I would normally have said no. But I was all out of tea that day.
Actually, I welcomed that big cup of coffee after another poor night’s sleep. The drink was ice cold, mercifully unsweetened and wrapped in the green of Starbucks’ gentle gorgon.
Among international brands, Starbucks is bucking a trend here, its China arm remaining wholly-US owned after other fast-food concerns have sold out to local firms. Starbucks has not splintered nor run away yet.
So it’s logical that my foreign colleague chose this brand for his gift to the whole foreign faculty. The invitation looked like this:
Roses are Red
Violets are Blue
They’re the incompetent f***s
Not you
“Oh, I love passive-aggressive!”, said another foreign colleague after receiving his invitation. Me, I was still wondering what the grievance was.
I should say that the invitation was not extended to my Chinese colleague. It had accidentally arrived on her desk, not mine. She had shrugged it off with bemusement, understanding the English but not the sentiment. Looking back now, if I can identify the specific grievance, it was the 7-day week we were enduring. 7 unbroken days of work is undesirable.
No. 7 days is brain-bendingly long. It’s long enough for one grievance to snowball, gathering grievances that are neither completely related nor completely understood.
Several colleagues came close to quitting that very week. One did yesterday.
Myself, I was all out of tea because I was just so busy. This job is five times my first China job all those years ago. An inflationary effect has multiplied the hours and the stresses, not just the salary and expenses. And, yes, 7 days is qualitatively worse than the usual 6-day-vacation punishments. It is at least worth asking the frog-boil question now.
To some extent, this is just the alignment of foreigners’ lives with those of local citizens. So many aspects of life previously lived “mafan free” (hassle free) are now “full-phat mafan”.
It was never trust and autonomy we foreigners enjoyed; more like fear of bothering the foreigner at work. But we are now expected to join the directives, and not just the practical belt-tightening and the revenue-diversification directives.
Of course, it is the leaders of this organisation implicated in my colleague’s note, not the Chinese colleagues. But this kind of action does accelerate the separating of the wagons.
Sometimes, I’d like to say that if we foreigners just parked some of our entitlement, attempted more courtesy and listened harder, we could be more accepted and achieve more. But, honestly, I’ve been grateful for the camaraderie of my default tribe, especially in recent weeks. Buying colleagues a coffee is a generous thing to do. Initiating a chat is a useful thing to do.
I’m all out of tea because I haven’t been trying hard enough. I haven’t been shopping. I haven’t been talking enough. I haven’t been charming more people into buying me gifts. Whether these joins are mendable or not, I know I’ve not been making my best contribution.
