Mood: Meh 
Eating: Spaghetti & Orgain Protein Bar Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
Drinking: Tea
Weather: 28°C, Clear
Location: Mont Fleuri, Mahe, Seychelles
I didn’t sleep too well last night/this morning. My sister returned from the family gathering at around 2:30am with only 1 vegan dish (a chickpea salad). I never actually told my family members that I wasn’t going to be there because I had initially planned to attend. My cough was just getting worse yesterday so I thought it would have been best for me to stay home instead of spreading the germs. Last night while trying to sleep my cough was extremely persistent. Even Thyl had to sleep next to me because she was probably worried. Apart from the Benadryl cough syrup I also have 2 different types of saline nasal decongestants. I can only stay up for about 2-3 hours until I start feeling sleepy or tired again.
Here in Seychelles a 13th month salary is mandatory for employers to pay to their employees. I personally think it’s ridiculous because we only work for 12 months so that 13th month salary has to come from the budget of one of the 12 months. I probably would feel differently if I was an employee because extra money for the festive season would be great. As an employer, it’s just one of those things we have to pay, like taxes. Anyway, the 13th month salary is a bonus and it’s calculated in a way whereby you are entitled a full salary if you’ve worked for the entire 12 months of the year. If you started working for a company 6 months before the end of the year, your 13th month salary will be given to you “prorated”. So that would be the total amount you receive in one month, divided by 12 months in the year and then multiplied by the number of months you’ve been working for the company.
I told my sister to explain this to E1 who started working for us as an employee on August. Prior to August, she was a casual worker and they receive their annual leave bonus each 5th consecutive day. Months ago, I might have written a blog entry or two about this whole thing because E1, while still a casual worker was making such a fuss about how she didn’t receive her annual leave bonus while her colleague at the time did. We tried to explain it to her in different ways and in different languages that the way the law works, to receive an annual leave bonus you would have to work 5 consecutive days without skipping/missing a day. But she just couldn’t understand it. So for the festive season, I told my sister that she would probably need to sit with E1 to explain how much she would be receiving as her 13th month salary because at some point E1 was talking about her 13th month salary and it gave us the impression that for the month of December, she was expecting: 1. her full salary, 2. an extra month’s salary and 3. a Christmas bonus.
With how berserk she acted about a few hundred rupees when she was still a casual worker, I can only imagine how crazy mad she would react when she finds out that her 13th month salary would be prorated, and THAT is the same thing as her “bonus”. Mind you, we did consider giving her extra cash but later changed our mind because we felt she already expects so much from us when she is just not worth it. Her receiving 100% of her prorated 13th month salary is already generous of us because if we were to do a performance-based assessment, she wouldn’t be receiving 100% of the 13th month salary.
So anyway, my sister told me that there’s just so much she can do to explain it to E1, and she doesn’t think E1 would believe any of her explanation anyway so if she’s not happy with her 13th month salary, she can just call the employment department and get them to explain it all. The evening before the 31st, I left E1’s 13th month salary in cash inside the drawer where I normally do (her December salary was already issued to her on the 20th). Here’s what she sent us in the morning of the 31st of December:
Good morning [my sister’s name] thank you for the 13 month I just want to take a time to tell you both happy new year I just want to say I’m very disappointed that you didn’t see my performance valuable cause during the time I’m working with you guys it’s was very tough and sometime moral down but also thank you for every lesson and everything good during this year I’m working with you guys will see the next year how it comes happy new year again
My sister asked her why she felt underappreciated and her response was:
Because the way you treat me sometime and I know I work hard all by myself I always make sure everything works well and deliver the work as a should I didn’t see a reason on the paper you wrote you’ll give me time to learn and improve to give me a small appreciation for this year of 2024
Let’s remember that this is the same woman who called us on Christmas day – not to greet us a merry Christmas but to let us know that she will most likely be on sick leave the following day. Here in the message, she was convinced that the amount we put inside the envelope was only a percentage of what she deserved because she thought that we had deducted some money based on her performance.
Was I surprised? No, I was expecting this kind of complaint. We already cover her bus fare and her phone bill – how many businesses do the same to their employees? Over the past few months we’ve received numerous complaints of her customer service – she doesn’t know how to talk to customers. She is a troublemaker to our neighbours. She does not talk to us (her bosses) with respect. Drama follows her wherever she goes. When we told her to improve her customer service because we noticed a dip in our sales when she took over, she told us that we should look at our pricing instead of her sales. She is a problematic employee and her attitude + her incompetency in English would make training her impossible.
Let’s deconstruct her message: “I’m very disappointed that you didn’t see my performance valuable” We employed her from August 2024 and our sales dipped significantly on August 2024. We are still trying to figure out if this is sheer coincidence or if her role plays a part. Her punctuality is perfect – she is on time ever single day. She does take sick leave almost each month, which is not surprising for any Seychellois staff at this level. I’m also happy with her cashiering, there have been no major issues since she took over. But punctuality and cashiering aside, her sales is shit, her attitude is shit; she is generally disrespectful to everyone around her to the point of our customers complaining, her current colleague has also complained about her attitude, she uses the phone non-stop and is very loud while she’s on the phone, which disrupts her colleague and the neighbours. They have called her out on this, and she refuses to change her ways, claiming that outside the balcony is a public area. She refuses to clean outside the balcony (that she alone has used in the past few months before we employed a casual worker) claiming that she is allergic to dust. We have to constantly remind her to clean certain spots inside the store because she does not know how to clean properly. It seems to be such a hassle for her to clean things. Cleaning is part of her duties,
“it’s was very tough and sometime moral down” – Once, it was raining heavily and we told E1 to stay home if the rain continues this way. She requested for a uniform top, and I purchased 4 for her and later realized she wasn’t even wearing them. She requested for a microwave, we got her one – which she doesn’t even use at all, she uses it only to store her takeaways. We got her coffee, which she claims to drink but never actually drinks. For Christmas she wanted Christmas earrings and other accessories which we allowed her to take. She wanted us to fix her kid’s sunglasses and we did. She wanted a necklace and we gave her one. Anything she asks for we do our best to oblige. At which point was is “tough”? At which point was her morale down? Her salary stays the same, and it is secure. The business owners are the ones who know if the earnings are enough to cover the bills for the month. Her being with us reminds me of being in a horrible relationship where you can’t do anything right. Not even her “happy new year” was genuine. It sounded more like a “fuck you” to me.
Honestly, I don’t even understand what she meant by “Because the way you treat me sometime and I know I work hard all by myself I always make sure everything works well and deliver the work as a should I didn’t see a reason on the paper you wrote you’ll give me time to learn and improve to give me a small appreciation for this year of 2024” I don’t know what paper that was, we did issue a note saying that from 2025 onwards we will be measuring her performance. For the year 2024, the 13th month salary worked this way: 50% was mandatory and the other 50% was supposed to be performance-based. For 2025 I think they’ll be changing it to 100% performance based. Isn’t it funny how these employees complain about even a single rupee deduction from their salary or bonus but they don’t care if they take hours of company time from you? All the little breaks she takes and yesterday it was the same shit where she called and asked if she could close earlier because she needs to use the toilet. Once we noticed her closing 15-20 mins before our scheduled closing time and when we asked her why, she said she needed to wash her mug. I don’t understand why they feel washing their mug should be done during our opening hours. Surely it’s something that can be done during breaks, before opening time and after closing time? Another time while doing the close-shift reconciliation, she dropped 1 rupee and instead of finding it and putting it back inside the cash drawer, she wrote me a note saying “1 rupee fell down” LOL WTF? So I’m supposed to pick up money that she dropped.
We provide everything she requests for and in return, that is the kind of attitude I receive in return. So I don’t really know what she meant by her morale being low, with the amount of stress she singlehandedly puts on me. Most of my posts are related to how frustrated I am about the staff we employ.