A genuine case of office bullying in Singapore

Okay, given that I have written a lot about an alleged case of office bullying in Singapore last earlier this month involving the now infamous Jerard Lee, a reader has drawn my attention to this case which has gone viral in Singapore involving a supervisor in an office in Singapore repeatedly striking an employee in the head. We have no verification as to what this company is, but one assumes that this is somewhere in Singapore given the Singaporean accents and it was reported as a Singaporean incident. Please let me know if you have more details.

Now there are plenty of one-liners from netizens who have offered their knee-jerk reaction to the case, allow me to offer my perspective on the case. Now this is evidently bullying - it is physical abuse that is clearly illegal (as opposed to laughing at someone's IC photo or calling someone a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle). Allow me to make 3 observations.

1. The supervisor clearly feels that he can get away with such behaviour and doesn't feel that what he is doing is wrong - there is a culture in that company where such behaviour is tolerated, even condoned. 

Why is this the case? Firstly, in Singapore, we do have a culture of physical abuse that is simply accepted as being a part of our Asian tradition. Granted that this is something that is evolving with each generation, you still cannot run away from the fact that it is generally accepted as a part of our culture. What is regarded as normal in Singapore is regarded as barbaric in the West - take the punishment of vandals by caning for example, many Singaporeans supported the caning of Michael Fay quite simply because it would send such a strong message that Fay would never dare to commit the same offence in Singapore ever again.

As a society, we condone corporal punishment - it is very common for Singaporean parents to smack their children in the name of discipline, but where do we draw the line between what is acceptable and what strays into the territory of physical abuse (as in this case)? Why do we condone corporal punishment then? It boils down to a fundamental belief that the threat of a painful punishment should be enough as a deterrent to stop or prevent a certain kind of behaviour and it is necessary for this threat to be real enough in order to be effective. I remember talking about this with my teacher in Singapore at the age of 15 and this was what she said to me.

"When my daughter was about 3, she started playing with the electrical sockets on the wall. It started when she was tall enough to reach the light switch and at that age, she found it funny to turn the lights on and off many times. Then she started playing with anything and everything to do with electricity - that was when I got worried. How do you explain to a child that young what electricity is and why one should play with it that way? I had no choice but to communicate it in a way which she would understand as a 3 year old - if you play with that, mummy would smack you. It was a cause and effect that I had to establish in her head and whilst she did not understand the risks of electrocution, she did understand clearly when mummy is so angry mummy would smack her hard. She doesn't understand what electricity is but she understands pain at that age. How else are you going to communicate that to a child that young?"

Whilst my teacher was able to explain her stance so eloquently, many Singaporeans simply default to corporal punishment as it is a lot easier than trying to reason with a child (or a teenager). This "do as I say or I will hit you" is very effective in getting your way. Parents get impatient and a long drawn out argument with a child could take over an hour whilst it takes a few seconds to punch or slap your child. By that token, my parents often went for the latter.

I could explain this to you but it's faster just to slap you. 

In my childhood in Singapore, I witnessed corporal punishment everywhere from my home to my school to the army. I do not condone it, I think it is wrong, but I can see why someone like this supervisor feels it is acceptable to behave in this manner in the context of his culture. This supervisor probably got smacked left right and centre by everyone from his parents to his teachers to his peers all his life and whilst this does not justify his actions - we have to ask ourselves as a society: is this acceptable? And if this isn't, then what about in the context of disciplining a child at home? Where do we draw the line and who gets to decide where that line is drawn?

Furthermore, there is an issue about what one gets away with - in my NS days, there were many things which were technically speaking illegal (such as the blatant bullying of recruits during BMT), but people got away with all the time - why? This is because those higher up the food chain were turning a blind eye to the bullying they witness and those bullied are too afraid to speak up against the bullies. This simply perpetuates the culture of bullying if no one within the organisation is willing to stand up and challenge it. So it doesn't matter what the rules or law are - they are meaningless unless those in the system are willing to observe and respect them.

It's not what the rules are - it's whether they are enforced and how people actually behave

2. The employee who is abused is afraid to stand up for himself - be it by defending himself when being attacked or reporting the abuse to someone further up the food chain or the authorities.

The part which I found most disturbing about the video is the employee's body language. If someone is attacking you physically, most of us would automatically defend ourselves by either blocking the attack or at least running away. He just sat there and allowed himself to be hit repeatedly - he was totally passive. Was he so desperate for this job that he was prepared to put up with being hit? Did he have such low self-esteem that he believed he deserved to be treated like that? Why didn't he want to stand up for himself?

If this employee had been physically abused at home his parents from a young age, if he couldn't even expect his parents to protect him from physical violence, if his parents were the very people inflicting physical violence from him, then he becomes used to being treated like that by those in authority and he wouldn't know how to stand up for himself. Oh man. How I wish I could sit down with that guy and explain to him that he deserves better than this, that he has the right to stand up for himself and not allow himself to be treated like that. It is almost like seeing a battered wife in an abusive relationship - you just want to grab the person and say, "stop allowing yourself to be treated like that!"

I really want to reach out and help that employee!

Am I right in guessing that this employee had been subjected to a lifetime of abuse from his own parents? I don't know, but what I do know is that he is not only unwilling to report it, he is unable to even defend himself as he got hit. The alternative explanation is that the job market is so terrible in Singapore that this employee has absolutely no choice but to put up with the abuse because he needs this job so badly. Is the situation in Singapore that desperate? Or is part of the problem this blind submission to authority without questioning those in charge? Do Singaporeans ever dare to question if their government, parents, teachers or bosses behave in a reasonable manner or do they just submit to authority even when those in charge are clearly corrupt? You tell me.

3. At least someone did make an effort to intervene and help.

And just think, for every one case where a third party actually got involved and attempted to intervene, how many cases are there in Singapore which go unnoticed, unreported because people chose to simply look the other way? Okay, so going through social media is hardly the right route to solve such a situation - nothing gets resolved through social media as our friend Jerard Lee found out and learnt a bitter lesson. But at least someone did have the balls to intervene and I am glad he did. Clearly, he took a risk in doing so because he could have offended the senior management of the company by releasing this video of the abuse to the public like that - but in doing so, he is forcing the senior management to do something about the situation rather than sweep it under the carpet.

Who do we blame in this episode? Do we blame the supervisor for his physical abuse? Do we blame the company for allowing this supervisor for behaving like that all this while? Do we blame the interns parents for raising a child with such low self-esteem? Do we blame Singaporean society for condoning physical abuse as a way of communication? My answer is all of the above. It is a sad, sorry reflection on the state of Singapore today where a young man doesn't even have the resolve to stand up for himself when being beaten up. It would've been convenient to blame the young man for being a coward, for not standing up for himself - but that wouldn't be fair. Unfortunately, this young employee's attitude is but a symptom of a far greater problem with Singaporean society.

As usual, please let me know what you think, leave a comment below, thank you for reading!
Part 2: http://limpehft.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-encore-eservices-assault-and.html