Cup of Cha
This is China

Don’t get me wrong, I would never publicly complain about colleagues and certainly never bosses. However, there is one particularly Chinese experience with someone at my office that I think is fairly telling about the culture here. It’s actually 2 experiences, but they happened 27 minutes apart, so I’ll combine them. (editor’s note: this did not happen at my current job)

The Pen Incident: There is a secretary in my office who is quite capable. Adequate anyway. So today I looked around my desk and realized that there were no pens. First I asked a colleague, who generously offered me her only one, but I declined since I needed one long-term. No short-term fixes for this guy.

I went to our secretary who told me that I should go to my department head to get office supplies. When I explained that I only wanted a pen (okay, two), she asked me if I had made a request to our department’s head, whom I know has to then go to the secretary since she has the keys to the supply closet. I told I had not, but I explained that two pens were unlikely to cause expense report problems.

“We have procedures,” she insisted. “You need to follow our procedures.”

Finally she gave me two pens, but then apparently sent out a curt email telling department heads that they are in charge of providing office supplies to their departments.

The Fruit Incident: Less than half an hour after the Pen Incident, a client came to meet me. As we sat down in the big conference room (the medium one was full and the small one is tiny), this same secretary informed me that we could not use the room for business.

“Oh, is there a meeting scheduled here?” I asked innocently.

“We need to cut fruit in this room,” the charming woman told me.

I explained that I needed to meet a with a client, hoping the clear gap in importance of these two actions would suddenly become apparent, but this did not deter her. She repeated her fruit dilemma.

Now normally I’m all for kicking a client out of the meeting room because a secretary needs to cut fruit, but today I suddenly had a wave of confidence. Without hesitation, I put my foot down, and informed her, “We will be done in half an hour. We will be using this room.” (pause for emphasis) Thank you.”

And you know what? She quietly left the room and closed the door. And what’s more, the client told me, “I like your firmness.” Double victory.

Yet despite this tiny triumph, I nonetheless feel that there is a gap demonstrated from these incidents that continues to hold back businesses in China. Although I could just be arrogant jerk.

Share This

Follow Comments via RSS Feed
You can leave a response or trackback from your site.