The seventh month is almost here. Walk around any estate and you'll already see joss paper burning by the roadside, offerings left on the pavement for the wandering spirits.
The Hungry Ghost Festival is coming.
So here are my ghost stories. No pontianak or void-deck orbs 馃ぃ
Table of Contents
- The Boss Who Monologues
- RIP Work From Home
- The Tip Jar
- "We're a Family"
- "Fast-Paced, Dynamic Environment"
- The 6pm Stares
- Forced Team Bonding
- Why I Started My Own Agency
The Boss Who Monologues
The calendar said 15 minutes. The clock says 10:45.
He's still talking.
Lately it's about AI. He found ChatGPT three weeks ago and now every meeting is a TED talk on how it changes everything.
He has not actually shipped a single thing with it.
Ask him about Google's new AI impressions report and watch the monologue stall.
Other days it's the news feature. That one write-up he got years ago, retold for the nth time, same story, same humble-brag, same room full of people who've heard it twice already.
Nobody has moved. Nobody can.
The deadline didn't move either. Only your morning did.
RIP Work From Home
For two years the work got done from home. Then one or two people ruined it for everyone.
You know the type. Work comes in late, or comes in sloppy.
Slow to reply the whole afternoon, like they only just woke up. Somehow always the last to join the meeting.
Management noticed. Management overcorrected.
So the whole team got hauled back, five days, effective Monday. Punished for someone else's slacking.
Pour one out 馃
The Tip Jar
Late by three minutes? That's two dollars in the jar.
Peak-hour MRT crush? Two dollars.
Sudden downpour? Two dollars.
The jar never sleeps.
Funny how the same energy never shows up for the unpaid hour you hand back every single night. The jar only points one way.
"We're a Family"
You'll find it on the careers page, right there in the job description. "We're a family."
Everyone knows what it signals now. It's the line that turns up right before the docked pay for leaving at 6, and the PIP the week after you ask about your bonus.
Real families don't ask for any of that. When an agency leads with "family," read it as a warning label.
"Fast-Paced, Dynamic Environment"
Every job ad says it. Here's the translation.
Fast-paced means no process. Dynamic means no handover.
"Wears many hats" means one salary, three jobs, and a manager who calls it a growth opportunity.
You're not being stretched. You're being taken for a ride 馃ぁ
The 6pm Stares
You finish your work. You pack up.
You stand.
Eight heads turn in perfect sync. Dead eyes.
One of them says it out loud: "Half day ah?"
So you sit back down and pretend to look busy until someone more senior leaves first. That isn't culture.
That's a haunting with a seating plan.
Forced Team Bonding
It's a workday, but you're not working. You're at Sentosa, herded into the same team-bonding camp games you used to take MC to skip back in school (I thought I graduated lol) 馃檲
Or it's the escape room. Or laser tag.
A grown adult with a mortgage, crawling around "building trust" with colleagues who won't reply to your emails on Monday.
Nobody asked to be here. Everybody's forcing a smile.
You can't manufacture bonding, but they will keep trying.
Why I Started My Own Agency
I lived most of these, and one day I decided I was done.
So I started my own thing. No AI monologues or "family" on the careers page.
Just people doing good SEO work while sipping matcha in Japan, or getting a massage in Bangkok 馃槑
We're a Singapore SEO expert team that would rather show results than talk about them. We do SEO services that actually move rankings, and as a GEO agency in Singapore, we get you cited in AI answers too.
Want a real SEO consultant instead of a 45-minute monologue? That part we can do.
Found your agency's ghost in this list? Come exorcise it with us.
