This probably has nothing to do w/you Samouth, but here's my take. IMO, in SEA in general employers pretend to pay employees & employees pretend to work. Throwing bodies at the problem is counterproductive. Everyplace is overstaffed and due to low wages, most ignore customers, fuck around w/each other. or play on their phones. Most places 2 or 3 are doing nothing and 1 is working while customers wait. There are about 400% more employees than there would be in the West in service jobs & despite that, the service is far far worse. They make no money so the don't value their jobs. Stop over-staffing, make people actually work, & raise wages. Then the employee will probably value the job & actually do it. I was recently in a wine bar in BKK & there were 3 people at the bar, 7 bartenders (1 farang), maybe 5 in the dining room, & I couldn't get a drink. I had to get rude, stand up, & wave my arms. In SV at a joint on the beach there were 9 staff out front, the 2 of us were the ONLY customers, & they forgot to make or food ! Stuff like this happens to me almost daily. I've been all over the world and the service in CMB is the worst I've experienced anywhere.

Username Taken wrote:^^ That's worthy of its own thread.

Yeah, and an interesting economical question. Why does it seem that in undeveloped economies, there are "no jobs", while so much would need to be done, obviously?

What's a normal salary of a waiter here?

Firstly; what is an expat salary?

I know expat teachers working full time for $800, Country managers of medium sized operations on 8k a month.

A great many expat people in between 1.5k and 3k per month.

Two Khmer colleagues of mine make well over $1000 per month with no particularly impressive education behind them but an ability to manage people and multi-task, decent English skills, an untypically Khmer way of taking criticisim well, and willingness to put in a shitload of hours. Plus readily able to admit fault if something goes wrong, coupled with honesty.


They'll go far.

""What's a normal salary of a waiter here?""
60-120 depending on province/metro

Ok. Considering a per capita GDP of maybe 1300 in 2015, that seems relatively much. (Still hard to imagine to get by on USD 2/day, though, in a city.)

wackyjacky wrote:This probably has nothing to do w/you Samouth, but here's my take. IMO, in SEA in general employers pretend to pay employees & employees pretend to work. Throwing bodies at the problem is counterproductive. Everyplace is overstaffed and due to low wages, most ignore customers, fuck around w/each other. or play on their phones. Most places 2 or 3 are doing nothing and 1 is working while customers wait. There are about 400% more employees than there would be in the West in service jobs. They make no money so the don't value their jobs. Stop over-staffing, make people actually work, & raise wages. Then the employee will probably value the job & actually do it. I was recently in a wine bar in BKK & there were 3 people at the bar, 7 bartenders (1 farang), maybe 5 in the dining room, & I couldn't get a drink. I had to get rude, stand up, & wave my arms. In SV at a joint on the beach there were 9 staff out front, the 2 of us were the ONLY customers, & they forgot to make or food ! Stuff like this happens to me almost daily. I've been all over the world and the service in CMB is the worst I've experienced anywhere.

Used to be a big argument with my Khmer Managing director which lead to me leaving. Reason behind so much staff is 2 things. #1 Nepotism hire everyone from your riceville commune. #2 The more staff you have the bigger people will think your business is. No money coming in? HIRE MORE!! BIGGER OFFICE!

"Oh look he have many staff he do very good business"

The company was grossly overstaffed. Half of his staff did nothing but go on facebook and youtube. I tried to get the staff to do something ANYTHING!...I had the come into the conference room and teach them how to write an email in English. My M.D got mad at me and said "Cannot do....you push they wont want to do work and walk away from you" I laughed in his face after this comment. Okay M.D...UP TO YOU. I'll be sure to buy grilled bananas from you when you pass by my home. SEE YA LATER!

Just thinking about it is getting me pissed off on how dumb he was. But like he told me "Its Khmer culture".

the law of diminishing returns.

BawBawFett wrote:You could be "opening a can of worms" with this one!

Ok sir don't get me wrong. I always feel safe to speak and ask freely here. Every time i logged in CEO i felt like i was in another country surrounding by different people with different culture. I don't see any negative parts about this thread. It is not about racism.

Thanks everyone for taking your time to write all the suggestions and stuff. Personally i feel that i am quite success with my career. I got a job when i was studying in year three at the university. Actually it is not really easy to get a job when you are studying especially the one with organisation. To get a full time job with organisation is quite challenging. I guess i was lucky that time. Compare to other Cambodians i feel that i am making enough money to allow me to live quite comfortably in the city. However, you can't just stay still in one place or the same position. You need to do something to get ahead and to help yourself to go further. Again, i do appreciate the suggestions you guys put here and also the supportive and motivational messages.