I found out that malaysians are generally quite lazy, let's say they rarely give the impression of making effort on what they do. There's is a evident lack of quality in this country, wherever you go it's easy to find something to complain about.
The maids generally won't clean properly, waiters are mostly unprofessional without any care for customers, bankers have limited knowledge, public officers are picked up randomly on the road and even though you point it out the outcome won't change. They nod to you and they keep going in the same way.
Quite often during my day at work i hear colleagues telling me "It's not my fault...I was not supposed to be in charge of that task....I was wrong because...you can't pretend me to work it out so fast...they didn't explain me properly so that's why i made a mistake...i thought it was enough..." and so on.
Once i've also heard "that task is not stated in my contract". WTF!
The frustration caused by such attitude makes quite hard to motivate and incentivate the staff. I've tried in vain so many times and used different ways.
There is no ownership of responsibility, nobody wants to improve.
I really can't understand the reason why they act like that, it most probably depends on their culture, i've noticed you can generally spot the same attitude in south east asia. It might not be related to the culture only then. Are they just waiting for the next anglo-saxons colonizing generation ?
Chineses and Indians say that Malè people, also dubbed Bumiputra, benefit of preferential treatments in several fields; the government indeed reserves quota for them in the federal civil service, scholarships, educational, they can get access to better interest rates on fixed deposits, discount when buying residential properties, loans with low interest rates and so on. Even private limited companies are commited to hire a minimum quota of Malè staff.
Finally they are lazy because they don't need to strive to do their best at everything they do. Most of the private companies are run by chineses they say.
Fair enough i would say but still i'm not fully satisfied with this theory.
The laziness experienced so far is not limited to Malè race indeed. Most of my colleagues are chineses, waiters at mamak are indians only and maids are mostly filippino.
In my opinion the topic is more a trivial matter and lies in the fact that there is little demand for excellence and a much bigger demand for mediocredity in these countries.
So why do we strive for excellence when mediocrity is required ?
Excellence causes competition and higher costs and they might not be able to deal with them.
They are easy to please, they live in a relaxed and easy going enviroment. The motto seems to be "why should i do something if i can wait to do it till tomorrow, thereby if i can do it tomorrow it's not so urgent and i might do it the day after tomorrow".
As long as they can get their daily ration of nasi lemak and happiness without any commitment they probably won't struggle for a better life because they are aware it implies hard work.
