An Excellent Perodua Automobile Technician
On the morning of December 21, 2005, I met with a minor accident.
On that day I was driving to Penang Island using my daughter’s Myvi car. After squeezing through the bottled neck of Penang Bridge Toll, a lorry suddenly emerged from behind to knock off the right hand side-mirror of our car. The plastic support holding the mirror casing broke. The mirror casing was left dangling, knocking against the door intermittently as the car moved. As a car without a side mirror made driving unsafe, I had to get it replaced as soon as possible.
I made a phone call to my brother- in- law who was in the automobile spare parts business in Kuala Lumpur to send me a set of mirror .The set of mirror was sent to a spare parts shop at Butterworth which I collected on December 24, 2005. After picking up the mirror, my daughter and I rushed to the Perodua Automobile Service Centre at Seberang Jaya. By the time we reached there, it was already 1.36 pm. We thought we could get the mirror fixed after 2.00 pm when the technicians resumed work. We did not realize until much later that it was a Saturday afternoon and the working hours for the day had ended at 12.30 noon. If we could not get the mirror fixed on that day itself we would have to wait for a few more days until the following Tuesday on December 27, 2005, when the Christmas holidays were over. Luckily, at that time there remained a few technicians at the service centre. They were busy with their stock checking. A technician by the name of Mohamad approached us. We told him our problem. He studied our case carefully and offered to help. He fixed our old mirror in silver paint casing to a new black plastic support. In this way it had saved us RM 50 for the cost of repainting the new mirror casing, from black colour to silver. Of course, it was more tedious and time consuming to do that than to fix an entirely new set of mirror. It took him almost one and a half hours to complete the task.
After the job was done, I tried to show my appreciation of his work by giving him a token sum of money. He refused to accept the money by reiterating in Malay language that “saya hanya mahu tolong sahaja.” [“I just wanted to help you”].
It was very kind of Mr. Mohamad to help us at that very appropriate moment. Otherwise, we had to wait for a few more days to make another trip all the way from Bukit Mertajam to Seberang Jaya to get the job done.
Mr. Mohamad is an exemplar to be laudable by many others including myself, for his work ethics which is very rare, and which I would say is on the brink of extinction in this very century. The fact that he was willing to attend to our car readily and voluntarily was a clear-cut testimony that he performed his work professionally and he treated his clients compassionately and equally irrespective of race, colour or creed. Rarely could one find a subordinate like him who would stretch extra hours on his own free will without being supervised. By trying to fix the old mirror with silver body paint to a new mirror support of black in colour, he helped us to save the cost of additional paint work by RM 50. In order to do that he needed extra effort, extra time. This showed that he would rather sacrifice his time so as to provide the best service he could render to his client. Frankly speaking and sorry to acknowledge that I cannot recall how he looks like now. Nevertheless, his good deeds and attitude will forever be treasured deep in my heart. The only way I can show my heartfelt thank to him is to post it on my blog to show the world that in Malaysia we still have a proud son whose name is Mr. Mohamad.
On the morning of December 21, 2005, I met with a minor accident.
On that day I was driving to Penang Island using my daughter’s Myvi car. After squeezing through the bottled neck of Penang Bridge Toll, a lorry suddenly emerged from behind to knock off the right hand side-mirror of our car. The plastic support holding the mirror casing broke. The mirror casing was left dangling, knocking against the door intermittently as the car moved. As a car without a side mirror made driving unsafe, I had to get it replaced as soon as possible.
I made a phone call to my brother- in- law who was in the automobile spare parts business in Kuala Lumpur to send me a set of mirror .The set of mirror was sent to a spare parts shop at Butterworth which I collected on December 24, 2005. After picking up the mirror, my daughter and I rushed to the Perodua Automobile Service Centre at Seberang Jaya. By the time we reached there, it was already 1.36 pm. We thought we could get the mirror fixed after 2.00 pm when the technicians resumed work. We did not realize until much later that it was a Saturday afternoon and the working hours for the day had ended at 12.30 noon. If we could not get the mirror fixed on that day itself we would have to wait for a few more days until the following Tuesday on December 27, 2005, when the Christmas holidays were over. Luckily, at that time there remained a few technicians at the service centre. They were busy with their stock checking. A technician by the name of Mohamad approached us. We told him our problem. He studied our case carefully and offered to help. He fixed our old mirror in silver paint casing to a new black plastic support. In this way it had saved us RM 50 for the cost of repainting the new mirror casing, from black colour to silver. Of course, it was more tedious and time consuming to do that than to fix an entirely new set of mirror. It took him almost one and a half hours to complete the task.
After the job was done, I tried to show my appreciation of his work by giving him a token sum of money. He refused to accept the money by reiterating in Malay language that “saya hanya mahu tolong sahaja.” [“I just wanted to help you”].
It was very kind of Mr. Mohamad to help us at that very appropriate moment. Otherwise, we had to wait for a few more days to make another trip all the way from Bukit Mertajam to Seberang Jaya to get the job done.
Mr. Mohamad is an exemplar to be laudable by many others including myself, for his work ethics which is very rare, and which I would say is on the brink of extinction in this very century. The fact that he was willing to attend to our car readily and voluntarily was a clear-cut testimony that he performed his work professionally and he treated his clients compassionately and equally irrespective of race, colour or creed. Rarely could one find a subordinate like him who would stretch extra hours on his own free will without being supervised. By trying to fix the old mirror with silver body paint to a new mirror support of black in colour, he helped us to save the cost of additional paint work by RM 50. In order to do that he needed extra effort, extra time. This showed that he would rather sacrifice his time so as to provide the best service he could render to his client. Frankly speaking and sorry to acknowledge that I cannot recall how he looks like now. Nevertheless, his good deeds and attitude will forever be treasured deep in my heart. The only way I can show my heartfelt thank to him is to post it on my blog to show the world that in Malaysia we still have a proud son whose name is Mr. Mohamad.
3 comments:
My friend Marilyn Jenkins wrote:
'I have read your blog and am duly impressed with Mr M. What a gentleman and the way in which he handled both the job and his attitude to you and your daughter was exceptional. Of course, you are right it is a rareity to find such a willingness to serve....these days people are seemingly out for themselves and it's good to know that some people do have good and generous natures. Thankyou for sending me the details I found it very enlightening...take care, Marilyn....'
What a lovely man. Perhaps he was an angel?
All the best, Heidi
This story reminds me of a person such as myself. It's generally in some people nature and hearts to want to help others without asking for anything in return. Mr.Mohamad knows this and he knows that bringing joy to the heart of others also brings joy and many blessing to him in spirit.
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