Many times, I know, we have realized that the orientation of a common college student here in the Philippines is studying to be an employee. Not to be the boss, nor the owner, but to be the employee. Although our teachers try not to get us comfortable with the idea of being a rank & file employee, nonetheless, they are unknowingly training every student here in our archipelago to be one of the majority - the employee who is now worrying and praying for their job not to disappear into the history of today’s financial crisis.
Big companies have closed down, some are in the process of filing for bankruptcy. Others are giving off whiffs of the scent of a future factory close down. Tragic, isn’t it? It’s the way you were trained, the way you were introduced into the business world. And now, it’s bringing our very own destruction and depression.
Since majority, if not all, are trained to function as an employee, we tend to try and find ways to squander things or amounts from our companies as much as possible. It can be a piece of pen, a ream of paper, a stapler, twenty bucks just because you overspent for lunch, five thousand for giving a supplier a favor, or a million from several fraudulent transactions.
How come nobody ever thought of reversing their lesson plans to reunite the common Filipino mind with the notion of being the business owner instead of the business owner’s personnel? How come they don’t teach us to be our own boss instead of us begging our bosses to keep us on the line? How come they never made us understand that we needed common skills, common sense and an honest conscience to survive just in case those who already had these decided to close their businesses?
Just makes me wonder how many of the Filipinos today are having the same worry or fear that there might come a certain day when they’d discover they have just lost their job - the inflow of financial help that puts bread on the table and sends their kids to the same school that taught them how to be an employee. How come our schools and our teachers don’t encourage us three times more to be our own boss and to survive at times when we can no longer be supported by those who had had the guts to start their own business? How come we now find ourselves just praying and waiting, helpless to do anything else?
Very few understand the workings of pre-need plans and insurance. Others think they know - but the truth is, they only know what sales people want them to hear and understand. Fewer understand the workings of a bank and how they acquire their funds to operate. Not a lot of people understand how to own and run an eatery, a store, or a simple buy-and-sell business. Not a lot of people know that the bulk of the hard work does not show through the products displayed in the store window. How come very few have had the opportunity to be taught the workings of the financial world? And now we watch with utter amazement why companies are closing and some are not, some prices rise while others don’t, why others worry too much about those and why others don’t worry at all.
Let’s teach our children, our neighbor’s children, our cousins, strangers who are willing to listen, everybody, to think straight. To think like an exceptional analyst - not losing the very uncommon common sense, to look into how to overcome the urge of being just an employee, to be more than what we were taught back in the university. And for those of us who are already on the path of the unthinkable - being and staying as an employee - let us remember to treat the company as our own. Whether at times of crises or at times of financial bliss, let us not take advantage of the company’s resources, because, quite simply, if they lose money, we will too.
Cathy Laine is a CPA and heads the internal audit department of a local business. She spends her free time writing, if not reading others’ work. She blogs at www.crazytittletattle.blogspot.com.
