My mother didn't know that I'd left the bank for Petronas. She wasn't aware that I'd worked in a bank to begin with, so there's really no point in telling her that I'd switched jobs. Anyway Petronas was still new
and unknown. It’s not yet a household name. So when I finally told my mother that I'd joined Petronas, she thought I was joining the Royal Malaysian Navy.
I think Petronas in 1979 was smaller and slimmer than modern-day Petronas Dagangan. Total headcount was less than a thousand, with an Executive Chairman (Tan Sri Abdullah Mohd. Salleh) and a Managing Director (Dato' Rastam Hadi) at the top. The whole company was organized in a vertical, text-book structure: Board, Divisions, Departments, Sections. Nothing complex and convoluted like it is now: Business, Business, Business. Staff titles were downright old-school: MD, Director, GM, Manager, Section Head, Management Executive. And only one MD, and head of Carigali was a mere GM. (Compare that to 120 MDs and 1560 GMs in Carigali now). Presidents or Vice Presidents were quite unheard of in our country. The only President I knew of at that time was US President Jimmy Carter. And President Suharto, of course.
I think Petronas in 1979 was smaller and slimmer than modern-day Petronas Dagangan. Total headcount was less than a thousand, with an Executive Chairman (Tan Sri Abdullah Mohd. Salleh) and a Managing Director (Dato' Rastam Hadi) at the top. The whole company was organized in a vertical, text-book structure: Board, Divisions, Departments, Sections. Nothing complex and convoluted like it is now: Business, Business, Business. Staff titles were downright old-school: MD, Director, GM, Manager, Section Head, Management Executive. And only one MD, and head of Carigali was a mere GM. (Compare that to 120 MDs and 1560 GMs in Carigali now). Presidents or Vice Presidents were quite unheard of in our country. The only President I knew of at that time was US President Jimmy Carter. And President Suharto, of course.
My young and restless heart was all set for a rollicking life among the masseurs
and gamblers in Pudu area, only to find out that I'd to report at the old Domestic Marketing
Division (DMD) at MIDF building, right behind Ampang Park. If you're interested, my job title was Management Executive. Not very inspiring, I know, but nobody complained. My starting salary was RM1060. One thousand and
sixty. No car, no driver, no girl friend. It's a lot actually if you compare with my friend in the government. He was paid RM 750 (Don't laugh). A link house at Bangsar Park at that time could be had for
about RM80,000 or less. Now it's RM1.2million. A purchasing power parity based
on this property alone means my salary was RM16,000 in today's money before GST and toll. Tell me
how much is Petronas paying a chartered accountant of England and Wales now?
DMD was actually one of the two Divisions under Marketing Division. The
other one was International Marketing Division (IMD). I didn't know a lot about IMD, but my impression was that IMD people were mostly overseas graduates and their parents were ambassadors. On average they dressed and spoke smoother and sharper than the DMD mob. You'd easily mistake IMD for a modelling agency.
Don't get me wrong. IMD guys were a lovable lot, and they're all pleasant, spirited and as confused as we were about where Petronas was heading. One of them was a certain Shamsul Azhar Abbas.
As the name suggests, DMD was largely domestic, you know, Kelantan and the stuff. Under DMD, there were three departments: Sales and Planning, Supply and Distribution and Engineering. No Finance, no HR. The head-office provided the services for free. You're right, life was certainly more fulfilling without Finance and HR in your midst.
As you already know, DMD would later grow and evolve into PDSB and finally PDB, while IMD became Petco and finally (still) Petco. With a shared history and office space, it's only natural for PDB and Petco to strike a very healthy and friendly and lifelong business relationship. Until today Petco continues to supply PDB gasoline, diesel, LPG, jet fuel, and probably jets, all at higher-than-market prices, pocketing plenty of profit. Not bad for a one-time fashion house.
Don't get me wrong. IMD guys were a lovable lot, and they're all pleasant, spirited and as confused as we were about where Petronas was heading. One of them was a certain Shamsul Azhar Abbas.
As the name suggests, DMD was largely domestic, you know, Kelantan and the stuff. Under DMD, there were three departments: Sales and Planning, Supply and Distribution and Engineering. No Finance, no HR. The head-office provided the services for free. You're right, life was certainly more fulfilling without Finance and HR in your midst.
As you already know, DMD would later grow and evolve into PDSB and finally PDB, while IMD became Petco and finally (still) Petco. With a shared history and office space, it's only natural for PDB and Petco to strike a very healthy and friendly and lifelong business relationship. Until today Petco continues to supply PDB gasoline, diesel, LPG, jet fuel, and probably jets, all at higher-than-market prices, pocketing plenty of profit. Not bad for a one-time fashion house.
Back to DMD and 1979, Sales and Planning was by far the biggest, and
the busiest, department. It had four Sections: Retail, Industrial, Home Fuels, Lubricants
and Fertilizer. I was placed in, you've to believe this, Fertilizer Section.
Understandably I was initially confused about this fertilizer thing, I mean Petronas
had hardly started its oil business and now we were going into farming.
Apparently Petronas was planning to build a urea fertilizer plant in Bintulu or
somewhere and we were supposed to handle the marketing part. I found out later
that urea was (and still is) gas based, so there was indeed a connection.
The Head of Fertilizer Section, Mohd Sarit Hj Yusoh, was a fun guy. He warmed me up with jokes about Kelantan and Kelantanese. We hit it off in no time. I was his only staff, so he'd no choice but to like me. Three more guys in bell-bottoms joined me two months later to give him more options. But he left afterwards to start a business and finally found his true calling in politics. Fertilizer and politics, you can only guess which one is more fun.
The Head of Fertilizer Section, Mohd Sarit Hj Yusoh, was a fun guy. He warmed me up with jokes about Kelantan and Kelantanese. We hit it off in no time. I was his only staff, so he'd no choice but to like me. Three more guys in bell-bottoms joined me two months later to give him more options. But he left afterwards to start a business and finally found his true calling in politics. Fertilizer and politics, you can only guess which one is more fun.
It's not just our section that got bigger. Scores of rookies with heavy
hair-do came in the following months to fill up all Sections. We had new faces every other week. At this
rate it’s only a matter of time before the whole floor would cave in. But this
recruiting rage just went on and on, and I'd to quickly learn some man-name
matching skills. I said "man-name" because I can't recall any new lady executives coming through, which led me to suspect that the Manager and all the Section Heads were chronically anti-social.
Before I forget, the Manager was Abd Rahman Abdullah, who lived up to his unimaginative name by being constantly serious and studious and ahead of us. It's a good strategy for an upstart like me to avoid him. I figured he had all the authority to extend my probation to ten years, so why take the risk. Later I found out that he's a Colombo Scholar (meaning he was really serious and studious) and he's my secondary school super senior (meaning he was actually not serious and not studious).
Before I forget, the Manager was Abd Rahman Abdullah, who lived up to his unimaginative name by being constantly serious and studious and ahead of us. It's a good strategy for an upstart like me to avoid him. I figured he had all the authority to extend my probation to ten years, so why take the risk. Later I found out that he's a Colombo Scholar (meaning he was really serious and studious) and he's my secondary school super senior (meaning he was actually not serious and not studious).
Retail Section had the biggest share of the new staff. This was
pretty much where all the action was, if you consider drawing imaginary pumps and non-stop talking about service stations as action. The Section was crowded and rowdy with
shoulder-to-shoulder jumbo-jet sitting formation. Once you're behind your desk,
you couldn't get out. If you wanted to go out to the toilet, everybody in that
row had to go to the toilet.
The Retail Section Head was one Ismail Kamari, who impressed me as a no-nonsense and go-to guy, and a perfect ruler for the Retail empire. Born in boomtown and bilingual Batu Pahat, he's all passion and little patience. Soon enough Retail began to dominate the department. The Section Head was the de facto deputy department manager. And, you know what, he also had a de facto deputy. This de facto deputy to the de facto deputy department manager was a clever-looking LSE alum named Anuar Ahmad. I heard he was previously a hard-tackling rugby player, so I'd to really choose my jokes when he was around. The rest were, well, just functionaries and foot soldiers like me, mostly local graduates with minimal meaningful experience. We talked and thought mostly in Malay or Javanese but wrote in English. It took me one full day to draft my first memo. My boss thought it was a poem.
The Retail Section Head was one Ismail Kamari, who impressed me as a no-nonsense and go-to guy, and a perfect ruler for the Retail empire. Born in boomtown and bilingual Batu Pahat, he's all passion and little patience. Soon enough Retail began to dominate the department. The Section Head was the de facto deputy department manager. And, you know what, he also had a de facto deputy. This de facto deputy to the de facto deputy department manager was a clever-looking LSE alum named Anuar Ahmad. I heard he was previously a hard-tackling rugby player, so I'd to really choose my jokes when he was around. The rest were, well, just functionaries and foot soldiers like me, mostly local graduates with minimal meaningful experience. We talked and thought mostly in Malay or Javanese but wrote in English. It took me one full day to draft my first memo. My boss thought it was a poem.
One major upside about the open-plan office was that there's no
communication barrier across the department. The whole staff gelled and joked
around freely like one big family. We
took the old mini buses to work and had to endure a full-blast Anita Ward’s
disco monster "Ring My Bell" throughout the morning commute. I needed
exactly half an hour every morning to clear my head and unlearn the lyrics. I later discovered that only the Manager and Section Heads
were married and had cars, which probably explains that anti-social bit.
For the first time in my young life I came across a Float File. It was an evil incarnate and a devil's workshop rolled in one. We'd know what everyone in the department was doing well or not doing well or not
doing at all through a "Float File" that was passed around the
department. This vile file contained every memo that everybody wrote. The language and tone varied wildly with the writers, and your heart must be strong to read them all. Through this Float File system you'd get
found out quickly if you were from Kelantan or if you had Javanese genes.
Computers were a long way off, everything was either handwritten or typed or plain memorized. You could hear typewriter chatter almost non-stop from end to end. Typists were in great demand and we'd have to jockey and jump queue and beg them and flatter and fete them everyday. The first week, I could hear typewriter chatter in my sleep. Things settled down pretty quickly, all made easier by the now-defunct human right: freedom to smoke in office.
A boss and his boys huddling and puffing away was pretty standard those days. Cigarettes were so cheap with more than fifty brands competing in the market. Smokers in our department decided to buy only Benson & Hedges to minimize supply interruption. The non-buying smokers were unhappy with this one-brand policy which they saw as unfairly restricting their choice. The non-smokers were just unhappy with smokers, whether they were buying smokers or non-buying smokers. It was complicated, those days.
Computers were a long way off, everything was either handwritten or typed or plain memorized. You could hear typewriter chatter almost non-stop from end to end. Typists were in great demand and we'd have to jockey and jump queue and beg them and flatter and fete them everyday. The first week, I could hear typewriter chatter in my sleep. Things settled down pretty quickly, all made easier by the now-defunct human right: freedom to smoke in office.
A boss and his boys huddling and puffing away was pretty standard those days. Cigarettes were so cheap with more than fifty brands competing in the market. Smokers in our department decided to buy only Benson & Hedges to minimize supply interruption. The non-buying smokers were unhappy with this one-brand policy which they saw as unfairly restricting their choice. The non-smokers were just unhappy with smokers, whether they were buying smokers or non-buying smokers. It was complicated, those days.
Whoever or whomever or whomsoever had given the name "Sales and Planning" Department
must be celebrated for his ambition. There's very little sales to talk about. So it’s planning and more planning days on end. Everybody was busy
dreaming up or scratching up something (and smoking, don't forget). The
domestic market was firmly controlled by
global brands: Shell, Esso, BP, Mobil and Caltex. Shell was the market leader and all service stations were called Shell stations. An Esso station was a
Shell station. It's no secret that one of our missions at DMD was to break this
foreign stranglehold. Only nobody knew exactly how.
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Note:
I've been trying to recall the names of the 79ers, those who were in Sales and Planning Department in 1979. Due partly to time lapse and partly to memory lapse, I could only manage this partial list. I'll update as and when I stumble on new (lost) names:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note:
I've been trying to recall the names of the 79ers, those who were in Sales and Planning Department in 1979. Due partly to time lapse and partly to memory lapse, I could only manage this partial list. I'll update as and when I stumble on new (lost) names:
1.Abd Rahman Abdullah. 2. Ismail Kamari 3. Hamzah Bachik 4. Padzin Ahmad 5. Maram Mohamad 6. Leong Chung Thad 7. Anuar Ahmad 8. Ibrahim Marsidi 9. Ismail Harun 10. Abd Rahim Ismail 11.Rusli Zakaria 12.Mohd Sabir Harun 14. Syed Izhar 15.Mohd Razali Moksim 16.Shaharudin Bujang 17.Mohd Sabarudin Mohd Amin 18.Ahmad Abdullah 18. Raja Abd Halim 19. Che Yusoff Che Omar 20. Mohd Johari Ismail 21.Awang Osman Awang Jaya 22. Azman Dewa (Allahyarham)23. Rahim Kamil Sulaiman 24. Baharin Raoh 25. Zulkifli Mohd Ismail 26. Mohd Mazlan Sharudin
