Does the man make the job or does the job makes the man?

I attended a course about human behavior about how should we fit someone into a job that suits their character. It’s very interesting. It said that people who has high social skill is best to be placed as a marketing, sales or any other job that needs a lot of b*ll sh*tting skills to be précised (like human resources for example? Ouch!). On the other hand, for those who has thinker type is best to be placed as analyst where they could sit quietly for an hours scrolling down number and do nothing but thinking.

This triggered my first question, does the man make the job or does the job make the man?

I’ll boldly put my self as an example. During my first days in the college, I have known from the start that I am not going to have a career in Finance. Impatient for one thing. And have terrible numeric skills in the IQ test was another reason. Accounting is just not my self. I have a cold shiver running down my spine just to think that I have to spend the rest of my life and earn my living by being an Accountant. Sorry my fellow Accountant, I just think that life as an Accountant is so d*mn boring!

A good friend of mine trying to cheer me up by saying that’s how things are in the college. They are very good in making it so dull so we’d be excited when we actually work as an Accountant. I couldn’t tell whether this has cheered me up or depressed me even more. Anyhow, during my last school year, I took a job as an Accountant in a foreign Embassy just for the sake of getting experience. All I can say that it confirmed my inner feeling and it motivates me to graduate sooner no matter how bad my grade is. Not to anybody surprise, I lasted only a year and a half as an Accountant. Once I graduated, I took a hike and never look back. Yikes! It’s just not so me. Sitting there and be miserable whilst the sun shines so beautifully over the green grass outside. Gosh. People do make fatal mistake, you know…

Anyhow, back to my first question, I noticed that you need to have special character to survive in a job. And what I mean by survive is genuinely like the job. Ever wonder why Accountant is such a bean counter? Most of the Accountants I met are very detail person at heart. I knew one Accountant who actually numbered her eggs in the fridge. She said that she did that only to keep track on how many eggs she or her maid eat everyday. Can you imagine anything more exciting than that? Anyway, that’s what they do. That’s the requirement of their job and they love it! But honestly (for the sake of my own safety), I admired their persistency and thoroughness. I really can’t imagine of living my life by counting other people’s money and actually enjoy it. Enough about Accountant!

And what about Engineers? Aren’t they a bunch of arrogant people who likes the most expensive thing in the world in the name of quality? Well, perhaps, that’s the requirement of their job too. Their job (reputation and credibility) relies on preciseness, job result and quality. And honestly, quality comes with price. It is one of the reasons why I am being laid back with my fellow pushy engineers.

But what about people who changes their character because of their new job? Politician for example. At first, weren’t they a bunch of people who tried to voice the people concern and therefore they are trusted to sit in the parliament? And what happened after they are there? I would say most of them has become those that they complained before. Sad but true. But perhaps ‘flexible to adapt’ was one of the basic requirement of a politician.

Another anomaly is also a change from a staff to a management. I had a long discussion with my boss once on how Corporate ‘buy’ people. Once you are in management position, your perspective changes. And your change of perspective affects your behavior. I’ve met people who were very nice and warm when they are staff and suddenly they are cold and keeping distance when they are part of the management. Or those who fought on behalf of the employee suddenly become very Corporate oriented. Up to this point, I asked my boss bluntly, “Are you going to change if you are part of the Management?” meaning: will you do whatever it takes to secure your position in the Company even though that would mean that you are going to “lie” to the Employees and the Government. It took him a while to answer, “No.” Well, in that case maybe, it needs a very strong personality to be on top and not change.

I believe people have their own unique character and their unique character will either support them in their job or will make them miserable. The only way to know this is you have to be honest with your self. What kind of person are you. If you are such a cheeky socializer, never think to become an Accountant. If you think that you are shy and deep thinker, never try to become a Sales Person. I am not going to say that if you are honest you should not be a Politician. U-uh, that would be too judgmental, but you are free to draw your own conclusion.

If you picked a job that does not suit your character, you still could survive of course, but you may not be happy with your job. And if you are not happy with your job, you won’t be able to give what is best within your talent.

If I was still an Accountant, I know I would not be happy. I’d be one of the Accountants who keep on making mistake and taking lunch time more than I should. I’d be one of the grumpy employee who constantly moaning about the Company. Thank God that I have came to my senses earlier and found something more suitable for my noisy nosey self. Ah!

Forest Gump believes that life is like a box of chocolate. You’ll never know what you’ll get.

For me, life is like a set of icon. We have ‘New Blank Document’ icon for a start of your new life (my romantic idea of starting something is new place where nobody knows about your past. Moving to a new company or to a new house for example), we have ‘Print Preview’ icon to re-think and evaluate something that we are going to say or present to somebody else, we have “Copy” icon to re-do things that we thought we’ve done successfully in the past but from all of these icons there are one icon that we don’t have. The “Undo” icon.

A dear colleague of mine once said, “I wish I had an “Undo” icon. I’ve said things I should not say and I did things I should not do. I wish I could have an “Undo” icon so I could start thing all over again.” My reply was what about “Erase” or “Overwrite” icon, meaning say sorry to person that you hurt so we could start all over again. But he said that is not the same thing. It happened. Although the other party forgave you, you have left a mark or even scar. Some are deep and can’t easily be amended. Forgive but not forget.

And there are some “mistakes” that you can not amend. Like a divorce for example. How can you explain to your child that separating your life from their father or mother is something that you need to do to amend your life. Wouldn’t it be just simplerer (is there such word?) to “Undo” your life, never marry this person thus never have to see your child going through the painful process of divorce?

Or…get caught when you are cheating on your partner for another example. If you are the betrayer, will you wish that you would remember to erase the text message from your lover so your spouse did not have a chance to read it. Or will you wish that you didn’t to go to that place and meet your spouse’s friends there? And if you are the betrayed one, will you wish that your friends will have no second doubt and tell you the truth or will you wish otherwise? Will you wish that you know earlier or will you wish that you won’t know at all? Will an “Undo” icon help you?

Or…letting someone do something and resulted in fatality. Won’t you wish that you’ll have this magic “Undo” icon so your loved one will never get hurt?

In these cases, maybe no. You don’t need “Undo” icon to avoid painful experience. Because life it self is a set of mistakes and I strongly believe that things happened for a reason. Undo-ing something would prevent something else to happen. Too matrix to understand, uh?

In regards to something more solid but lighter, shopping for example. I sincerely wish that I have this “Undo” icon. One day I got so upset to find the exact same blouse I bought in a department store near to my office with 40% price cheaper. I was fuming! Same brands, same fabrics, same color…argh! I swear that I will never buy anything in that over priced department store ever again! Whenever we went there I always indoctrinating my girlfriends not to buy anything. Even in the sale season, their price is still higher.

However, a minute after repeating the same line over and over and my girlfriends suddenly found excuses to separate them selves from me (not out of bored, I hope!), suddenly three pairs of cute pajamas came out of nowhere. Oooohh…those tiny pajamas with friendly looking little elephants, giraffes and ducks look extremely inviting and the price is discounted!! I could imagine my chubby little boy in them looking as delicious as Baskin & Robbins’s Rocky Road! I was just trying to pick the “rightest” color (is it the yellow or the blue sky colors?) suddenly my girlfriends appeared from thin air. If I had known them better I would have thought that they are witches apparating in front of me with the wickest grin. “I thought that you will never buy anything ever again from this department store” they teased me cruelly. Ah, never say never. I wish I could Undo my mantra to them and change it to something like, “Never buy anything here, unless it’s force majeur” like this time. Easy!

Or after stubbornly being adventurous and unfortunately the food I ordered is really…blah! And suddenly my husband’s food look so much delicious. Hunger maybe one of the reason. But I sincerely wish at those times that I have this “Undo” button so my dear husband won’t have to always swap his food with mine. I know, selfish! So stop it!

In general, I found that if you have optimized your “Print Preview” icon, you won’t need an “Undo” icon. And there were many icons you can use before “Print Preview”, there are “Spell Check”, “Thesaurus”, “Hyphenation”…these three at least will help you to avoid in making mistakes. And if after using these three tools you still can not determine whether this word is right (this morning I spent 5 minutes trying to find the correct spell of beaurocrazy – as you can see, still can’t!), drop it! The word may not be existed in other language. Or it may not right after all. Lets use other which is more simplerer (oops…still got this red line under this word!)

I would not recommend the usage of automatic correction though. One of my ex-colleague told me a story when one of his friend activated the automatic spell check and resulted that our company names (He**) changed into ‘Hell’. Yikes!

So now I am trying to develop a habit in using these three very useful icon, plus another ten minutes to read through it again before I hit the icon “Print”. Or if it is a heavy thing, I spent 30 minutes to re-read it. And if I can’t find the correct word, drop it. And don’t loose sleep over it. There are still many words you can use to convey your message. By doing that I minimized my needs to use the “Undo” icon and saving my own time.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.”

–From Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

I “kind of” disagreed with the above famous quote of Shakespeare. Can you imagine if rose is not named rose? Let say it is named ‘blah’, do you think people will still give this blah flowers for their loved one for Valentine’s Day? If you were the recipient, would you say, “Thanks dear, I love blah so much.” Nah…the scene is too peculiar even to imagine. So Thanks God the name is rose. It really suits it smell, colours and symbol. Not that I love rose, in fact I kind of dislike the smell. Once I cleaned up a bed that got full of roses petal simply to get rid of those damn and thorny flowers but that’s another story. My point is, of course a name mean something. I believe a name is also the best give a parent could give you. It contained their hope and pray and I believe, no parent will give a bad name to their child. But bad it self is a very subjective word.

Like my name for example. Growing in a non-english speaking environment had brought me lots of challenges in introducing my self. Misspelled, mispronounced, mistreated, I experienced them all until I work in a multi national environment. There I can breath more freely for most of the people able to spell, pronounce and appreciate its meaning. Shine. I really like my name. And I think I am living it. (Thanks Mom, thanks Dad, for giving me such a beautiful name. I love it!) And for the same romantic reason, even before I got married, I have decided that I am not going to change my last name. Complicated formalities changes was one of the minor reason but my main reason was I sincerely feel that I have became what I am is because of my parents. My husband, as great and fun loving creature as he is, is still an “end-user”. By keeping my Dad’s name behind mine, I feel that I appreciate the “engineer”. The person who made it happened.

On another story, a dear friend of mine told me a story that an old friend of her back in college was named ‘Marvellous Jelly’ by his parents. When I first heard it, my jaw is dropped and it remained where it was for a full one minute. What did his parent think when they gave him that name? I can think of one thing, at least…and it is not a nice one!

Well, maybe the above example was an extreme one. Another solid example is, I noticed that after the 911 tragedy, the visa process to the Western countries (US in particular) for man with Moslem named is more difficult. It took longer and sometimes even months to get it approved. If you can imagine that ‘Mohammed’ is a common name in Indonesia (as one of the biggest Moslem country – bear in mind, not Islam country) many businessmen can not travel there in time or should try to obtain their visa many months before. Maybe I am wrong, but is it a coincidence that to process visa to US for those with non-moslem’s name (or for married women) was easier?

Still in Indonesia, Indonesian - Chinese descendants are also having challenges in processing their formalities. To obtain passport they also must surrender a letter to prove that they are a citizen of Indonesia. Regardless the fact that they were born here, their parents were born here, their grandparents were born here and so did their great great grand parents and all their assets were here, the Government still ask them to surrender this letter. One of the irony was when a couple Indonesian badminton hero who is assigned to carry an Olympic torch is having difficulties in processing their Indonesian passports.

This kind of difficulties towards Indonesian – Chinese descendants has resulted in them changing their name. For example, those who came from family named ‘Tan’ is changing their family name into ‘Tanuwijaya’. Those who came from family named ‘Soe’ is changing their family name into ‘Soebrata’ or ‘Soemawijaya’. A colleague of mine rejected fierce fully when the Immigration Officer would like to issue passport under his Chinese name. He felt that it will be a threat for him. Although I feel saddened by this fact, I also could understand the reason behind is. Being an Indonesian – Chinese descendants, they are stereotyped as rich and minority people. And when you are rich and minority in a corrupt and developing country, it could lead to only one thing. Being ‘milked’.

Having seen all this, I decided that name is very important. Because your name showed you who you are, where you came from and at some points, your believe. Or at least, your parent’s believe. And all of this can either benefit you or failed you. It really depend on the situation and situation, is sometimes affected by decision made by some stupid and ignorant people.

I personally don’t ‘judge’ people based on their name, or their colour of skin, or their nationality. That’s why I said in the beginning that I “kind of” disagreed. Not completely disagreed. I just thought that when Shakespeare said the above quote, the world must be so much simplerer then. Well, maybe not. Otherwise Romeo & Juliet would not have to die just because one is Capulet and the other was Montague. And that’s why a name should have not be the base of how we judge people. Unfortunately, the world does not run that way.