So what happened? Well, the normal civilians i.e. my brother and myself were pulled in to assist, hence the topic of my story today: Common Sense. We arrived at the party at around 2030, 30 minutes after the said event was due to begin (well, the invite did say 2000 but who arrives on time for these kind of things correct?). After about 15 minutes of mingling, I decided to go find a drink. I was a little surprised that there weren't any waiters walking around with trays of drinks. So, after a little snooping around, I found the drinks table and lo and behold, there wasn't anyone manning the table. Due to my luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, my mum magically appeared next to me and told me to man the table... she immediately grabbed my handbag and pushed me behind the table. Did I have a choice? NO. So there I was, dressed in my "party gear" serving drinks.
Seeing that I have over 4 years experience working behind the bar (whilst I was in uni), it wasn't hard for me to organise the drinks table. It was a fairly simple procedure as there weren't many drinks to organise. On the menu, there was the necessary Coke, Sprite & 7-Up, orange juice, mineral water, coffee & tea and tuak (a Malay term for Malaysian ceremonial wine, served in little shot type glasses). Whilst the table looked neat and clean, it wasn't well organised i.e. it wasn't efficient. One had to reach out, stretch out etc. in order to make a simple drink. Plus, there was limited space to move (a more horizontally challenged person could not have fit behind the makeshift "bar").
Thankfully, there were 3 maids on hand to serve the drinks... i.e. to walk around with trays, distributing the drinks to the masses and to clear the dirty drinking utensils. These 3 ladies are the catalyst of my story today.
Common sense. What is it? Well, I think that common sense can be defined as good judgement, something which is not based on specialised knowledge. It isn't something which you can learn from books.
Now, I like to think that I am a person who has common sense e.g. I tend to do things in the most efficient and logical manner. As such, as I had 3 "helpers", I had two of them serving the drinks and collecting the dirty cups. The 3rd, well, she was assigned to fill the clean glasses with ice and to clean the dirty ones. When I got behind the bar, the 3 of them were standing around doing nothing as they didn't have an instrument with which to scoop up the ice with... can you believe that?? Sheesh... anyways, spying some tea spoons behind the bar, I immediately took two and started scooping the ice. Taking my hint, one immediately went back to the kitchen and brought out some bigger spoons.
I then started making the drinks and lining them up i.e. 2 rows of coke, 2 rows of 7-UP etc. The servers were told to take a mixed variety of the drinks and start distributing them. Whilst the rows of drinks kept disappearing, I was making new ones. The ones at the back were moved to the front and new ones were then dispensed behind them. As 7-UP and water are clear liquids, I put a can of 7-UP behind the row of the 7-UP glasses and a bottle of water behind the water filled ones, to indicate what was what. Simple yes? You would think that they would understand yes? NO... NO... a thousand times NO!! The two drinks waiters couldn't remember which row was which row, despite the indications and despite the fact that I had told them repeatedly.
Nevermind... as the night progressed, things got steadily worse. For example, I noticed the level of ice in the cooler was steadily diminishing... hence, I had to ask them to bring in more ice. Naturally, as fate would have it, they didn't have any more ice and it didn't occur to the maids to get someone to go get some. One of the in-house drivers had to go get some whilst ice cube trays were frantically being emptied into the cooler. Then, we ran out of glasses... they had to be told to go find any plastic or paper cups that were available in the house!
As there were a limited supply of cups and glasses, the two "waitresses" were told to pick up any empty ones that they spied and get them cleaned. This they did... they brought them back to the bar (which didn't have access to a tap). Now, the "bar" was about 8 feet long. The maid allocated to clean the glasses was on my right... to my horror, her method of cleaning the glasses was dipping them into a bucket of water and rinsing them out. I asked her about the soap etc. and she very nicely told me that it wasn't possible to clean the glasses thoroughly and that in that household, they do things the way they do things... whatever that meant. I didn't want to argue with her as it was all that I could do keep up with the demand of the masses. Needless to say, I got myself one glass and hung on to it.
Anyways, the dirty glasses would come back and despite being told, the waitresses would ALWAYS put them to my left... where there was ample space. However, the glass cleaner was on my RIGHT. Also, I noticed the waitresses kept coming back to the bar armed with a tray on which there were always drinks on it. They would then deposit the unconsumed drinks on the table (not in the appropriate rows I might add) and pick up new ones, of the same sort. What's up with this? One actually came back with a tray fully ladened with with an assortment of drinks, put all the drinks back down and picked up one glass of coke and one glass of water and she then went back into the crowd. This I didn't understand.
Anyways, these 3 maids have a few things in common. One, they are all females 
and two, they all came from some village in out back East Malaysia, the rural area. I think that they got some sort of basic education and they were all very soft spoken. As the night progressed, it became abundantly clear that common sense is a virtue that these three ladies didn't possess in abundance.
Now, why is that? Is common sense a trait with which one is born with? Is it a trait that one inherits from ones' parents? Is it genetically encoded in our DNA? Is it something that is acquired as one moves through the passage of life? Is the level of our common sense attributed to our social surroundings? Perhaps it could be linked to our educational system i.e. in Malaysia, one is not thought to think and analyse, rather, they are thought to memorize. A majority of students who go through this system don't utilise their in-built cognitive abilities. Thus, after a period of time, they lose it... and that results in a next-to-zero level of common sense.
Unfortunately, I don't know the answer to this question. It could be one reason, or another. It could be a combination of a lot of factors. However, I do know that those who do have a higher degree of common sense move up the career ladder faster than those without, despite educational qualifications.
