Today afternoon, as I entered my toilet for my urge to release certain tension build up in my abdomen area, armed with a very good book which I acquired recently, ‘A Doctor in the House: The Memoirs of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’, (ISBN: 9789675997228), I was dawned by a series of rapid release of a mixture of liquid, solids and gaseous secretions which is the direct source of my abdomen discomfort.
Upon flushing, there is one extreme stubborn solid, that just wont go down.. commonly known as ‘Floating Log’ shit.. which just wont go down after 2 flushes.. which started me thinking.. in our daily lives, at work, we encounter all types of ‘SHIT’ and to each type, there is always a way to solve the problem.
Similar to our daily job, the types of shit we encounter, similar to our poop in the toilet bowl, some goes down quietly without argument, some will swirl and move down along with the flushing water.. some will go down after a fight, leaving traces of their struggle along the toilet bowl, and some just wont go down.. after flushing, it will just float right out.
Now, you may think, what difference does it all make? and how will it relate to our workplace? Simple. Everyday at work, we receive jobs or tasks to perform. It may be analytical, physical, last minute or a mixture of all that. For last minute jobs, we tend to be more messy in our handling due to haste and the rush to resolve it. Some tasks, may seem simple but takes a lot of time to complete.
When we go to work everyday in the mornings, and receive tasks for the day, or backlog from the previous day, we tend to solve it in a way we feel is the most confortable. Such as ‘flushing the toilet bowl’. But similar to our toilet experience, this is quite alright for most of the tasks we receive. But what about the more troublesome ones?
Lets start with the types that leaves trail marks on your toilet bowl. It is similar to you completing a task, only to receive lots of comment from superiors or colleagues, we tend to just redo the tasks without fully understanding what is required and what is lacking. The superior or colleague may not fully tell you what you need to know to complete the tasks completely, or YOU yourself might not LISTEN fully to what your superior/colleague has to say, and perform you task. (such as re-flushing the toilet bowl). What will this accomplish? nothing.. just a waste of water resource and the trail is still there, albeit a bit less.. but it is still there. lets treat the water as time.. precious time has been wasted..
What we should have done, perhaps is to understand what happened, what went wrong and why your work is not accepted. Only then, you work on a solution to solve the problem. In the toilet bowl’s incident, you may need to use a strong water gun (conveniently available in most Malaysian toilets) or a toilet bowl scrub (or whatever it is called) to remove the trail before flushing. This will ultimately clear all traces of the tasks on the toilet bowl leaving it clean and hygienic, and to the satisfaction of your superiors/colleagues.
What if you encountered the stubborn floating log shit? that just wont go down no matter how many times flush? You can continue to keep repeating your job without analysis, and have your superior reject your work everytime, OR you can analysis the situation, listen carefully to what your superior wants from you and SOLVE IT.
So how DO I remove a floating shit? There is 3 popular ways to do that.. Either you can remove it via flushing MANY MANY times, the most resource wasting method, or the ‘not-so considerate’ manner of letting it mellow for a couple of hours before flushing again.
The 3rd way, may be the messy way, but fastest and most efficient way of solving the problem. To use the Watergun or the ‘toilet bowl brush’ to whack the floating shit into smaller portions.. before flushing it down.
Similar to many difficult problems, the method of using the watergun or toilet bowl brush, will be the same as calling for meetings, meet all concerned parties and brainstorm on the problem and how each of us could play a role of solving the problem. Of course, this being your ‘shit’ you have to chair the discussion/meeting. This will be similar to the task of breaking up the shit into many pieces..
Then, when everyone agrees to a certain deadline, you flush the toilet at the deadline, that is calling for a discussion/meeting to follow up. This is similar to the flush after you break up the stubborn shit. BUT, this ‘flush’ will not be clean yet.. because there will still be people or parties that have not completed their tasks yet.. thus the toilet bowl will still have some small pieces of ‘debris’ floating around.. after which, upon the conclusion of the meeting, you flush the toilet again.. and this time.. the toilet bowl will be clean.
And of course, for all types of shit, there is always the most irresponsible method, to leave it and let someone else solve your shit..
This is how I see my daily work, and how I come to solve my problems. I hope it will bring good use to all my readers.
Thank you.
some part is true but i wouldnt use the shit to describe my daily life..mean ur life is shit
ReplyDeleteno.. it is the tasks that we, i describe as shit..
ReplyDeleteit is a figure of speech..