team work

Today was Anugerah Cemerlang day where the top scorers for PMR and SPM received their cert, plaque and some money for their their academic exellence from the Menteri Besar.

I was in charge of the certs; more than 200. The office clerk did all the typing. I had to check for errors etc. Quite a tedious job. I was given two trainees to help me but I gave them minor jobs to do. The final checking I had to do it myself so that I have myself to blame if any of the certs are not there. All these took me about two weeks.

Today, I was at the backstage. I was working with Vim; who is in charge of the plaque and voucher. She is simply excellent and well organized. There were three of us backstage; all 'our' people....

We were to work closely with the registration, coordinators of the prize receivers and the MC. Unfortunately, the team work there was a bit lose. Vim and I ran through the list from the registration and confirmed it with the MC to make sure that they don't read the names of the absentees. Then we realised there were names that were not ticked but we saw the students around. Sure enough, upon checking, the students were in the hall. We had their names crossed out and the certs removed. How horrified it would be for them if their names were not read out!!! Now who is to check this and coordinate it? The coordinators; of course; after receiving the list from the registration. Hmmmm....how could we on the backstage not get upset? We were so busy getting the certs etc ready; and here we are running around the hall to double check the namelist too!

Had there been a hiccup...do you know who they will blame? They will blame us on the backstage for not being efficient. But the whole process starts from the door and goes pass the hall before it reaches backstage. Unfortunately, it gets stuck somewhere in the middle of the hall and backstage had to come down to the hall to confirm everything. Why can't we just go the extra mile and make extra effort to check and recheck and send mouth to the backstage to confirm and reconfirm?

Everybody was congratulating everybody for a real smooth and speedy ceremony. A pat on the back of the three teachers on the backstage. Yes, nobody see us sweating, panicking but we know we did our best to ensure all run smoothly.

The world would be a better place if everyone of us is willing to walk the extra mile and not count the few short metres that we take.