A Few Observations

If you don't know, I work part part part time as an office boy. Besides the typing and typing involved, I get to make calls soliciting information from company gatekeepers (usually operators or secretaries) about their bosses so we can inundate their inboxes with our e-mails. Sometimes I go straight to their bosses.

So here is a short, empirical account of what I've noticed:

• If the person picking up the phone is a Malay operator/secretary, he or she is more likely to divulge information about his or her boss than Chinese or Indians (the latter being the hardest group to extract information from, although this is slightly misleading).

• The degree of success of extracting information from the higher ranked members of companies (such as managers) can be categorized thus (from easiest to hardest, according to race): 1. Malay 2. Indian 3. Chinese (although I would say Malays and Indians tie for being the easiest, with Chinese being the hardest).

• Chinese managers are the hardest to extract information from. However, there is an interesting (if a little tenuous) correlation between the accent of the speaker to the willingness to divulge information (i.e. the thicker the "Chinese" accent, the more likely he or she is to share personal details). Of course, this is slight generalization on my part.

Update: Something I forgot to mention earlier- all my conversations were in English, although some (but very, very little) BM was used in some cases.

Do note that sometimes I am required to ask for e-mails only, and on other occasions actually find out (what I call, "from scratch") the owner of the business from lower ranked members of the company. The latter is not necessarily harder than the former, but it is a longer process.

Notice that I categorize people according to races, and directly imply that some races are more willing to share information than others. This is merely what I've noticed, and it is up to the reader to come up with his own conjectures. That said, Malays are still the nicest of the lot. =)

Well, this is from the top of my head. I should be writing this stuff down. Intriguing. Anyway, I'll share more with you once I collect more observations. Hehe.