As the Lunar New Year is around the corner, the thought of starting the New Year (kai nian) with the customer was on my mind. Need to investigate the logistics of organizing a Lo Hei. An old memory came rushing back.
The guilty shall remain anonymous.
It was just after Chinese New Year and the big boss gave a directive to all heads have a Lo Hei with the customer before starting work. Ok nothing strange about that. There was an scheduled afternoon meeting. My boss and I were in the office, I was thinking of car pooling with him. He said go ahead first, as he has something on. I was thinking this is strange, as there is much time left for a “something on”. So I jumped on a cab for a journey to the far end of Singapore. And a boat ride.
Later on at the customer site,my boss told the rest of our team, he specially went out of the way to organize the logistics for the Lo Hei with the customer. The kicker was he made it as if it was a huge effort. I don’t doubt it, those extra family size pizza boxes are big and fragile. Why did he have to sneaking around to do this? He could have easily grab a few staff or me to help him. Since these are top level people, low level staffers like me will never be included, so there are no faces to save.
I have always considered this act as grabbing all the glory. That defining moment made me realize my boss was never a team player.