SINGAPORE: A Singaporean employee recently shared online that his colleague abruptly quit after receiving what he felt were minor complaints.
In a post on the r/askSingapore forum on Friday (Jun 13), the employee explained that he works in a small SME with around 20 staff members. His colleague, who had been with the company for about 10 months, received two complaints about his work earlier in the week. However, the employee believed both trivial matters had already been settled without much fuss.
“The first issue wasn’t even his fault — it was a paperwork mix-up that’s already been settled. Nobody got blamed, and it was resolved without drama,” he wrote.
“The second issue was that he forgot to take a photo of an item. Again, super minor — the customer could easily help us with the photo, and our company already said it’s not a big deal. They just reminded him to be more careful next time.”
Despite this, the colleague apparently took the feedback very personally. “He felt like his work reputation was affected and straightaway drafted a resignation letter and sent it to our boss — all within the same day.”
The employee added that his colleague would often speak about how younger people today were not able to handle hardship, which made the sudden resignation feel even more unexpected.
“He always talked about how ‘young people nowadays cannot 吃苦’ (can’t take hardship). Yet now, just because of two small incidents (one of which wasn’t even his fault), he resigned,” the employee said.
“Now, if he leaves, guess who has to take over his tasks, plus my own, plus train the new guy when he comes in? Yah, me lor. But that’s life, I guess. Anyway, just wanted to get this off my chest.”
“Nothing wrong with it; he doesn’t owe the company anything.”
In the comments section, several Redditors weighed in with their own interpretations of the situation.
One Redditor suggested that the colleague might just be super serious about his work, like the “siao onz” type who takes full responsibility for anything that goes wrong and has really high standards for himself. So even if the issues were minor, it might’ve hit him harder than expected.
Others felt that the resignation might’ve been on his mind for a while already, and the recent issues just gave him the push he needed to go.
One wrote, “It’s from your perspective. He could have already been thinking of resigning previously and taken this chance to quit. Nothing wrong with it; he doesn’t owe the company anything. Don’t make it sound like his fault; he CAN leave the company anytime. If you can’t handle it/have issues, tell your superiors; he has nothing to do with it.”
Another added, “As you said, it wasn’t his fault. It sounds like his boss blamed him for it, and heis super unhappy mentally about many things already.”
Meanwhile, a third Redditor urged him to also leave the company, writing, “Bro, leave la, if you manage to survive the double workload, they will not hire another person. It’s the way of the world now.”
In other news, a daughter took to Reddit to vent about how mentally and emotionally draining it’s been living with her mum, who she believes may be struggling with undiagnosed mental health issues.
Posting anonymously on the r/askSingapore subreddit, she shared that her mum often displays signs of depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem.
“She’s always overthinking, sad or angry about something,” the daughter wrote. When we get into arguments—which can be over very minor things because she’s very sensitive—she would think of herself as the victim and how life is super hard for her.”
Featured image by Depositphotos (for illustration purposes only)