Year 2005 was a very bad year for us. Not to say that the future would be any better, but the management thought it would be a good idea to have a small party as a mark of a new beginning, and also as an appreciation for all employees who had toughed it out together.
Since our cash flow was frozen by the court, it wasn't possible for us to ask the appointed consultants to release any funds for such leisure event, regardless of how small the amount might be. So what we did was that all employees (including the management) were to put together some money according to the company's hierarchical structure. The operation workers would contribute SGD5, executive level employees SGD10, and the management some unknown amount.
The party was held during lunch time, which means that we almost had a 3-hour lunch on Friday. Everyone received an ang pao as door gift. The ang pao bore a lucky draw number and SGD10. So we actually got back the money we paid out and had a free lunch plus gifts. I guess the management had funded the party. Since they earned big bucks, i think the money didn't really mean much to them. It was still a nice gesture nonetheless and giving out something to boost up the morale of the employees was something a leader should do. I appreciate that.
The lunch was ok; it was from our lunch caterer anyway. There was a balloon popping game and the person with the last intact balloon standing was awarded with a prize. I didn't join in the game even though everybody was supposed to participate. I've never liked balloons, especially popping them. Standing at the sideline watching people playing the games was kinda entertaining though, especially seeing the top management having fun like a bunch of kids. It was a rare sight indeed.
The lucky draw was the part where everyone was looking forward to. There was enough prizes to be given out to everyone, even down to the cleaners and security guards. The top three prizes were vouchers for hotel stay and DVD players. I wasn't that lucky to win the top prizes. I got the special prize of a hamper and a Robinson SGD50 cash voucher.
When i saw the red wine in the hamper, i was already wondering how i could bring it back to JB. True enough, when we were at the Malaysian customs checkpoint at 2nd Link, the customs officer pointed to the bottle and asked me if it was wine. I told him that it was a prize i won and i hadn't opened the hamper yet so i wasn't sure what it was (trying my luck here). He then asked me to open up the hamper so that he could take a closer look at the content description on the label pasted at the back of the bottle. After he had confirmed that the liquid in the bottle did contain alcohol, he told me that it was taxable.
贝 and i had agreed earlier that if anything in the hamper was taxable, we were gonna discard it since we didn't see a point of paying for something that we didn't have the intention of buying in the first place. So when the customs officer told me that i gotta pay for the red wine, i told him that i didn't want it anymore and asked him to throw it away right there at the checkpoint.
He was taken aback by my reply and asked me if we don't drink at all. I told him that we do drink but if we gotta pay for it, then i would rather not bring it into Malaysia. He then hesitated for a while and told us that he would just let us go since we were honest (was i?) and it was around Chinese New Year time. So, we cleared the checkpoint and brought back the cheap wine without paying anything.
I have mixed feelings about this incident. On one hand, i thought it was really nice of the custom officer to let us go, doing us a good turn in view of the festive season. On the other, i thought the law is the law, and law enforcers should go by the book when it was something that concerned the country (i.e. money to the country). I believe that if this incident had happened at the Singapore checkpoint, the Singaporean customs officer would have never let us go like this. So was our customs officer right at all? I really don't know.
Labels: work
