On Smiles and Greetings.
I realized one thing today. Back in Sydney, people are generally very generous with smiles and greetings.
"Hello"
"Hi"
"How's your day been?"
or sometimes just a simple smile.
Be it the taxi driver or your boss or the tea lady or the toilet cleaner or your lecturer. You call them by their names. You don't have 'sir' or 'boss' or 'Mr.' or 'Miss' or even 'Prof'. You treat them equally. You can sit with them and talk like friends and still keep the respect.
I've been working here in Malaysia for almost 7 months now, and I realized that here, there's always that hierarchy of treatment. You call your supervisors or anyone higher than you 'Boss' and you obey to his every rule and contributing ideas/criticism is not highly encouraged. Eating with your boss during lunch is a very big deal. When passing by superiors not from your department, you pretend like you don't recognize him/her and just walk pass by. Why the complexity? 'Eh boss boss!' Why can't we just greet everyone equally and be more pleasant?
Malaysians are good with the elderly. We have the highest respect to the elderly. In my office, we treat tea ladies will respect because they're old. I like that about us. But i think this whole complexity when socializing with those more in power should stop. Hmm..maybe, the bosses put that impression towards their staffs, that they prefer to be treated special, which is why we bow to that.
"Hello"
"Hi"
"How's your day been?"
or sometimes just a simple smile.
Be it the taxi driver or your boss or the tea lady or the toilet cleaner or your lecturer. You call them by their names. You don't have 'sir' or 'boss' or 'Mr.' or 'Miss' or even 'Prof'. You treat them equally. You can sit with them and talk like friends and still keep the respect.
I've been working here in Malaysia for almost 7 months now, and I realized that here, there's always that hierarchy of treatment. You call your supervisors or anyone higher than you 'Boss' and you obey to his every rule and contributing ideas/criticism is not highly encouraged. Eating with your boss during lunch is a very big deal. When passing by superiors not from your department, you pretend like you don't recognize him/her and just walk pass by. Why the complexity? 'Eh boss boss!' Why can't we just greet everyone equally and be more pleasant?
Malaysians are good with the elderly. We have the highest respect to the elderly. In my office, we treat tea ladies will respect because they're old. I like that about us. But i think this whole complexity when socializing with those more in power should stop. Hmm..maybe, the bosses put that impression towards their staffs, that they prefer to be treated special, which is why we bow to that.
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