Michelle Chong’s viral post on Singaporeans not taking pride in their work prompts netizens to share their own experiences

Photo: Michelle Chong / Facebook
Photo: Michelle Chong / Facebook

For all of you battling the Monday blues, here’s a little (hopefully) motivational push. Local actress/director Michelle Chong recently took to Facebook to share her opinion of Singaporeans’ work attitude in a post that called for people to take more pride in their work.

“I think we have so much potential to be special, to set trends, to be leaders, to be extremely good at something,” she explained. “But I am starting to think and feel that people here generally don’t care about what they do, which is something I don’t understand.”

Sharing her own experiences with people who didn’t have accountability or took ownership of their work, Chong recounted an incident with a post-production company that she said “ruin[ed] my production at the last stage”, causing it to have sound distortion and washed-out colors at a media screening. That lack of professional standards wasn’t just limited to any particular industry — the interior design firm she hired put up “shoddy work”, including tiles that could be “peeled off from the wall” and “a constant sewage stench” that stuck around because the company did not seal up the pipes.

Chong went on to talk about how, in the course of her career, she had come across numerous other instances of people who didn’t care much for their job.

“It’s a ‘why should I bother? It’s not like I’m getting paid very much for this job’ or ‘please lah it’s just a job right?’ or ‘do extra for what? I’m still getting the same salary right?’ attitude,” she voiced out, at the same time admonishing and spurring people on to higher standards.

“I’m not saying we don’t or can’t make mistakes, but maybe just have a little more pride in what we do?”

From the number of people who heard her call and answered with their own experiences, it was clear that Chong wasn’t the only one frustrated with the lack of passion and drive in Singapore’s workplace — although there were also those who delved into the reasons behind the culture of the “heck care attitude”.



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