Meeting with principle

A colleague went to a meeting with a principal the other day. Apparently the principal decided to call all of their service providers to the meeting to discuss about payments. During the meeting, a guy representing the principle said something to their favorite service providers.

Principal: How is Mr F?
Service Provider C: He's doing ok. He sends his regards...

Principal: Heard you guys are shifting to a bigger place.
Service Provider C: Ya loor. Thank to you guys for giving us the business.

Principal: Why isn't mr F here? Well, if he is here we won't talk about business lah kan?

Service Provider C; Hahahahaha...you are right....

Then the principal turned his attention to my colleague with a straight face.

Principal: And you, what's your name again? Your company kan, very slow, very late, reports no quality, etc..etc..etc...How can you expect us to pay you when your service is slow, no quality. You guys better be careful. You will be strike off the panel if you do not buck up.

My Colleague: Yes Mr A. We understand and we will keep on improving.

Principal: Don't just say lah. Do it lah.

My colleague. Yes Mr A. Understood.

Principal: Learn from Service Provider C lah. You haaa.....very slow...The others also are very slow. I'm very disappointed. Etc...etc....

So he went on and on giving comments this and that to all the service providers except for one (let's call it service provider C).

When my colleague came back from the meeting, we had a chat about it. I even look at our statistic report that the principal claim we are slow. We are slow but statiscally only 1 out of 20 reports. That's not bad I think. We are not machines that are expected to be 100 correct all the time. Plus, out of 100 surveys, we are doing it according to the standards that were required by the principal. Nothing out of the extraordinary.

I then ask him, this principal seems to know Mr F (Service Provider C) very well eh? The answer was, yes lah, the principal has been taken care of handsomely by Mr F, how can he not be nice to Mr F? What about us I ask? Well, for us is only, receive the assignment, do the survey diligently and submit the report. No relationship be it personal or professional with the principal whatsoever....(perhaps that's where we are lacking)

So, I came to a conclusion, in some ways, in this business, you have to take care of your principals to get a bigger share of the pie. You can beg till the cows come home but if you are not giving him anything, don't expect to get the business. Sad but true. You can have all the MBAs, PHDs, ACCAs, ACAs, or whatever, but if you don't fill their pockets with brown envelop, you won't get a single business...I'm not saying all of them are like that....

Perhaps, we, ourselves could start giving by sending them a lorry load of durians at their office tomorrow. Hahahaha....

It's sad...but that's the reality of it nowadays....

And I'm sorry to even write this, for the principal, it must have felt very good when you have the power and authority to instruct people like us eh? You must be super proud that we, the service providers, come up to you and practically beg for business. Well, sometimes you're up and sometimes you're down....

Rant over....