Service overlooked
My son came back from school last week and announced he was bored of going to school. “Bosanlah pergi sekolah” were his exact words. Now this is my young hero who would find every ways and means NOT to go to school, not because he doesn’t like to study or hates the teachers or is being bullied by friends (that’s another story altogether!).
Nope, this is my young man who likes to NOT GO to school simply because he prefers to stay home and draw race cars and footballs teams and football fields while his favourite programme is aired on Astro’s Disney Channel. And every 10 minutes or so he would walk into the kitchen looking for a favourite chocolate bar to snack on, then walk back to his drawings.
So when he made that announcement last week, the whole family including his grandparents and aunties and uncles in Perlis and Singapore (news like this travel within the family vines like the speed of light in our household) laughed it off, teased him about his favourite past time and called him names like Mr P For Ponteng etc.
Later than night, as I was tucking him in bed, he again uttered his reluctance to go to school. This time, not as adamant as earlier and his body language somehow made me want to know more. The room lights were turned off but I could see vaguely from the lights of the bathroom shining through the open door that he had an unhappy facial expression on, which is not made up.
So I asked him what was bothering him – we try as much as possible not to interfere in matters of the school especially if it involves the children being penalised by teachers for their own carelessness. His response stumped me – everyday in the week, teachers don’t seem to be attending classes! Students were pretty much left on their own to do their own stuff and he doesn’t like this. So why should he go to school? Well, he does have a point there…
It seems that for that week in particular, the school played host to some annual schools sports events at the national level. Such being the case, almost all teachers were involved since this is a high profile national event and there were a lot of VIPs in attendance. Not to mention participants from other schools and other districts. And as host, their school aimed to provide the best of service possible to these guests.
Well, I guess they overlooked their internal customers in their quest to deliver exceptional service to their external ones, didn’t they? As for my son, I exercised my power of autonomy and excused him from school the following day.
And did I mention he and his friends categorised VIP into 2 levels? So choose if you are VIP1 or VIP2 ….and choose wisely!
Nope, this is my young man who likes to NOT GO to school simply because he prefers to stay home and draw race cars and footballs teams and football fields while his favourite programme is aired on Astro’s Disney Channel. And every 10 minutes or so he would walk into the kitchen looking for a favourite chocolate bar to snack on, then walk back to his drawings.
So when he made that announcement last week, the whole family including his grandparents and aunties and uncles in Perlis and Singapore (news like this travel within the family vines like the speed of light in our household) laughed it off, teased him about his favourite past time and called him names like Mr P For Ponteng etc.
Later than night, as I was tucking him in bed, he again uttered his reluctance to go to school. This time, not as adamant as earlier and his body language somehow made me want to know more. The room lights were turned off but I could see vaguely from the lights of the bathroom shining through the open door that he had an unhappy facial expression on, which is not made up.
So I asked him what was bothering him – we try as much as possible not to interfere in matters of the school especially if it involves the children being penalised by teachers for their own carelessness. His response stumped me – everyday in the week, teachers don’t seem to be attending classes! Students were pretty much left on their own to do their own stuff and he doesn’t like this. So why should he go to school? Well, he does have a point there…
It seems that for that week in particular, the school played host to some annual schools sports events at the national level. Such being the case, almost all teachers were involved since this is a high profile national event and there were a lot of VIPs in attendance. Not to mention participants from other schools and other districts. And as host, their school aimed to provide the best of service possible to these guests.
Well, I guess they overlooked their internal customers in their quest to deliver exceptional service to their external ones, didn’t they? As for my son, I exercised my power of autonomy and excused him from school the following day.
And did I mention he and his friends categorised VIP into 2 levels? So choose if you are VIP1 or VIP2 ….and choose wisely!
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