C-O-O

Her name is E Kao. Ya, I mean the name in IC. If you know Hokkien, you will know E Kao means dumb. And she is dumb indeed.

In the office, we call her C-O-O, which stands for Chief Operation Officer. Emmm ..CP was the one who gave her this nickname.

C-O-O was born in Taiping, she is an orphan. Before she came to KL, she worked in a Kopitiam. She was not paid and even not being treated well by the Taukeh, because she is dumb!! Sounds pathetic? Yap, this was what my boss’s father (whom we normally address him as Uncle) felt as well. Thereafter, C-O-O was brought to KL. She worked in my boss’s restaurant which was next to our office.

The restaurant has been stopped from operation about 2 years ago. Uncle wanna sent C-O-O back to Taiping. She refused, begging for staying back. End up, my boss allowed her to stay here and work as a cleaner in our office.

The reason why she is called C-O-O is she likes to supervise us, which even my boss doesn’t do. She reaches office quite early in the morning, and wait for us to open the door. Sometimes we are late; she “grumbles” us by keep pointing to our watch or clock. She likes to check why somebody is not working; she likes to scold us if our stuff is not arranged in order; and she likes to bug us when we are busy.. Don’t you think she is like a Chief Operation Officer? To ensure the office operates well, haha ..

C-O-O is a pretty smart old folk. She is not educated but she is capable. She assists us to do simple admin works such as stamping envelopes, putting stickers on the brochures and moving the boxes etc ..You only need to demonstrate once to her, she knows what to do then. Don’t be astonished if you have been told that she can “read” papers. Of course, not the “real” reading. She can figure out what happens by seeing the picture and then confirms with people around her. In fact, her hobby is …gossiping. She likes to update me lots of fighting and relationship stories which most of the time I do not understand what she means. But I still nod to her just to show some response. (Well, everyone in our office knows a wee bit about sign language, we were forced to learn in order to communicate to her !!)

C-O-O can cook well, especially our favourite northern region dishes. Once in a while, normally during festive season, she cooks and all of us have our reunion lunch in the office. Sometimes, we are too lazy to go out for lunch, just taking down the orders in a paper and assign her to go out to “tapao”. She likes to do so or else she feels boring if merely sitting in the office most of the day.

C-O-O is about 70 years of age, I guess. Nonetheless, she is still strong and eagerly to learn new things. She always checks with me about the structure and feature of the office equipments. Once, she asked me why do I have a mouse pad and my colleague doesn’t have? ^^^^_^^^^ _^^^^

Alas, C-O-O our beloved C-O-O, we are proud of your smartness, what a pity you are dumb!