One salary, three jobs

‘Still the same: one salary, three jobs. How do you think I’m feeling?’ my friend retorted when I asked her how she was. She is always on the go and barely has time for chit-chat.

As a journalist who has won many awards, she thrives on challenges and has been juggling her career and her family for the last twenty years. But even for a veteran workaholic like her, this is simply too much. ‘I have no problem with the increase of complaints that comes with more commitments. The trouble is, nobody seems to care that I’m burdened with three full-time jobs, something I don’t deserve and haven’t asked for.’

Indeed, each of the three jobs which have been heaped on to her shoulders demands her exclusive attention. She is a senior social journalist, whose job means that she should be on the street every day in order to investigate and report on stories. She is the head of English programmes on the radio station. And she is the producer of a weekly sixty-minute live discussion forum that involves senior government officials responding to the pent-up frustrations of the callers, who see it as their last resort for getting heard.

‘Why do you allow yourself to be so blatantly exploited?’ her editor asked in exasperation when my friend returned to the office after being made the head of English programmes. Until the very last minute of a meeting of top managers, the appointment had been kept secret even from her. It was typical of the broadcasting station that nobody was ever consulted, and the appointment was announced at the end of the meeting as if it were a mere afterthought.

Although a competent journalist, my friend speaks hardly any English. Yet when she shared with some close colleagues her anxieties about the immense challenges she was facing, it was suggested to her that she was taking the linguistic and editorial aspects of the job far too seriously. ‘Let the English editors sort out the linguistic aspects. All that’s required of you is firm journalistic control. Make sure everything runs smoothly without any major hitches. You should be aware that this is how all but one of your predecessors worked.’

So on top of all her other duties, my friend has been landed with the unpaid responsibility of managing a multi-national production team without herself being able to speak English fluently.

The other day my sister observed that the cause of so many safety disasters such as that of the toxic milk powder lies in the fact that a position which requires technical expertise is usually given to a layperson.