I was very much shocked with his condemning me. 

On another occasion, the Japanese factory manager came to me and said, "You really are a moron. Again you hired an operator who does not have commonsense at all. He always comes to the factory with rubber slippers. I told him to wear shoes in the factory. Do you know what he said to me?  He asked me to pay money for the shoes because I demanded him to wear them. Why should I pay for them? You idiot hire anyhow those operators who don't have any commonsense.  You should immediately bring in a better operator. I am disgusted with your sense of personnel management.

There were more incidents alike observed in the factory in Singapore. Each time such a problem occurred the Japanese factory manager chewed me out because he could not speak English, and I was in charge of hiring local operators. Of course I worked with local personnel manager.

Since the factory manager was my immediate boss, I had to listen to his demands and instructions. I discussed with the local personnel manager, whose name was Ted (fictitious name) on how to accommodate the factory manager's requirements. Ted asked me if there were any criteria of hiring operators. I didn't have anything like that available. He suggested to me to make a standard job operation guideline and job description so that they can be explained to operators before they start to work in the factory.

I admired his insightful opinions. I went to the Japanese factory manager and asked him to give me copies of an operation guideline and a job description if any. He replied to me, he doesn't have any in written. He started to explain to me verbally, and asked me to make them from scratch in English. I thought he was still angry at me so he didn't want to hand me copies. I never thought that he didn't have them.

I made them in English after all. Each time when the personnel manager hired an operator, he explained to him or her what he or she should do and what not. After he or she agreed to such conditions, the personnel manager asked him or her to sign an employment agreement. Since then, we didn't come across any serious problem with regard to personnel management. The Japanese factory manager was contented with me.

So I again asked him to give me sets of the job guideline and job description in Japanese language. He honestly told me that he didn't have them at all.  I asked him how he administered and managed the factory operation when he was in Japan. What he said was that Japanese operators learn how to do through on-the-job-training at the workshop. They learn it from observing what their senior operators do in the factory. All of them have good commonsense, and he didn't come across particular phenomena in Singapore.

    --- to be continued ---