It was my first day on the job, and my boss, Victor, wanted to see me in his office. What happened was definitely NOT what I expected!
It was Boxing Day, and I’d just come back from leading a group of 5 divers on a full-on 38-metre-deep dive at a dive site called Yapak, with sharks and manta rays seemingly almost everywhere we looked. I was pumped – especially as my hangover from Christmas Day celebrations had well and truly been washed away on the dive!
For those of you who read my previous article, you’ll know in a former career I was a SCUBA-diving instructor, marine researcher and underwater videographer for around 2 years, and lived on Boracay in the Philippines for 6+ months. Boracay was a tropical paradise, with a 4km west-facing white sandy beach and crystal clear tropical waters.
I’d completed my Instructor’s course before Christmas and had proudly landed a job at the only Filipino-owned and operated dive shop on the island, called Far East Scuba Institute (FESI). Boxing Day was my first official day, and job 1 was take 5 divers to Yapak – a great start!
After showering off after the dive, I threw on my board shorts T-shirt and sauntered barefoot through the dive shop and breezed into Victor’s office.
I grinned and said what a great dive my first FESI guests had just done at Yapak. “Good”, he replied. He looked unusually serious and simply nodded at me to sit down in the chair at the side of his desk.
He looked a bit uncomfortable, and I quickly realised something was going down. I sat up a bit straighter in the old chair.
Victor slowly opened the desk drawer and rested his hand on something for a second or two. It was something metal, but I couldn’t quite see what it was. As he lifted it out of the drawer his hand was covering most of it and I still couldn’t quite make it out.
“You’re ex-British military, aren’t you Simon?” It was more of a statement than a question “Um, yeah, we chatted about it before, I left a couple of years ago” I replied.
He extended his hand towards me and slowly slid the item over to me. It scraped as it slid over the scratched wooden surface.
“Well, welcome to Far East SCUBA Institute, Simon.”, Victor smiled. “This is yours now” he said as he took his hand away.
It was a gun. To say I was surprised was a bit of an understatement!
“Do you know how to use it?”, he asked. “Yes, of course” I responded. Victor sat back and said “show me”.
I initially thought it was a Browning 9mm pistol, but it turned out to be a Colt M1911A1 pistol, or Colt .45 as it’s more commonly known^^. The two weapons are quite similar though.
I flicked out the magazine – it was full – checked the weapon and made it safe. “Carry on” said Victor. I then stripped it down to the firing pin, checked it over, put it back together and put it gently on the desk.
“Nice work Simon. Look after it well”.
I looked him straight in the eyes and asked “That’s lovely, thanks Victor – but why on earth do I need a gun on this tropical paradise?!?”
“Good question, Simon! There’s something I need to tell you”
“No SH!T,” I replied, snorting out a laugh which broke the ice on what was quite a tense moment! I’d spent a bit of time with Victor when ‘interviewing’ for the job, and we got on well.
Victor started his story. Basically, he’d started up FESI about 3 years previously and had borrowed about US$10,000 (equivalent to around 500,000 Filipino pesos) from ‘Mr Chang’ who owned a successful dive shop 2km down the beach.
The recognised custom at the time was for the borrower to give a cheque to the lender in good faith, including agreed interest. At the agreed time period (4 years in this case), when the borrower had the money to repay the loan they’d tell the lender to cash the cheque, the loan would be amicably settled and everyone would be happy. That was the theory, at least!
In Victor’s case, things went slightly differently! Victor was a very shrewd businessman, and very quickly established a roaring trade! Victor had some high-placed contacts in Korea, and we used to get hundreds of Korean divers coming to the dive shop.
The problem was, within less than a year, Victor’s dive shop had become way more successful than Mr Chang’s dive shop. Mr Chang wasn’t happy about that. In fact he was extremely p!ssed off! He was a high-status person, and he’d lost face, big time! Mr Chang felt Victor had embarrassed him and shown him up by being so successful so quickly and out-shining Mr Chang’s place.
So, Mr Chang decided he would get back at Victor and cash the cheque early, as he thought there was no way Victor would be able to repay the loan, certainly with no notice he was calling it in. Mr Chang thought the cheque would bounce (be dishonoured), and then his plan was to commandeer Victor’s dive shop as repayment for the loan, getting rid of and shaming Victor in the process and taking over his business.
So, Mr Chang smugly cashed the cheque. However, to his absolute horror, it didn’t bounce! The cheque went through, which meant Victor’s loan was repaid in full, the deal was fully resolved with nothing owing to Mr Chang.
Victor told me Mr Chang was apparently not a happy chappy, to put it mildly! 🤬😡
Incensed at yet another huge loss of face and feeling he was the laughing stock of the island, Victor told me Mr Chang stormed into FESI screaming and brandishing his own Colt .45, fired a couple of shots into the roof (the holes were still there!) and proceeded to rob Victor of all the SCUBA gear he could see in the shop, loading it onto a trolley and marching off yelling and swearing.
Unfortunately for Mr Chang, his cunning plan also didn’t quite work out 🤦♂️ Victor had anticipated this and had hidden all the good gear and replaced it with the worn-out stuff he’d been collecting!
That all happened about 12-months before I got there. Mr Chang had been back twice since, doing the same thing. Victor casually dropped the bombshell that Mr Chang was due back anytime soon, hence giving me the gun to defend myself if I needed to!
We chatted a bit more, and the conversation fizzled out. I got up, tucked the gun down the back of my board shorts under my t-shirt and went in search of Louis, the head-Filipino instructor. I found him having a beer in Cocomangas bar and so plonked myself down next to him and took a long swig of his beer!! I asked him about the story Victor had told me. It was all true, and yes, Mr Chang was ‘due’ soon!
I asked Louis if he had a gun as well – he just laughed. “no, Mr Chang is harmless enough” he grinned. “He just needs to do his thing. But we do need to find some more old BCDs and fins and stuff (dive equipment) ready to put out on the shelves”.
Long story short, about a week later when the guests had left the dive shop and Louis and I were chilling out with a beer, the world suddenly erupted! Mr Chang had arrived, brandishing his Colt .45 sideways, gangster style, and yelling and screaming at Louis and I. He stopped and stared directly at me – I was the first ever Westerner to work in the dive shop, and I think that annoyed him more!
I sat there, watching, my mind racing. What do I do? I could feel the cold beer in my hand, but everything else was a bit surreal! I didn’t know what to do.
Getting out the gun was clearly not going to help the situation – and anyway, it was safely tucked away in my maintenance kit at the back of my dive gear cupboard (I’d very quickly made the decision not to carry it around soon after Victor ‘gifted’ it to me).
I looked at Louis for guidance as Mr Chang ranted on. No gunfire this time – yet. I decided I’d take my cues from Louis as he’d been in this situation before. To my amazement, Louis was stood there smiling softly, with his hands waving gently towards Mr Chang in a ‘stay cool’ sort of gesture.
I stood up slowly and did the same (although I wasn’t at the smiling stage!). Mr Chang was splittingly enraged – red faced, almost frothing at the mouth, screaming in Mandarin (I think!) and wildly waving his gun at Louis and I.
Cool as a cucumber in his sleeveless T-shirt, boardies and bare feet, Louis said in a calm voice “Hi Mr Chang, kumusta**. Where do you want to start?”
It completely took the wind out of Mr Chang’s rage. Mr Chang’s head sort of twitched a couple of times as if he’d been woken up, and his rage visibly dialled down a couple of notches! The Colt .45 lowered a little, although he was still waving it back and forth between Louis and I.
Mr Chang screamed something, and Louis calmly said “cool, let’s start with the fins shall we”, and very slowly walked over to the rack where the dive fins were sitting. He scooped them all up in his arms and calmly asked “where’s the trolley, Mr Chang?” Mr Chang waved with the gun and pointed to the street outside.
“Hey Smifffffy (my nickname)” Louis casually remarked, “would you grab some BCDs and bring them to the trolley for Mr Chang”. If Louis had a tuxedo on instead of his boardies he would have personified James Bond. I was blown away (by Louis, not Mr Chang, thankfully!).
Surprised by a now much calmer Mr Chang (still waving his gun mind you!) We calmly loaded Mr Chang’s trolley (with all the battered and broken old gear we’d collected) and as fast as it had started, Mr Chang stormed off and the dive shop fell silent.
Louis looked at me: “want another beer Smifffffy?” Of course the answer was a resounding YES! “I’ve got some clean underpants too if you need them” he grinned, as we clinked bottles.
I learned many huge lessons from Louis that day and built a whole depth of respect for him. A lesson in how to manage conflict for starters; how to stay calm and not react back; lessons in emotional intelligence; read the room and take cues from others; how to use someone’s need for control to calm and dissipate a serious conflict situation; how preparation and visualisation are key tools for managing a situation; understand what people need and what drives them; and much more.
Mr Chang came in one more time during my tenure at the dive shop, a very similar M.O. My mantra when it all kicked off for my second time was “be more Louis”. It worked. I didn’t need clean undies, and Mr Chang did a lot less spitting and gun waving, which I was happy with 😉
Interestingly, a lot of those ‘be more Louis’ traits apply equally well to our workplaces, and we incorporate ‘being more Louis’ into our Giving and Receiving Feedback training, our Conflict Resolution and Dealing with Difficult People training, our Individualised Emotional Intelligence & Leadership Development Roadmap’ program, and more.
What happened to the gun in the end, I hear you asking? If you read my last article, you’ll know that after 6 months I reluctantly decided to leave Boracay and crew a yacht down to Borneo.
When I told Victor my plans and told him I was resigning, I handed him back the gun – nice and cleaned and oiled. He smiled, and pushed it back into my hands: “this is yours now Simon. Piracy is rife in the South China Sea at the moment, you might need it.”
^^ The Colt .45 is slightly larger in calibre and stopping power than the Browning, but the Browning has a much bigger magazine (13 rounds vs 7 in the Colt .45). I found out later that there were actually plenty of weapons knocking about the Philippines, most left over from when the Americans were stationed there in WW2.
** kumusta – a common way of saying hello in Tagalog (Filipino)
