A Man Called Ma

Some saw him as evil. Some said he was sadistic. Some thought he was nothing but a bully. Most of the time he was so mean and cold, and my best friend absolutely hated him. However, there were some who told me he was a great friend. Many more acknowledged his brilliance in his work. As for me, until today, I still cannot make up my mind on how I feel about him.

A hard man to please, he set a high standard for his staff to follow and demanded ridiculous amount of effort to make sure everything goes to plan. One thing I can say, he was certainly full of character.

He was my boss at my previous job. The latest happenings in my current work place, coupled with a quick look at my life right now brings my memory back to him. I see my relationship with him as quite strange. On the surface, I didn’t like him too much and he didn’t seem to like me too much either. However, and I don’t know if I am just imagining it, I felt that he for some reason genuinely really wanted to mould and guide me in my work, in his own sadistic and mean way of course. I’m not saying the normal guidance a superior gives to his staff. I think it was more than that.

I don’t really have any incidents to share to show why I feel the way I feel. There were a few incidents of course, but I can only vaguely recall them. They will mean nothing if I try to tell it here.

But one of the few things that I do remember was that one of the highest compliments I got for my writing was from him. He very rarely complimented anyone personally and directly, and true to form (and ironically as well), I got that compliment from him when he berated me about my work, about a newsletter I wrote. He clearly wasn’t happy with it and while shaking his head with angry face, he said, “Hazri, when you are good, you are really good. But when you are bad, you are really bad. I have no time for work like this.” He then proceeded to strike off the newsletter I printed with his red pen, jotted down a few pointers and asked me to re-do it.

Forgive me when what he said there made me feel like I was floating. Forgive me because I only focus on ‘when you’re good…” part and completely ignoring the “when you’re bad…” part, because coming from him, that was as big a compliment as it gets.

Another incident I had with him, which I don’t think I will ever forget, was during my appraisal. At that time I was a real mess. Work pressure and the pressure from being in a relationship with a ridiculously demanding girlfriend really got to me. My work suffered, badly. And I guess he saw that. And what made it worst was my contract was almost finished. With my bad work performance, plus the restructuring of my department that was happening then, I expected my contract to not be renewed. Hell, I myself won’t even renew my contract! I was that bad!

So I filled my appraisal form as honest as I can and in the end I can only gave myself a ‘3C’, with the worst possible rating a ‘4D’. ‘3C’ was a big decrease from my previous agreed rating, a ‘2B’. At first I wanted to change it so it can at least hit ‘3B’ but because I just couldn’t care less at that time, I just let it be.

So when my turn came to face him for the appraisal, I did so emotionless, like a zombie. I sat in front of him, passed him my completed appraisal form and sat quietly while waiting for him to go through it. I fully expected an earful lecture from him about how my performance dipped terribly. About how I’m not meeting his lowest acceptable standard. But to my astonishment, he suddenly burst into a big laugh.

“3C huh? I couldn’t agree more!” he said.

Then, to my bigger astonishment, he put the form aside and asked me, “Hazri, kenapa you ni?”

He looked me straight into my eyes and told me to forget about the appraisal.

“Let’s talk about you,” he said. “Do you have anything to let me know?”

Still astonished, I kept seating in my seat quietly, motionless, meeting his eyes with a blank stare.

Seeing that I’m not saying anything, he said, “Ok then, let me do the talking. You listen to me and listen well!”

So off he went. He told me about getting my priorities right. About doing things at the rate that I can handle. Do not rush things. Think about what I want. Know what I want. Don’t bite more than I can chew.

I remember seating there, horrified, because I knew exactly what he was saying and where he was going. He was talking about my personal relationship. He was telling me that he can see how I was suffering, how my relationship with my girlfriend was killing me and everyone in the office can see it! I was so embarrassed, I felt so pathetic. I never thought anyone could tell that I was suffering.

He continued on talking until he told me about how he made his choice (he didn’t elaborate on what exactly the choice was), about making sacrifice and how his ex girlfriend was not happy about the choice he made. Then he stopped and let a loud sigh out. That part about his girlfriend was a slipped, that was clear. But whether the slipped was because he didn’t mean to let anyone know about his past experience with his girlfriend; or because he didn’t plan to use the word ‘girlfriend’, in fear I would think he crossed the line by intruding into my private life, I’m not sure. But what he said next, almost made my tears flowed out.

“Listen to me Hazri, take it from me who has been through all this before. Trust me, this is not that difficult. This is not that complicated. You might think that it is now, but later in life you will see it differently. All you have to do is make your choice now. Make a firm choice. Think this through. Decide what your priorities are. Delay things that you can delay for now. Forget about other people, think of yourself first.”

“Don’t worry about your contract. I’m offering you a new one. I want you to stay but you will have to improve from here. And go fill a new form. Make it a 3B…. Ok we are done here.”

With that, I quickly got up and walked out from his room. I didn’t want him to see me cry…

Fast forwarded a couple of months later, my girlfriend became my ex, my work suffered even more, I looked terrible all the time, and my boss disappointment in me hit an all time high.

And one night, staying back to finish a newsletter, I said fuck off to his face.

Long story short, it was approaching 10pm, I’ve done a newsletter but I had to wait for him to come back to office so he can approve it that night, because the newsletter needed to go out first thing the next morning.

And he was being his normal ass self, making me wait for so long that night just to wait for his approval. And when he came back to the office, he ridiculed my work (which was so clearly unjustified because I did well, but I’m not getting into it right now), and ask me to re-do it. That’s when I said, “Fuck off, I’m sorry but my brain is not working tonight.” Then I stormed out.

The next morning, I gave him my resignation letter.

He might think I resigned because of what happened the previous night, because we never talked about it. But the truth is, I’ve planned to resign on that day two weeks earlier. I have even sought advice on resigning from my HR friend earlier than that, and he told me to resign on that day. It got nothing to do with the ‘fuck off’ incident. But I bet until today my boss still thinks I resigned because of it.

So those were my experiences with him. Maybe I could’ve gone into more details, especially about the ‘fuck off’ and the resigning bit but writing this is really draining my energy out and I’m so tired right now. Maybe I’ll add more on those bits later. For now, I just hope in reading this, no one will jump to a conclusion on who was right who was wrong. That’s not my intention in writing this. I just want to share my experiences that I had with him because my current work situation is making my mind going back to all this.

I said earlier that I still couldn’t make my mind up on what I think of him, but that is not important. Whatever he was, there is no denying that a large chunk of what I know about my job today came from him. I met him when I was zero, he gave me a chance, I took it and I learned a lot. So for that, I thank you, Mr Ma. I hope I will be able to apply the lessons about work and life that I got from you better. I hope I will not let it go to waste.

Thank you for everything...