And a fabulous birthday it was. On my birthday, I went for a bike ride on the loop that will be the Olympics mountain biking loop- where I had some races in the past- and rode around for a couple hours, then sat in only minimal traffic and came back to the east side of town to eat dinner with a bunch of folks. Dinner was great [should have photos soon], and I got some quality gifts, including:
Toblerone chocolate
Butterfinger flavored hot coco mix [brought from Hong Kong!]
A body loofa glove
A bunch of sponges that say: “SWEEP THE CLOTH Healthy Life.. begin from the clean garbo” [right]
Books from mom
Tupperware and a hand-made Tupperware carrier [for lunch]
And a three foot orange tree, delivered via moped. All great gifts.
I also bought myself some trail running sneakers and a $100 cell phone [cheap!]. I can listen to the radio on it. So it was a good birthday.
There is a photo of me and my sis on my computer desktop right now, and as many of you know, my sister has brown hair. When my coworkers are looking at this photo, and I tell them that this person is my sister, they first ask me if it is my real sister and not my cousin. When I reply that it is in fact my real sister, and that we don’t call our cousins ‘sister’, they ask why she has different color hair than me. Apparently they skipped that part of genetics in school.
If fancy cell phones are symbols of affluence and culture than you can count me out. Most of the Angels and other folks here have cell phones that cost as much as their monthly salary. They are buying $250 phones [and up]. That’s like if you make $2500 dollars per month spending it all on a stupid phone. Their phones can take photos, movies, play music, heck, it could be the English Butler and I could go home. My favorite is that their screen always has a photo of themselves looking particularly pretty. Why would you want to look at yourself EVERY time you look at your phone? I will never understand the vanity. And what happens when they drop it in the toilet?
A common conversation as I approach a group of saleswomen: “what’s wrong with your face?” someone else: “all those spots” someone else: “it must be an allergy, huh” me: “yeah.” Or- “did you get fatter?” someone else: “Look! You can see your stomach!” someone else: “Are you pregnant?” someone else [after I ask if they have eaten] “I’m not eating lunch, I’m losing weight.”
I find that I also begin to make Chinese- like comments, such as, I see someone eating, I say “you’re eating.” I hear a phone ring, I say “the phone is ringing.” I see someone leaving work, I say “you’re leaving work.”
The Chinese not only love to state the obvious, they also love to explain it.
I read in a magazine that five superstars were advertising for a bottle of alcohol [not unusual]. The article states that the government recently passed a law that you must be 18 to buy alcohol, however one of the superstars had just turned 17. When I pointed this out to a nearby Angel, she explained to me that she was just advertising for the alcohol, she wasn’t going to buy it or drink it herself. Really. I had no idea. Maybe that’s just the lack of sarcasm in the country.
I’m doing some editing on a document that was translated from Chinese, it is a manual to a rented office. The following words have come up:
Noodles
Beard
Rice
Dragon
Hurl
Flurried
Anne [?]
I’m not sure what dictionary they are using. This is the beginning of [hopefully] real and actual work to be done by yours truly at my new place of business, Gateway Plaza. I start on Thursday!! I can’t wait to get out of here!
Management Chinese- style: tell the employees that you are going to fire that they will be fired two weeks in advance. Then, have them work with the new employees, even though you are paying the new employees half as much. Then, have the old employees train the new ones. Then, question, what is wrong with the old employees’ attitudes? I’m hoping its just like this at the Olive Garden.
THE FOLLOWING PART IS ONLY FOR SUPER BLOG/ CHINA READERS, IT’S PRETTY BORING
I’m reading this book called A Billion Customers by this guy whose been doing business in China since 1990 [James McGregor] and I find that some of his observations resonate with my experience…
Companies seem to be organized as dictatorships. My Angels have been told that they don’t need to stand at the door before 9am, but if a manager is there walking around, they will stand regardless, even after I tell them countless times that they don’t need to stand just because a manager is there. It’s like an instilled fear of the boss.
The Chinese don’t treat others as equals: everyone is treated according to their status. The cleaning ladies are so deferential it’s a bit nauseating. The salespeople jump at the first words uttered by their managers’ mouth [who is a 28 year old woman].
They don’t separate personal and professional. This leads to vacations taken only with work colleagues; significant others are left at home. It also seems that people don’t have many friends outside of work. A few days after the head security guards were let go, and were waiting for their next work to begin, I found them coming back here to go out to lunch with my manager and the office assistant. Days in a row. And then hanging out in the club after lunch. Just chatting. And it’s not like this place is near anyone’s house. After I leave this Olive Garden I plan on not coming back. Ever. [and couldn’t they have googled ‘olive garden’ to find out that it’s a chain Italian restaurant in the US? Do a little market research?]
No one wants to accept responsibility for any mistakes. If a mistake is made someone else is always found to blame, but people rarely acknowledge their mistake. Yesterday a package was delivered to our reception desk, a salesman named Justin signed for it because the receipt of the package, Jane, wasn’t there that day. Today, Jane discovered that her package was no longer at the reception desk, and called in the delivery man to ask him who signed for it, and after talking to Justin [who said he did in fact sign for it, but didn’t allow that to make him accept responsibility for its current whereabouts] Jane yelled at the delivery man for about half an hour, asking about his company policy and refusing to just say, well our sales person signed for it, thus agreeing that he would be responsible for it getting to me, and it got lost in between, its our fault.
When the developers finally decided to kick our company out of this ‘Olive Garden’ that I work, I didn’t find out in some email [I don’t have a company email address] there wasn’t anything posted, no memo, nothing. I only found out after asking my manager point blank what was going on. Information is not shared with others and I can’t figure out why they don’t share it. Possibly they know that everyone talks to each other so much that news will get around that way. In continuation of my fake ‘manager’ duties, I didn’t find out that my Angels had been giving 6 extra days off because they worked too much during Chinese New year until I saw the schedule and asked one of them [one would think that I would do the schedule but the office assistant never had the patience to explain it to me, and besides, that would take away power from her]. Another thing I love about this work place is the communication between the developer and our company. Our Angels and bartender and waitress work until 8.30 pm every night, despite the fact that the entire sales staff goes home at 7 pm. So for an hour and a half every night we sit here and do nothing, and if a customer did come, there would be no sales person here to receive them.
Cooperation. Because of the ridiculous glass box structure of the reception area, on days that it is cloudy it is freezing in here, on days that it is sunny it is insufferably hot. One cloudy day they took out the free standing heaters [that you might find at an outdoor bar], but they continued to light them on sunny days. I inquired with the head security guard as to who we could find to turn them off because there is absolutely no need for them on such a hot day, but he said he would not find who it was because it didn’t concern him. I tried to stress that we all work in the same place, we should work together. I wasn’t successful.
Also interesting was McGregor’s short commentary/ summary of the Cultural Revolution:
“In preserving his own political position, Mao destroyed the country’s economy and tore apart the fabric of Chinese society… China hit rock bottom during the Cultural Revolution. A society that treasured education closed its schools. A society in which students were taught to revere teachers suddenly had student Red Guards beating and sometimes killing their teachers. A society based on filial piety had children denouncing their parents at mass rallies.”
Sometimes I just can’t believe that China was like that a mere 30 years ago. That one man could transform an entire giant nation of people to go against the cultural values they have had for thousands of years. It’s a little frightening.
