ATCO's do their best (not always enough and often too much) within the frustrating and strangled system we are forced to comply with. Sometimes the frustrations explode on frequency when one too many "what's my delay" questions happen. You may not realise that this question occurs 100's of times a day and it is not possible or appropriate to answer all in a calm /concise and friendly manner due to workload or the fact that there maybe no reasonable answer due to a sad lack of experience or outright ablitiy. You may be the one that breaks the chopstick and the reply may not equal the question. How many of you have listened to the poor R/T from some carriers the constant cries of confirm followed by a perfect readback, the long unitelligable readbacks, the incomprehensible incoherant requests that clutter the HK ATC freq's do you then wonder why occasionally and increasingly there are snaps on the ATCO's side. Please add to that the frustrations of pay/toil/leave/China ATC (prehistoric systems, couldn't make a decision if you paid them, let's put a hold on Hk traffic again it worked last time and they don't stand up for themselves,why not just stop all traffic into Beijing and Shanghai because we can ha! ha! let's make FL370 the only level today as nobody can make it by Dotmi -20, I think that guy might be near the holding point let's call HK and give him a 3 hour delay but only say it is 20 minutes for the next 19 minutes(you think I'm joking,I'm not) Many pilots do have a reasonable gripe but at the end of the day so does everyone else and you all pick on the ATCO. HKATC is clearly a leader in service in Asia (kindascarybuttrue) it ain't perfect, sometimes it ain't pretty, but without support from H headquarters Q and the users (Pilots) things won't get any better just more frustrated/irritated and down right cranky.
Just remember we both need each other and are in a pile of
without acceptance and cooperation.
p.s. I don't miss the job and can confirn all that dyce has said re toil and Gweilo airlines except that I was closer to losing 200 hours but didn't keep a record.