My employees are holding a strike, yay!

Today almost 80% of my employees are holding a strike. The cause was pretty simple, one old employee who had a pretty bad track record was.. verbally disciplined. For whatever reason, he couldn't accept that reprimand so he told his work friends. Now, some of those friends were talented provocators (really. they were pretty good..) . I had awared of them since years ago but they behave well enough so... They coordinate a strike bringing almost 80% of them.

The detail is rather sketchy since I wasn't present when the incidence happen. I'll update later. But one thing for sure, I now have a reasonable basis to fire those provocators. Yay! But now I must deal with some future consequences... *sigh*

How guilty is he?

Consider a ..hypothetical case.

Due to a certain fuck up, a large national corporation used to pay P's electricity bill. Being a good honest individual he reported their mistake to their office, and offered them a payment equal to the amount they paid. They said they would contact him again.

The following month they paid his electricity bill again. He reported this incident again to them, while checking whether the person he talked to have the authority to act on the corporation behalf. This time, they did send someone to him. He paid them although he only received their proof of payment as receipt, which wasn't enough evidence that the money would be properly received by the corporation.

..as you can guess, they paid his bill again on the following month. He called them again. They say they would get to him again. He waited and waited for months but no one ever come anymore. Meanwhile, he was getting so busy he totally forgot. When he finally remembered again, he didn't bother to contact that corporation anymore.

Interestingly, he later noticed that whenever he paid the bill earlier, they won't double pay for that month. That means they had a mechanism to check that a bill they were suppose to pay, was paid. That should raise a red flag on their system. He guess someone probably took advantage of that..

How guilty do you think is he?

An anecdote of an assholeness of ex-(civil/army/police) officer

I hate this one specific ex-officer.

Based on what I gathered, ever since he lived in this one exclusive residential estate, permits involving every construction project in that area become his business. The procedure to get a permit is very bureaucratic, EVEN WHEN WE GIVE MONEY to his staffs. You really don't want to know how worse it is when we hadn't give any money yet.

Even after we get the permit, we must still endure a painstakingly long procedure to have the gate keeper allow any delivery even if it's delivered using a fucking small 4-wheels truck. Such delay may cause problem in a project profit since no material means no work can be done.

And this whole permit business is not even acknowledged by government. Basically, he unofficially control this area and pulling out rules from his asshole and apply them as he sees fit.

Vendors compliance with specification

In my somewhat limited experience, vendors of materials in Indonesia, particularly in construction industry, is rather bad in complying with promised specification.

There is one high profile company whose product did not satisfy advertised specification. What they did is quite scandalous given it's position as a market leader and it's name affiliation to a highly reputable multi-national company with highly significant presence in it's field..

People whose work specialize in that field can easily identify the specification change. On the other hand, although the change is visible with naked eye, it's quite subtle. I don't think I will ever realize the change if noone point it to me.

Sadly, not many field worker point it to their supervisor. Maybe they they thought they don' want to complicate their daily work because of this "whistle blowing".

There is another company, whose brand is very strong on the Indonesia's public eye (depending on province), who changed it's product specification recently to the one with far less production cost (as of today..). But this company is more upfront. They actually state their new specification in the packaging. They also tell their distributor and large customer about the change.

Sadly, they don't tell the retail market about the change. Although not telling the retail market is arguably a good decision in marketing perspective, what they do might make many new buildings become unsafe...

Anyway, the market of material that has no specification in Indonesia, is bad.
Given equal price, the materials are getting worse these days. They are so bad that you might end up with better materials if you take used materials of an old building.

Many contractors know this for a fact, but they rarely try to reuse used materials. There are many reasons.
1. The using of used materials are not specified in a construction projects even though used materials might be superior than new materials of the same type (for example un-ovened wood).
2. Incorporating used materials in project specification is going to make the contractors looks bad..
2. With the relatively high price of second hand materials, it's more profitable to actually sell the old materials. But the administration of gathering and selling used materials are difficult to do accurately thus prone to corruption. Therefore, attempt to sell used material might negatively impact workers morality.

btw, there is a reasonably sized market of second hand materials in Jakarta, Indonesia. The group who benefit the most from this market are poor people who want to build housing.

NB: The poor people will be hit the most with the specification change of the 2nd company mentioned above. It's because they usually build with as less materials as possible and they don't know that current specification requires more materials.

I had mentioned this specification change to a major customer of mine and suggesting other product with less prominent brand name, but they disregard it. Maybe they don't want complication.. Anyway, a few days ago they asked about the detail of the product change (which means that they never forget what I said before), it seems that they begin to have some.. problems..

*sigh*
Mark my word, this can later become a PR nightmare for this company..

Too bad I'm not perfectly anonymous, not to mention the relationship I had..