🤠’s Dua Sen: Never criticise your boss’ boss
In another lifetime (ie in the early 1990s) I used to be employed as a rookie investment analyst (a job that is probably now largely extinct like the dinosaurs) in a start up stockbroking house at Raffles Place. The job required detailed analysis of the audited accounts of listed companies and lots of number crunching on financial models - cash flow forecasts and NPV valuations -on then state of the art IBM PCs. The end result of all this labor was put on a regional newsheet compiled at HQ (“Asia Morning Line”) sent to institutional clients in London and New York.
The problem was some nitpicking clients complained about the number of grammatical and typo mistakes in Asia Morning Line. These complaints both embarrassed and infuriated “D” , the new Scottish Regional Research Director hired from UK.D put out a circular addressed to all country research directors and every analyst, threatening dire consequences if he ever found grammatical or typo errors again. Unfortunately, the gremlins had been at work again. There were two mistakes in his own memo on grammatical and typo errors.
Yours truly had spotted them, of course. On a whim, I decided to point out what the gremlins had dragged in. I sent my boss’ boss D a memo, signing off as “Mr R.U. Sure” . Of course I showed the memo first to my boss - she had recruited me 3 years ago- but if my memory is correct, she merely asked if I really wanted to do it.
A couple of months later I found out why. Arriving at the office one morning, I found an IT person sitting in my chair. My boss and her boss, the country MD, had resigned without telling the research and sales teams. I found out much later they had accepted offers from one of our competitors. Sitting in my boss’s chair in her office cubicle was D.
One by one, the entire research team were called into D’s office, in order of our seniority. TC who sat next to my desk for three years came out of D’s office shortly, and told us he had resigned. He packed up his stuff and left the premises. Then it was my turn to face the music. I expected to get the Chop.The English you see are generally known to have a sense of humour. But the Scots are like my Better Half - most of the Scottish expats I have met have been the dour “no sense of humour “ type. Instead of firing me, however, as the newly ensconced Red Dot Island research director D said he was doubling my salary. I asked D why. D mentioned my boss the previous research director had been paying below the market rate. Of course, we already knew that.
Just as I opened the door to leave (after thanking D for the raise in salary), D asked me to close the door. It has been some 30 years but I still remember D’s next words of advice, “Don’t ever criticise me again”🤠's Dua Sen: Never criticise your boss' boss. You never know if one fine day you might have to see and work with them everyday.
Post Script
With the benefit of 30 years hindsight I think but cannot be 100% certain I didn't get the chop because it was my luck TC handed in his resignation first. Starting a new position as Red Dot Island research director without a full team of analysts would not be a good idea.
When I eventually handed in my letter of resignation in 1992 to accompany my Better Half who had been an offered a position as a uni lecturer abroad, D organised a farewell luncheon for me at a bar in Clark Quay. I was presented with a Tissot watch that I still wear from time to time to remind myself how lucky I was.
