Expectations

I’ll take a moment to make a comment about workers in China. This is a general comment and is not applicable for everyone but it’s no different than the general comments made all the time in the media. I’ve stayed away from posting stuff that is work related due to what I have seen on the Internet about people being fired for making admittedly bad decisions and posting negative information about their boss, colleagues, company, etc. I don’t think this is quite the same so I will forgo the usual paranoia and post it.

For years we’ve been told that Americans are lazy and don’t want to work, this is why there is migrant (now known as displaced foreigner travelers as opposed to illegal immigrants [call the PC police, radical elements are running amuck on this blog]) labor to do the work that “Americans won’t do”. Low wage jobs or jobs that require someone to work hard are left others to handle, too many people are too good to do this kind of work (or at least that is what they would have you believe. Mike Rowe shows you otherwise, if you don’t know Mike Rowe, you need to watch Dirty Jobs on Discovery Channel).

This isn’t an “American disease” as we have been led to believe. In the US, the job market has been and continues to be very poor and people are scrambling to find work, many are looking at jobs that perhaps 5 years ago they would’ve overlooked but now a job is a job and most people just want to contribute to society rather than sit back and let someone else pay for them to get by. Good people that are hard-working and loyal to their companies have lost their jobs due to circumstances that are outside of their control. In China, there is an expanding job market, especially in the larger cities. So it seems that perhaps the Chinese are now the people that don’t want to work. I’ll give you an example (these events are real; the names of the people have been changed to protect the innocent). A worker accepts a job to work for a company. (After a probation period, the company could choose not to continue to employ the worker if the worker doesn’t show any promise during the probation period.) At that time they understand the salary of the job and the work required, it’s all pretty straight forward. (You should see the resumes here, they contain age, marital status, some even have photos, and many other things that are taboo back in the US..a topic for another time.). So they go through the orientation training (usually between 3 to 5 days) and then begin the actual training for the task they are hired to perform. Then after two weeks on the job (and still within the probation period), they don’t show up to work. The supervisor tries to contact them and cannot contact the worker. This is a violation of the company policy and the worker will be given a verbal reprimand which will go on his permanent record with the company (dun-dun-daah...make the sound with a very ominous undertone). The next day, he comes back to work and is given the verbal reprimand. Then he is supposed to sign a document indicating that he was given the warning and understands the warning. This is when it gets interesting. He declines to sign the document and proceeds to indicate that the job requires him to work too hard and doesn’t pay enough. It’s at that time that he decides to resign (you can’t fire me, I quit!). In China, people don’t quit, they resign. I don’t know why this term is always used but I guess “to quit” has a bad connotation where “to resign” is more of a positive spin on the term. Resigning is more like I left on my terms as opposed to quitting where it’s like you gave up and the company had the last laugh. Perhaps this is cultural but this guy actually decides that it is better to resign than admit he was wrong not to show up to work. We see this “logic” used in so many different scenarios here that it is almost comical. Anytime someone does something wrong, you need to leave them room to wiggle out of actually being wrong. You use terms like “maybe” to describe what might have happened when you know darned well exactly what did happen. This has been probably my biggest hurdle to overcome when an issue comes up. They try to find any possible explanation for what happened (the machine was working right, the lights over the machine weren’t on, the planets weren’t aligned properly…) rather than admit they were wrong or they didn’t do the right thing. They know what happened, you know what happened but you shouldn’t let them know that you know else they lose face. It’s like strange takeoff of the Abbott & Costello “Who’s on first” routine. My personal favorite excuse, "the work instruction doesn't say we should do that every time".

I’ve heard of other similar instances where workers will just not show up to work. In some cases, they change their phone number and do other things to avoid being contacted by their former employer. Many times, if you speak to their co-workers you will hear them talk about the former employee being unhappy with the amount of work required and the low pay. It’s such a strange situation knowing what is happening back home (dude, it’s a job keep working until you find a better one). It’s definitely not an American thing, it can happen anywhere. It’s more about the person and their work ethic and not about their country of origin.

I will take this a step further to talk about what may be the culture here (I can never be sure because so many people tell you different things). People here expect the chance to advance in their company (much like many in the US expect something). When someone takes a job to operate a machine, they can become very skilled at this job and actually enjoy the work but if they don’t see any chance for advancement they will typically seek another job after about 1-2 years with a company. Keep in mind that again, I am talking in generalities but this is what I am told and what I have experienced. People take jobs and may love the job and the company but the grass (bamboo) is always greener somewhere else so they look for another job. This is more true of the younger generation, as people get past 30 and start to have a stable home life (kids…if you call that stable), they seem to be more inclined to find a good paying job and stick with it. The younger kids…not so much. It’s even more evident around this time of year. People collect their New Year’s bonus and then the resignations start. They head home to be with their family and then they decide not to come back to work. It’s much more rare here to find people that have been with the same company for a long time, as opposed to what used to be the normal situation back home (before the economic downturn), people stayed with a job if they liked the company and the work.

Why do I tell you this (besides the fact that it is very informative)? Because of the reason I am an Expat. I am in China to train people to manufacture our products using the equipment and procedures that I know work best. I also try to train them on how to troubleshoot the equipment, determine what is or isn’t a quality product and how to work efficiently among many other things. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t. I am training in two separate departments so I’ve got a lot of ground to cover with a lot of different people. Somehow, I’ve got to give my 18 years worth of experience to people in whatever time I have with them. In one department, we originally hired 6 people, of those only 1 remains. In the other department, we also hired 6 people, only 3 originals remain. Is it me? It’s tough not to take it personally when people you have come to know leave to go off and find other work. In some cases, I was happy to see people go (bad attitudes or very poor work ethic). However when the people I have worked the most with are starting to leave; it becomes much more difficult to accept. One of my best workers told me just before the Chinese New Year that she wanted to resign. She was very upset and crying about her decision and I had a hard time trying to understand why she was leaving even as she talked to me about the decision. We have worked together for 18 months and I think of her as family so it was tough for me to listen and not react negatively to what she was saying. Back home, I would’ve said she was homesick and needed to go home and think before making her decision but since there is a cultural barrier that I may not understand, I could only ask her to reconsider and wait until after the holiday to make a final decision. She’s 22 years old and is an excellent worker. She has a bright future with the company but she will not stay to find out what the future holds for her with this company. She has been to college and therefore is owed a better job than “just being an operator and Team Leader”. I hope it works out for her but there is a little part of me that wishes she finds out that her next job is much worse than this one (then I get to say the oh-so satisfying “I told you so”).

Why do I tell you this? I guess I’m just sharing the frustration of encountering these types of situations. When I have family & friends that are unemployed and are trying to find work, it’s tough to stomach that someone can walk away from a job because they are expected to actually work for their wages (granted the wages in US terms are low but for here, the pay is pretty darned good) or when they feel they can do better elsewhere. It’s not like they have a job when they leave, they just leave and find another job. When people I have trained leave, it means that I have essentially wasted my time on someone that won’t be around when I leave. So I have to start over with the next person and hope that the limited time I have to work with them is enough. This is the role of the Expat! Basically your job is to make sure you don’t have a job. I’m not here to entrench myself so deeply in the facility that any thought of me leaving would destroy the fabric of the universe (this is the one that would bring balance to the force). I am here to show people how to do the job and then go back home. I’m not complaining (not really), I’m just sharing.