Came across this interesting FB post about common norms in Singapore.
As job opportunities dwindle, retrenchments rise, and the cost of living soars, more people are feeling hopeless
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Full Story:
3am Stories - 14,000 Singaporeans Got Retrenched Last Year. You've Probably Sat In The Back Of One Of Their Grab Cars And Never Asked.
I got into a Grab last month. From my office at Fortune Centre back to my place. Late at night. Long ride. It was just one of those days where everything drained you and you don't want to think anymore.
The driver didn't talk. That's fine. Most don't. Most Grab rides in Singapore are just two people sharing silence and air-conditioning for twenty minutes.
But then I noticed the lanyard.
It was hanging from the rearview mirror. One of those corporate ones. The kind with a magnetic clip and a company logo. Blue. A tech company I recognised. Not one of the big ones, but big enough. The kind of company where you'd wear business casual and have a standing desk and complain about KPIs at Friday drinks.
The lanyard still had his staff pass attached. I could see his photo. Younger. Cleaner shave. Tie. The kind of photo you take on your first day when you still iron your shirt and believe the HR orientation speech about "family culture."
He caught me looking.
"Old habit," he said. "Haven't taken it down."
I didn't push. But he kept going. Like the lanyard had been waiting for someone to notice.
His name was Kenneth.
This is what he told me on the ride home.
-----------------------------
I was a Senior Project Manager. Twelve years at the same company. Started as an executive. Worked my way up. Twelve years. That's almost half my adult life.
I managed a team of eight. Regional accounts. Southeast Asia coverage. KL, Jakarta, Bangkok, Manila. I was on a plane every other week. I had a laptop bag with the airline priority tag still on it. I knew the Changi Terminal 3 lounge menu by heart.
You know the feeling when your work becomes your name? When people ask "what do you do?" and you don't say "I manage projects." You say "I'm a Senior PM at ____." Like the company is part of your body. Part of your introduction. Part of the way people decide if you're worth talking to.
That was me.
Last March... no, wait. Let me back up. January. January they started doing "restructuring."
You know the word.
Every Singaporean PMET knows the word.
It's the word they use before the word they actually mean, which is "some of you are going to lose your jobs and we haven't decided who yet, so everyone please continue working normally while we figure out whose life to ruin."
Two months of restructuring. Two months of smiling in meetings while your stomach is eating itself. Two months of watching colleagues get pulled into HR one by one.
𝐌𝐲 𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧 𝐜𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡.
A Thursday. 2 PM. Calendar invite: "Catch-up with HR and your manager." No agenda. You don't need an agenda. Everyone knows what "catch-up" means when HR is on the invite.
The meeting was eleven minutes. I know because I watched the clock the entire time. They said "role redundancy." They said "business realignment." They said "not a reflection of your performance." They said a lot of things that sounded like English but meant nothing.
They gave me a box. A brown box. Like the ones you use for house moving. I packed twelve years into it in under forty-five minutes. My mug. My desk plant. A photo of my daughter at my company D&D two years ago. She's wearing my lanyard around her neck like a necklace, laughing, too big for her, dragging on the floor.
I carried the box to my car. Sat in the carpark. Didn't start the engine. Just sat there.
Then I drove home.
My wife was at work. My daughter was at school. My son was at childcare. The flat was empty. I put the box in the storeroom. I closed the door.
And then I did something I'm not proud of.
I didn't tell them.
That first week. I woke up at the same time. 6:45. Showered. Put on a shirt. Not my office shirt, but a decent one. Drove out of the carpark at the same time my wife left for work. She went left toward Bukit Batok. I went right toward... nowhere.
I sat in the Jurong East library for six hours. Brought my laptop. Pretended I was working. Updated my resume seventy-three times. Applied for jobs. Twenty that first week. Then thirty the next.
No replies.
I came home at the same time every night. 7:15. Said the same things. "Work was okay." "Traffic was bad." "Ate at the canteen."
My wife would ask about my day and I'd make up meetings. Make up emails. Make up colleagues' names. I became a fiction writer and my only reader was the woman I married.
After two weeks, the savings started to feel real.
Mortgage.
Car loan.
My daughter's enrichment classes. My son's childcare fees. Insurance. Utilities. All the things you set up when you had a salary and never thought about because the money just went where it was supposed to go.
I applied for more jobs. Forty. Fifty. I lost count. I went for seven interviews in two months. Three of them, I could tell in the first five minutes they thought I was too old. I'm forty-six. In Singapore, forty-six in the job market is like being a three-year-old car trying to get a loan. Technically fine, but everyone wants the newer model.
𝑂𝑛𝑒 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤𝑒𝑟, 𝐼 𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠, 𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑘𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑡 𝑚𝑦 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑎𝑖𝑑, "𝑉𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒. 𝐵𝑢𝑡 𝑤𝑒'𝑟𝑒 𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑟𝑢𝑛𝑤𝑎𝑦."
Runway. Like I'm an airplane that's about to crash.
𝐁𝐲 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐡 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐫, 𝐈 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐛.
Here's the thing about Grab. It doesn't judge. The app doesn't care if you have a degree or a diploma or a PhD. It doesn't ask your age. It doesn't ask why you're here. You just drive. You pick up. You drop off. You earn.
I started with nights.
9 PM to 2 AM.
Because during the day, I was still "going to work." Still waking up at 6:45. Still putting on the shirt. Still sitting in the library. Still applying. Still pretending.
My wife never asked why I came to bed late. She assumed I was working on "a project." She's a nurse. She works shifts. Some nights she's home by 9, some nights she's not back till midnight. We're a family that runs on scheduling, not conversation.
The money from Grab wasn't enough to cover everything. But it softened the fall. I could still pay the mortgage. Still send my daughter for her Saturday art class. Still buy the same groceries. Still keep up the lie.
Because that's what this is.
A lie.
A lie that I maintain every single day with military precision.
My wardrobe has two sections now. The right side, the shirts and pants I wear when I leave the house in the morning, so my wife sees me "going to work." The left side, the t-shirt and shorts I change into at the library toilet before I start driving at night.
I keep a collared shirt in the car. In case my wife texts "I'm coming home early" and I need to look like I'm coming from the office. I have two phones. One personal. One for Grab. The Grab phone stays in the glove compartment. If my daughter ever opens it, she'll just think it's an old phone. She's nine. She doesn't ask.
My son is four. He doesn't know anything. He just knows Daddy goes to work and comes home and sometimes smells like the inside of a car. He's never been suspicious because he's never had a reason to be.
My wife.
My wife is the one who keeps me up at night.
She trusts me completely. That's the thing. She's never once questioned. Never checked my phone. Never asked to see a payslip. She tells her colleagues her husband works in tech. She tells her mother I got a promotion last year because I didn't have the guts to correct the version of me she'd already told them about.
I'm driving Grab in the country I was born in, living a lie to the people I love most, because I cannot... I physically cannot... look my wife in the eyes and say: "I lost my job five months ago and I've been pretending ever since."
Because in Singapore, your job is not what you do.
𝐈𝐭'𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞.
And if I don't have one. A real one, with a title and an email signature and a lanyard. Then what am I?
You know the worst part? It's not the money. We can survive. We'd have to downgrade. Pull the kids from some classes. Maybe sell the car. It would be tight but we'd be okay.
The worst part is the shame.
I can't say it any other way.
It's shame.
Pure, undiluted, Asian, Singaporean, male, forty-six-year-old shame.
My father drove a taxi his whole life. He raised three kids on that taxi. Worked fourteen-hour days. Never complained. Never took a holiday. He told me, I must have been fifteen, "Kenneth, I drive so that you don't have to. Study hard. Get a good job. Sit in the air-con office."
And I did. I did exactly what he said. For twenty years, I sat in the air-con office. And now I'm in the driver's seat of a Toyota Vios, at 1 AM, picking up drunk kids from Clarke Quay who don't even look at me, and I think about my father and I feel like I've wasted every sacrifice he ever made. I know that's not fair. I know driving isn't shameful. I know my father would tell me he's proud of me for doing whatever it takes to feed my family.
But the voice in my head doesn't sound like my father. It sounds like every aunty at every CNY gathering who ever asked, "So what do you do?"
It sounds like my mother-in-law, who once said, at dinner, in front of everyone, "Good thing Kenneth has a stable career. These days, so many people get retrenched." She said it like retrenchment was a disease. Something that happens to people who didn't try hard enough.
How do I tell her? How do I sit at her table and say, "Actually, Ma…I am one of those people now"?
So I don't. I smile. I nod. I say work is busy. And I drive.
Last month, something happened.
I was driving. Late. Maybe 1 AM. Picked up a passenger from Raffles Place. The CBD. He was in a suit. Tired. Loosened tie. The kind of guy I used to be.
He got in and I saw him glance at my lanyard. Still hanging from the mirror.
"You used to work there?" he asked.
"Long time ago," I said.
"I just got let go from ____," he said. Named his company. A bank. Big one. "Today was my last day. I don't know what I'm going to tell my wife."
I looked at him in the rearview mirror. He was maybe thirty-eight. Thirty-nine. Good suit. Expensive watch. And his hands were shaking.
I pulled over. Not to a destination. Just... pulled over. Along the Nicoll Highway. Engine still running. Hazard lights on.
"How long have you been driving?" he asked.
"Five months."
"Before that?"
"Senior PM. Twelve years."
Silence.
"Does your family know?" he asked.
"No."
"How?"
"You'd be surprised what you can hide when you're ashamed enough."
He stared out the window. The Marina Bay skyline. All those buildings we both used to work in. All those lights.
"I don't want to be a liar," he said.
"Neither did I."
"So why do you do it?"
And I said something I didn't plan. Something that came out like it had been sitting in my throat for five months, waiting.
"Because the moment I tell my wife, it becomes real. Right now, every morning, I wake up and for three seconds, just three, I forget. I forget that I'm not going to work. I forget about the box in the storeroom. I forget about the library and the Grab app and the shirt I keep in the car. For three seconds, I'm still Kenneth. Senior PM. Team of eight. Regional accounts."
I looked at him in the mirror.
"If I tell my wife, I lose those three seconds. And right now, those three seconds are the only thing keeping me together."
He didn't say anything for a long time.
Then he said: "Can I ask you something?"
"Yeah."
"Your wife. If she found out, not from you, but some other way, would she be more hurt by the job, or by the lie?"
I didn't answer. I couldn't.
He knew. I knew. We both knew.
He got out at Sengkang. I didn't charge him. He tried to pay. I said no. He said, "Tell her, brother. Tell her before she finds out."
I drove home. Parked in the lot. Sat there until 3 AM. My wife's light was off.
I went inside. She'd left dinner on the table. Cling wrap on top. Rice, steamed fish, stir-fry kailan. A Post-it note stuck to the plate:
*"Ate already? Heat up if hungry. Don't sleep too late. ❤️"*
She does this every night. Every single night she's home before me. Leaves a plate. Leaves a note. And she thinks I'm coming home from the office. I sat at the table. Ate the rice. Cold. Didn't heat it up. Because I didn't deserve warm food from a woman I've been lying to for five months.
That was three weeks ago.
I still haven't told her.
But I took the lanyard down.
It's in the glove compartment now. Next to the Grab phone. Next to the shirt.
I'm not ready yet. But I'm closer. I think about what that passenger said every night. *Would she be more hurt by the job, or by the lie?*
I know the answer. I've always known the answer.
I just need a few more days. A few more mornings. A few more of those three seconds.
Then I'll tell her.
I think....
========================
Kenneth's ride ended at my place. I paid. He said thanks.
Normal Grab ending. Five stars, close the door, walk away.
But I stood outside my gate for fifteen minutes before going in. Just standing with it.
𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞'𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐜𝐚𝐧'𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭.
There are over 14,000 people retrenched in Singapore every year. That's not a number. That's fourteen thousand Kenneth's. Fourteen thousand professionals who went to work one morning with a lanyard and came home with a box. Some of them told their families that night. Some of them are still pretending.
And we walk past them every day. We sit in the back of their Grab cars and scroll our phones and rate them five stars and never once wonder: who were they before they were our driver?
Here's what I want to ask you tonight.
What are you hiding from the people who love you because you're ashamed?
Not just jobs. All of it. The debt you haven't mentioned. The diagnosis you're sitting on. The failing marriage you perform every Sunday at your in-laws'. The loneliness you cover with "I'm fine" and a busy calendar.
We hide because we think being honest will make us less.
Less capable.
Less worthy.
Less lovable.
We think the people who love us only love the version of us that has it together.
But Kenneth's wife leaves a plate of rice every night with a heart on a Post-it note. She doesn't do that for a Senior PM. She does it for the man she married. The man. Not the title. Not the lanyard. The man.
And he can't see it. Because shame is a blindfold. It shows you everyone's expectations and hides the one thing that's actually there. Someone who would rather know the truth and struggle beside you than live comfortably inside your lie.
Your wife doesn't need you to be a Senior PM, Kenneth.
She needs you to come home.
For real, this time.
If you're carrying something heavy and pretending it's nothing... this is your sign to set it down.
Not tomorrow.
Not when you've figured it all out.
Now.
While there's still rice on the table and a heart on the note and someone who deserves to know the real you. Even the version without the lanyard.
Especially that version....
3am Stories. Pass it on.
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