Sometimes, certain life experiences take years before you could make some sense out of them. I had this sudden recollection of one of my NS days while mugging for psychology exam…
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It was one of the lucky days in the MTL office, not much job to do and our staff sergeant is not around. Fellow drivers were sitting and lying around in the room, enjoying the air-con, listening to music, snoozing off. It was one of those days that would just pass by quickly, and we could all enjoy our dinner and book out in the evening.
As his PA, I was preparing the next day’s vehicle and manpower planning and tending to phone calls. Suddenly, the phone rang. And it is from the admin office. Not a good sign. Turns out, it is from our officer who needed a truck of jerry cans to be shifted from one truck to another truck. It’s not a very difficult job. It can be easily done if everyone chip in a little. But very tiring if one person do it. So I asked for my fellow driver's help.
But guess what? Not a single of them agreed to help. I recalled asking the room as a whole. No answer. Then asking one by one. They are all good friends of mine, but one by one they rejected me! I was raged. Very raged. Fine! No one helping me? I'll shift ALL by myself!! And I stormed out of the room down to the ground floor only to realise that I didn't bring with me the vehicle keys…
I looked up, poor ah hwa walking by the second floor corridor. Wrong place, wrong time. Without caring much, I shouted at the top of my voice, "THROW THE KEYS DOWN TO ME NOW!" These was one of the very few times that I got shocked by my own voice. So loud, so fierce, so many echoes. And I began to see the results. Everyone got out of the room (and slumber) and came down to help.
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Excerpts from today’s reading:
"Diffusion of Responsibility -Tendency of an individual to assume that others will take responsibilities (as a result, no one does). The larger the group, the higher the tendency.”
And on the same page:
"… the act of screaming can lead to receiving help 75% of the time."
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Moral of the story:
Scream when you need help.
