Can our interns apply for leave better than this viral adik? We grade their emails

In case you’ve been out of the loop, this image of an intern applying for leave went viral recently for being a little too succinct.  

With the title stating when he’ll be on leave and the content of the email stating when he’ll be back, this one really takes the cake on the whole minimalism trend these days. Granted, the intern did actually get the green light from his boss beforehand, who so happens to be local TV Star, Azizan Nin, and the email was really only for formality’s sake.

Tho the whole thing makes for a funny story, you would think that a person old enough to get an internship would know how to write a formal email, or at least, work those fingers to google a template.

So you can imagine how elated we were when we realized we had 3 interns to test this theory on. Which, btw, is a pretty rare occurrence considering Cilibos pledged never to hire more than 2 interns at a time (sadly, a story for another day).

But you know what’s not that rare after all? Subpar leave applications, cos as it turns out, even with the freedom to refer to whatever resources necessary and an ample time limit of 15 minutes…

2 out of 3 interns submitted applications with incorrect days/dates

Exhibit A: 

In general, the structure of this application is sound but the downfall is in the details. In particular, this intern didn’t clearly state 2 things:

1. The exact dates she would be on leave
2. The number of working days she would be gone for

And it gets messier when you consider the fact that June 3rd and 4th fall on the weekend. So is the intern taking 5 days off excluding the weekend? Or did she make a mistake and is really only taking 3 days off? This writer personally thinks that in light of our Asian heritage, anything other than an A should be rejected but our boss is not quite as severe.

Application verdict: Reapply with correct details

Exhibit B:

This one is the very definition of masuk pintu kaki kiri, with the date miswritten at the very start of the email. Can’t say we’ve heard of people applying for leave to travel back in time, so either our intern owns a real-life DeLorean or he was in a super mega rush and didn’t check his email before he sent it in.

Tho considering the fact shit quite literally hit the fan, his situation was quite urgent la ah… And while it can be difficult dealing with a sick pet, our boss thought the intern’s verbal diarrhea was more concerning and suggested he keep his details short.

“You might just want to state a general reason next time, like ‘My dog fell ill and defecated all over the house. I’m requesting leave to take it to the vet and clean up my house’,” — Uihua, Big Sensei

On top of that, not only did the intern apply for leave over the weekend, but due to the short notice, his application would technically fall under Emergency Leave and for a situation like this, 4 days is pretty much 3 days too many.

Application verdict: Rejecteddddd

1 application hit all the right notes by being concise and complete

Ok, ok, we know what we said about googling templates and this is us being nitpicky rn, but pandai-pandai don’t follow the entire template la… So stuff like ‘contact me anytime’ or ‘feel free to reach out’ are a no-no, unless all you aim in life is to be a model worker with a hotline to Bosszilla.

“Unless you are genuinely okay with being contacted or you’re taking leave when you have some pending work to attend to, do not say “please don’t hesitate to contact me” just to make your boss happy and complain when people actually contact you,” — Uihua, Supreme Overlord

Other than that, everything else about this intern’s email was fine, bar some minor tweaks.

Application verdict: ✨Accepted✨

Applying for leave might not be that easy after all

With a 66.6% failing rate, what more can we say? Paiseh. So since school never teach (or school teach and y’all thought it was about as important as algebra or whatever) nah ambik, we give checklist for your next leave application:

• Get your dates right
• Include the number of working days during your leave
• Strike a balance between wordy and vague
• Be selfish, don’t offer your free time
• Remember to ask in advance if it’s annual leave
• Don’t be greedy with emergency leave
• Sign your name la

But obviously Cilisos being Cilisos, we didn’t stop there, so here’s a bonus of our interns’ resignation letters plus our boss’ comments. And before any labour union comes knocking our door, we didn’t fire our interns ok. What do you take us for? (Mayhaps we did, but we rehired them in 15 minutes, pwomis 🥺)

Bonus 1 : Good for HR but not for Cilibos who like joke

Bonus 2 : Sass the Cilibos and he will always carry you in his heart

Bonus 3: Cilibos did not force her to resign ok and he refuses to be judged in labour court