Secretaries' Week: What About Me?!

I’ve just found out that Secretaries’ Week is on 24-30th April. Secretaries’ ‘Week’?! Why do secretaries get one WEEK when Fathers and Mothers only get a DAY? We have Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Teacher’s Day, Same-Sex Partner Day but secretaries get seven times more celebration than the rest of us.

Never mind that they work 40-60 hours a week only and get paid for it. Parents looking after children work 24 x 7 = 168 hours a week and get zilch. Only heartaches and high blood pressure. Furthermore if secretaries dislike their jobs or bosses, they can resign and find another one. For parents, children are mostly non-refundable and non-changeable. All sales final, no correspondence will be entertained.

Yeah, yeah, I know all these ‘holidays’ are created by the retail industry to boost their sales during low seasons, etc. But ONE WEEK?! How many times are you going to bring your acid-tongue, ungrateful, back-biting, gossip-mongering secretary to see Ning Baizura perform at the New Federal Hotel luncheon-cum-high tea (RM32++)?

I just googled it and found that Secretaries’ DAY is actually the 4th Wednesday of April, that would make it 27th April. But some genius marketing staff had probably had this brilliant idea that most people have 7 secretaries and that they might need a whole week to bring each secretary out to see Camelia perform at the Grand Concorde Hotel luncheon-cum-high tea (RM39++). This exec figured that entry level managers should have at least one secretary, the higher you climb on the corporate ladder, the more secretaries will be at your beck and call, so the MD or GM of a multi-national corporation would have seven. That explains why I don’t have one.

The only time I’m going to get a free luncheon-cum-high tea (RM40++) at Istana Inn to see Harith Iskandar perform is the day they introduce a “Khe-Leh-Feh Day”. Or better yet, “Khe-Leh-Feh Month”.


(For those who don’t understand Cantonese, Khe-Leh-Feh is slang for lowly employees, that make coffee for bosses, photocopy stuff, clean toilets etc.)