The All-Purpose Cultural Excuse
Over the years, I’ve seen how culture has been used as the carte-blanch of excuses by locals to cover-up inadequacies in work ethics. It’s used perennially as the grand shield or facade for absenteeism. Its use has had employers from both sectors pondering its legitimacy.
It is used abusively to check-out a relative at the hospital as though mere presence can heal illness. But more often than not, if you check out the whereabouts of your employee who hurls this excuse at you, he or she never actually visited the hospital.
Understandably, it is magnanimous to grant leave from work when immediate family members are seriously ill requiring hospitalization or an immediate family member is called to his or her eternal rest. What I haven’t been able to fathom are the absences for your mother’s cousin’s hospitalization, your distant cousin’s anniversary, death of a distant relative you hardly know, among other mañana excuses.
It should be understood that a good work ethic is especially critical in the private sector. If the seriously ill or dead person isn’t an immediate relative, then by all means, time management is of the essence for any and all employees. You may not exercise your cultural excuse during working hours, but you definitely can visit or attend nightly rosaries or visitations after working hours.
Interestingly, I’ve heard tons of assertions about, well, “locals first” or preference. Fine! But let’s see if we can meet the employers’ needs in our weak-kneed cry for “locals first”. This assertion is long on rhetoric, but awfully short when we’re tasked to put teeth into concerns for locals first. It’s so embarrassing to say one thing and do the exact opposite. Komprende?
I’ll go to bat for locals if and, only if, we stick to commitment to revamp our adolescent work ethics and deal with it with a sense of maturity. Otherwise, we’d be joining the Cultural Excuse Choir singing: “We’ve found the enemy, and the enemy is us!”
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How sad that through the years we’ve done a royal job perpetuating and strengthening what’s known as the “political patronage” system. In other words, we’ve added more than our share of workers on the public payroll if only to massage political gratuity into another set of rights.
A person is hired to do a certain job. Next, another one is hired to do part of the first person’s job. Then, another five people are hired to divide the work into meaningless roles with the goal of keeping political stalwarts “happy”. This approach to “meaningful employment” is far removed from its meaning and intent. But then we’re our own worst enemies, yeah?
Injustices abound in that under this case scenario, local employees aren’t necessarily given the opportunity to learn or hone their skills other than to turn a productive working session into one grand coffee break, every new day!
The employee learns that one can make fast bucks without earning them. He or she doesn’t get any real training on the job. His or her fate is dependent upon who the next governor, representatives, senators or mayors may be. In the process, taxpayers–especially productive taxpayers–are bilked of their hard-earned income. How long must we perpetuate non-productivity that sink the fate of employees into the abyss of greater injustice? Troubling, isn’t it? Think about it.
Strictly a personal view. John S. DelRosario Jr. is publisher of Saipan Tribune.
