Arguments from and against the real world

I have never reflected on being out of school; never proclaimed to feel 'more alive than ever', nor broken down to curse the working world or shut it out. There is little time to miss school between my two jobs, Wednesdays at Crawford, and the humbly-jumbly social events I find myself entangled in. But I have sampled both ends of the polemic, and I suppose there is no better day than the last day of my first phase of post-school life (I resign from both current jobs this week) to ruminate.

I think a number of us are beginning to feel the unexpected disjoint between society and life. While fellow classmates call it a 'culture shock', others, old hands at the Office, call it 'the real world'. Over the last two months, I've developed an aversion to the words 'the real world', because whenever they are invoked in conversations, they always imply that all problems are chronically stabile and ideals, principles and theories are but pretty lies. I routinely refer to glimpses of the 'real world' as the popping of carebears and rainbows.

I have discovered that The Real World differs from my world on ethically, economically and socially.

On Ethics.
1. Fair Employment
Sickeningly, that racial discrimination no longer exists, I've discovered, is a myth that exists only in our Singaporean social studies and history textbooks. I was thunderously upset to find out that the homogeneity of my workplace staff (all Chinese, young and female) was not an act of God to impress upon us the reality of Fate and Destiny, but the will of bigots, who (incomprehensibly) believe that intelligence, conscientiousness and generally positive dispositions choose sides on racial lines. I remember being very impressed by their conclusions, because none of dear people who proclaimed their views so earnestly had for themselves good qualifications (or social intelligence, for that matter) to prove their Aryan superiority. Worse, as I went about trying to clarify employment policies and principles with others, I found out that such employment 'regulations' are not at all uncommon.

It is easy to allow the passion of injustice to overwhelm you, which I did for a while. I realise now that as bigotry is easy to sift out, eradicating it is a completely new, demanding situation. Since no policy will ever bear the words "Thou shalt not hire non-Chinese", typical unfair employment practices are generally carried out within the buffer of the "personal judgment" of the employer. It is as simple as putting aside the forms - distributed to everyone and collected from everyone - of an applicant who does not fall under your "criteria". These forms go out under pretexts of "unsuitable personalities" or because the applicants they represent "pale (ironically) in comparison to other applicants". The 95478 clauses that our Tripartite Alliance for Fair Employment may draw up have no arbitration over what goes on in the interview room, so long as the words "not Aryan" do not turn up in the rejection report. And they never do. Fair employment is not enforceable.

What legislators can do, and have tried to do, is to impose as many tangible limitations as possible on the areas they can control; such areas largely pertain to the advertising for applicants. It has been made illegal to use words that pointedly refer to a select group of people in society, for instance, one may not advertise for "a manageress" or ask for "a crew comprising members under the age of 35". It goes to the extent of prohibiting questions on the marital status of a woman. While one may not advertise for a "Malay teacher", there are easy alternatives such as calling for a "teacher to teach the Malay language", suggesting a look-out for people proficient in the required skills, who tend to be, but are umnecesarily, Malay.

Unfortunately, things are not always that simple. There are problems associated these noble intentions that we may not ignore either. Certain jobs are arguably not made for everyone. During the process of hiring a security guard for his firm, one of the directors from the local office of a multi-national company vented his frustrations with the impossibility of leaving out knowledge of a female applicant's marital status. It was crucial, he argued, to know if she was making plans for a family, because her ability and commitment to the job would be drastically affected. A lady with a melon-sized human being attached to her waist would not, as one imagines, be very good at chasing theives and terrorists. In taking the preventive measures we have against workplace discrimination to protect the rights of employees, we risk neglecting the rights of employers in situations aforementioned. This implicating clash of rights makes any attempt to expunge discrimination in employment tenuous and painful.

In pointing out what I felt employers should not do, I wondered what it was that employers should do. The answer, almost instinctive to my Singaporean brain, appears to be to adhere to the principles of meritocracy.