guns on MRT & service culture in singapore

hmmm....after sending my mum to the airport for her holiday to China, i proceeded to take the MRT to get to NTU. along the way, at Tanah Merah, i noticed this group of MRT police boarding the train. it really goes some way to say i was not one bit shock at their presence nor did i feel scared. i just looked at them in their dark blue uniforms with their revolver, baton, handcuffs & what-have-you-not hanging from their waist. i appreciate what is being done to make singapore safer. i should know. i was once involved in air base security and had my fair share of run-ins. only thing i feel is that, the danger level is high in such security related jobs yet, like our service sector counterparts, we are undervalued and underpaid. as the saying goes, "you pay peanuts, you get monkeys". unfortunantely, in our dear old singapore, the notion of being paid in peanuts have taken on a whole different meaning after the NKF saga, where it's former chariman's annual salary of S$600,000 was termed as peanuts. the governement is finally looking at improving the service sector but i feel its going to have to improve by leaps and bound before anything will happen. i know because i have also been working on a part-time basis in the service sector for the past 8 years. although it is low paying, i still do my best because i feel it is important to do a good job. however, the management never appreciates this and are always saying the company is not making money when in fact it is making healthy profits and the management are just wanting more for their bonuses. that is why, in the service sector, people are job-hopping more frevently than any other sector. this cannot go on else very soon, the best of our service staff will, like our nurses, be poached away.

oh and having assholes HR managers who forces people out of the company just because he does not like them will not make things good either. look at Legends @ Fort FCanning. the entire membership department has went through an overhaul since i joined the club as a part-timer last July. there is only one staff left from the staff that were there last July and she's there only because the HR manager is not successful in getting rid of her. he even had the gall to force the GM to sack the previous Asst Manager of the membership dept. when the GM reluctantly signed the release form, the HR manager took liberty and wrote all sorts of unsavoury, untruths, and unnecessary comments within the performance review. in the end, the Asst Manager chose to resigned instead, to save her reputation. if you look at the Sports & Recreation department, it is even worse. in less than a year, i've seen 2 managers left. the manager who employed me, left after having differences with the HR manager. the manager who took over him, left barely 6 months into the job. even the instructors were not spared. one instructor left together with the first manager, while another was forced out after she did not meet her sales target. sales target? yup, bullshit isn't it. nowhere in the instructor's job scope is it written that he/she must meet a certain sales target, plus, gym instructors are employed to look after the well-being of the gym users and not to be pushing products or selling training packages. so, you tell me, even if given top notch workers, if you have HR managers like the one Legends @ Fort Canning has, no one will stay.