture book he had when he was young. He especially liked to see dark clouds and rain fall out at the sea from the distance. In the distance, the rain looked like a gentle grey shadow of nothing which he enjoyed watching and imagining how it might be like to be out at sea.

Xiao Bai's favourite part of the trip was when they traveled in the mountaineous region, Xiao Bai was not as old as the mountains, but he was made of the mountains because steel and other raw materials that Xiao Bai was made of came from the earth. When they drove up and down mountains, Xiao Bai would like to observe the rain and how close they were to the clouds above and how rain fell at such altitude.

After some time, the fishmonging business was back to usual but the man was less enthusiastic and Xiao Bai aged significantly, and they wondered when should Xiao Bai retire and the man thought about getting married and starting a family and settling down.

One day, while on the way home from fishmonging, it started to rain very heavily. Xiao Bai was tired and it broke down as it thought about how life was more than selling fish knowing that it would always continue to age and would never get any younger tomorrow than today. While comforting Xiao Bai, the man felt alone sitting in the truck by himself in the middle of the way in the middle of pouring rain.