The first time Patrick Tseng was retrenched, it was mid-1998 and the world was caught in the throes of the Asian Financial Crisis.

Tseng, then 36, had 12 years of experience in the logistics/courier industry. He had recently jumped ship from his longtime courier/logistics company to one that was newly set up.

He moved for the better prospects: Tseng was given the role of acting country manager for the local office and had plans to acquire a third party logistics company.

All that fell through when the company let him go.

"I was thinking, is it something I did wrongly? Should I have stayed with the original company instead of moving on?"

"I felt pretty depressed lah, y'know?" says the 58-year-old who is turning 59 this year.

Extremely uncomfortable to look for a new job

It was hard to look for a new job.

Tseng wasn't, by any stretch, considered old but as any middle-aged job-seeker in a market of young(er), fresh(er) candidates would tell you, their greatest concern is whether employers would consider them hire-able.

Then there was the issue of his educational qualifications.

"I'm just a GCE O-Level holder," he says quietly.

"This was something, through the period when I was pretty down, that I reflected on. It was something that I should have taken more seriously when I was younger."

And truthfully, looking for a new job after decades of being employed made him extremely uncomfortable.

Where does one begin? Would he have to pick up new skills? Starting all over, doing something completely new, scared him.

"So I thought of doing something very comfortable — sales and marketing, something that I like to do," he says.

It's easy to see why he thought of going into sales and marketing. It's the first time we have met but Tseng warms up quickly and makes me feel like I am talking to a friend.

By end 1998, Tseng was back on his feet. Because he had the know-how and the support of a couple of customers from his previous company, Tseng decided to start his own courier and logistics firm and strike it out on his own.

Jumping from job to job

Tseng did work hard — in a string of jobs over seven years.

The logistics company he started in end 1998 "didn't work out well for me because there were a lot of debtors".

He quickly got out of that business in 2002 and decided that he should go into the food & beverage industry, selling fruit rojak and popiah.

Tseng thought it was a difficult industry to break into so he enlisted the help of a mentor, but within a year, he decided that it was not his cup of tea.

Because the industry is so cutthroat, I ask.

"That's one thing but it's the hours that I have to be there, basically," he says. "The hours are pretty long."

Wanting to spend more time with his family, Tseng hired someone to run his stall, and later down the road, earned a tidy sum of money by selling his rojak business to them.

He turned to being a property agent job because "being from sales and marketing, I thought property would be easier to do".

True, it was easy talking to customers but Tseng struggled with the "numbers and the financials". He found, for example, that he was paying much more than he cared to for office space and flyers — "hidden costs" he calls them.

"The returns did not match what I paid up, so I thought no lah it's not worthwhile to continue doing it," he says.

Listening to Tseng, I find that his experience trying to find the perfect job can be explained, quite simply, in one quote:

"Sometimes I didn't think too much. Just jump lah."

With that, seven years of job-hopping went by and in 2005, Tseng became a chauffeur, driving for several private companies before he settled, in 2012, with an events company engaged by Resorts World Sentosa to ferry casino visitors from overseas.

Second retrenchment in 2020 was not unexpected

By the time we have our chat, Tseng has accumulated about 15 years of chauffeuring experience.

It's a comfortable job, he had been ferrying the same casino regulars for years and they'd grown comfortable with one another, Tseng says.

And so, of course, his second retrenchment was devastating but unlike his first, the blow was not unexpected.

In fact, he was quite prepared for the eventuality of losing his job because tourist numbers took a nosedive since the beginning of this year.

No tourists = no assignments.

"The business was very, very slow and we had some reduction in headcount. Just only a matter of time."

Unlike his first retrenchment too, this time he was given support in the form of a referral to the Employment and Employability Institute (e2i) where he was allocated a career coach who helped him look for job vacancies and training opportunities and signed him up for job fairs.

A "bridge" to opportunities

The first thing that career coaches at the institute do is assess a retrenched worker's basic needs and commitments, for instance if they have a family to support or bills to pay, says Tseng's coach, Nur Azizah.

They will also look at the worker's transferable skills and working experience, and try to match that with available vacancies in the market. Since Tseng has so many years of experience chauffeuring, Azizah suggested that he could use his skills to drive a taxi or become a bus captain.

Sometimes, a retrenched worker might not be able to get the job that they want — because the industry is not hiring or they might have the necessary skills —  so their career coach might suggest settling for something temporarily to tide them through the short term.

"So, for example, a person needs those bread and butter issues, so we will need to settle on the short term first, while the economy gets better and [at the same time] we work towards a long term goal. It could be that maybe they need to upgrade themselves in the future if they want to move from Company X to Company Y, or to a different industry, or even to a different career path."

Sometimes, there are specific industries with more readily-available vacancies. For instance, the healthcare, education, security, and biomedical industries are hiring right now, says Azizah, though many of these require prerequisite skills.

For these, career coaches will advise their workers to "up-skill" or attend a traineeship programme and it is up to the retrenched workers to decide if they want to take up these opportunities.

Tseng considers the support from e2i a "bridge" to connect him to the myriad of opportunities available in the job market — opportunities that he might have not been able to find on his own.

"I had never tried a job fair before...It was very different. There I applied for a job as a barista, frontline healthcare, and social service that kind of thing."

Ultimately though, Tseng did not become a barista. Nor is he willing to drive a taxi or bus.

Nope. He has aspirations of becoming a personal trainer and health motivational speaker. It's something that he has been thinking about for some time and even attended professional courses to "upgrade" himself when he was a chauffeur.

It is also something that Tseng feels he needs to do at this stage of his life; being close to sixty has made him more conscious of his health and fitness.

The man is quick to acknowledge that he is thankful for the help that e2i has provided but ultimately he feels that "an individual has to be proactive...and keep your mind open" even if it means not taking said help right now.

For those who are retrenched, Tseng has this advice: Continue to have a positive outlook ("We are very emotional and worrisome creatures. Being doubtful and limiting ourselves is our most common enemy.")

Also, be ready to accept that expectations might be vastly different from reality. And work with the relevant agencies — you'll never know when their help might come in handy.

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Stories of Us is a series about ordinary people in Singapore and the unique ways they’re living their lives. Be it breaking away from conventions, pursuing an atypical passion, or the struggles they are facing, these stories remind us both of our individual uniqueness and our collective humanity.

Top image courtesy of Patrick Tseng, vunela.com.