Few wks back, an expat friend asked me 'Why Singaporean can job-hop for a pathetic meagre amount of SGD200?'. So i answered her 'Dear, if your salary is USD20000/mth, of course it's not a lot of money. But if you salary is SGD2000/mth, that's quite a sum of money!'.

In Singapore, apart from those elites that work for GLCs and real big MNCs, most likely you will be overworked and underpaid. I can't say this for all ppl but at least for myself, a guy without a degree. I remembered i went for this very interview at a huge accounting company for a post of support technician. The job scope of supporting more than 1000 staff. When i said i wanted a salary of SGD2000/mth (with 4+ yrs of relevant working experience), the interviewer was in a shock and immediately asked this favourite question 'How much lower can you go?'. Not sounding haughty, i told him i'm not interested in this job at all judging from the scale of work and salary.

Maybe the Gahment ppl never realised that there are certain job that Singaporean can't do. Those job that are very lowly paid and long uncertain hours. Yes i agree that it's better to have a job than not. But in the end, u must realise that you may sacrifice all your time and life to work for real peanuts pay (not some SGD600000/yr, my dear). Don't we all have families, friends and a life??? The job i mentioned would have taken all these away from me if i ever lower that already paltry salary request and take on the job (god bless, i didn't). That job is more suitable for ppl from our neighbouring countries and i'm sure they will laugh their back off if that company offers them SGD1200/mth. They will be rich back home when they decide to call it a day and go home. Isn't that true???

Lucky and thank god that i have a very good job now. This is just a recall of incidents after my expat friend asked me that question. Did you face the same prob as me? Let's hope not.