Complains

I think one of the biggest and most prominent brand in the whole country is my company's logo, I'm not kidding or just inflating my company's ego. I'm speaking from my own experience.

Everytime we take the company's vehicle with the logos on the side, heads turn. When I'm sitting in the van and we drive by in a small town, I can see heads turn. The first thought in everyone's mind on seeing the van is, 'what are they doing here?'. When we stop at a traffic light, the motorcyle rider next to us always want to peak in and see who's in the van. Which celebrity they can catch sight of.

Usually when I'm in the van, I wave at people who are looking at us just to see if they wave back. Most of them do. From the average aunties and uncles; the school kids to the police. Everyone waves back. That's a good sign.

People also just love complaining to us about their problems. I'm not in the news department anymore and people don't understand that things aren't as straight forward as it seems... but the moment they see me wearing my company's vest, they pull me aside to complaint about something. I've turned into an unnoffical elected representative.

Just the other day, we were at someone's house to do an interview. I stepped outside for awhile to catch some fresh air while the interview was still going on inside the house. The neighbour next door came out and asked me in Mandarin what we were doing. Since my mandarin wasn't so good I just mumbled we were doing an interview. She started complaining about the neighbour. I just nodded and walked of after awhile. I was really sleepy and my head was spinning. I wasn't in the mood to listen to someone complain. All the things she kept saying just didn't compute, plus she was speaking in a language I had difficulty understanding.

Normally, I would help people but sometimes you just get caught off guard and you're not in the right frame of mind to do anything. Don't call me in the morning before lunch if you need anything from me, I'm a slow starter. I hate talking to people in the morning. I just want to be left alone. Afternoons are better when I'm a bit more talkative. People who call me in the morning would most probably get no help out of me.

I prefer request for help in email forms too instead of direct calls on my cellphone. At least in emails, I'm already in the right frame of mind to read something. When someone calls me on my cellphone, I'm most probably in the middle of doing something and find the distraction disturbing. With e-mails, I can mull over how to help the person and type out a proper response.

The one thing that really cheeses me of is when someone calls me on my cellphone when I'm driving. I don't normally attach my handsfree kit so I don't answer the phone. If I do, I have to pull over and it's not so easy if you're on a busy highway.