I would like to share about an email I received from my boss
back when I was an intern at an international bank in 2010.
Initially, there were only three of us in the department
before S joined. S was scheduled to start work on the 20th, a
Wednesday. The day before, on the 19th, I received an email from my
boss (who was then overseas), he wanted me to help S settle in and in his own
words, asked me to “help get her a subway
card”.
(*At this point, I would like to ask the reader to take note of the first thing that comes to his/her mind with regards to the word “Subway”.)
For a brief moment, I was stunned because the first thing
that came to my mind was the sandwich chain “Subway” and I knew they did not
have any promotional card or any card in fact. However, I quickly realized that
my boss was actually referring to the MRT.
Although the word “subway” means the train service, I feel
that my boss should have used the term “MRT” instead. To be fair to him, he is
an American. However, he has lived and worked in Singapore for the past 15 years and on that basis, I
believe that he should have known that Singaporeans do not refer to the train
service as subway.
This might be a very small issue but it certainly led to
some confusion.
Therefore, my question is, as future managers (since the
majority of us are Business students), do you think it would have been better
if my boss used the term “MRT” instead?
Please let me know what you think. I will post my thoughts
on this matter either on Sunday night or Monday morning.
Have a great weekend!
Cheers!
Joey
