A Little of the Old

So… my first full day at Airline House… all I remember of this place was my visit to a certain warehouse many years back. The tedium of the police checks, the cramped warehouse. Yet, Airline House brought back with it a certain sense of familiarity. For a moment this morning, I could not quite place it. After all, this place should be foreign ground, why was it that I felt so vaguely comfortable? Then it hit me… this reminded me of my days of old, doing warehouse operations. Striping aside the “glamour” of the aviation industry, at the end of the day, we are back to basics… and it’s still a logistics environment. Chunks of empty space, 1970s office interior, a predominantly aged workforce, with its token young staff to handle all the IT related work. Even the office canteen with its 50cents coffee brings back memories.

Walking along the long stretches of corridor in my T-Shirt, pants and open toe shoes (dress down!)… I felt quite at home here. In a way, time has suddenly slowed down. To a certain extent, the toughest part of this assignment will be to handle my boss… and of course, to get my interviewees to understand the purpose behind my assignment… Talking to the various control owners was not an issue… they felt like colleagues to me... and soon we were chatting away about the problems that come with day to day operations, and the fire fighting that is inevitable in an operations environment. However, when we came to the crux of the matter, mainly, what is the main objective of the job, and what are the controls in place… we were both temporary stumped. And it did strike me that even now, with my supposed understanding, I would be hard placed to put to words what I did during my ops days, and what were the so called “controls” that were in place then to ensure that I did my job well.

After all, life as an operations executive… if someone down the line does not screw up… I will have nothing to do. :) But there are really no controls in place to ensure that people down the line do not screw up. It’s a sad fact… but paperwork is often done as an after effect, almost never simultaneously with the physical inventory flow. It doesn’t come as a surprise to me than that so many of the big corporations are susceptible to fraud.

As I type, am kind of missing the days of old… the laid back environment, the adrenaline that comes from all the fire fighting, and the sense of accomplishment every time a “fire” is put out… but would I ever go back to such a job? Am not really sure… in a certain way, each step that I have taken since a year ago has been a step further... Cannot quite say that I am not enjoying what I do now, just a sense that it is different, and a little sense of loss...