Enjoyed doing community related work with below average pay, a shitty SME boss, and ungrateful clients but accumulated good karma and now I do chill corporate work in an MNC with great pay and benefits.
I won’t say what industry I was previously working at but the work dealt with high net worth clients down till the man on the street kind of work.
This was my first job straight out of NUS not so long ago. I loved what I did, which involved helping these various clients to solve their issues, especially those really down on their luck.
My ex-boss (and kudos to him) likes to help that common man on the street (who also at times take advantage of our kindness and even make unreasonable demands) sometimes at the expense of his employees (we all know how shit SMEs in Singapore generally are lah, so no point sugarcoating it).
As a single guy then, I didn’t mind the below average pay (in comparison to my industry’s average) because I enjoyed what I did that still allowed me to indulge and I could buy a nice sports car (before the COE prices shoot through the roof).
Now that I have gotten older and looking forward towards marriage and etc, I suddenly got poached to join an MNC with all the blessings that came with it (e.g. annual salary is more than $100k) when I reached my early 30s. Nevertheless, I kinda miss my old job cause I still like helping the less fortunate (since I learn to count my blessings and share my blessings with others) but appreciate that it’s now no longer forced on me by my current employer compared to my ex-boss.
My point of sharing my tale on a lazy Sunday morning is three-fold:- (1) there’s always light at the end of the tunnel, karma was good to me (but not for my ex-boss ever since I left given what my ex-colleagues shared) – moral of the story is don’t treat your employees like trash; (2) enjoy every step along the way, the good and bad – you learn of your limits, etc; and (3) if it’s meant to be, then it’s meant to be, time will tell – this one, you will know when you see it cause it’s hindsight 20/20.
With all that, I want to wish everyone a great last few months of 2022!