Apologies to Dire Straits for misappropriating one of the lines up above...Today's rant: Chinese bosses who expect you to work your ass off and then don't pay you the agreed upon amount, if they pay you anything at all.
Picture this: you, a professional in good standing with many credentials, are asked to write up a sample of something--say, a new book series. The deadline given is very tight--almost impossible--but you stay up all night and produce something quite good. The person who requested it takes it, spends oh, a month and a half looking at it, then tells you (or worse, your boss) that it's terrible, a disappointment, not what they wanted, and half-heartedly agree to give you a second chance. But wait--this time their specifications are completely different. The first time they wanted a book series for the X market--now it's the Y. Your boss screams at you for your stupidity and inefficiency and "lets" you have a "second crack" at this client, "letting" you spend your entire weekend--a holiday weekend and your kid's birthday, to boot--creating a scope and sequence for a six-year book project with a sample chapter for all levels. Due Monday. Without use of say, an artist, to provide artwork, so you have to spend hours on the Net finding suitable clip-art and pictures and hoping it's copyright free...You meet the deadline. The client takes the material. You don't hear from them again. Your boss decides to withhold your salary because "you didn't earn the company any money." (Come to think of it, it was a North American company that did that to me.)
Six months later you are in a book store, browsing, and you see a familiar-looking title. Two, in fact. Lo and behold, there are your samples, fleshed out by different writers with varying ability in both writing skills and the English language, but still, it's your two samples. Your work. For which you slaved away, were humiliated, missed your kid's birthday and WERE NOT PAID FOR. Would this make you leave the publishing industry? Run back to your home country? Run to the nearest bar? Having repeated this scenario with different publishing companies, I can tell you I've done all three and that's probably why I left publishing and television production for teaching.
But wait! Let's say you sign a contract for a big-ass school. They tell you to buy a round-trip ticket so you can fly home at Spring Festival but refuse to tell you WHEN vacation officially begins. They also make you submit three bids proving you have indeed purchased the lowest-priced ticket. It's non-refundable and you can't change anything on it. At all. You book it, a tad nervous because you're not quite sure about this and a little uneasy, but you book it, pay for it, and then find out the first day of school that the school WILL NOT reimburse you for the full flight, as they've decided not to reimburse round-trips for the new staff (even though your contract says they will) and if you don't like it, you can quit. But you can't quit, because they are illegally holding your Foreign Expert Card, and besides, the hiring season is over and it would be a drag to find another place to live and another job now that it's September, so, pissed off, you begin the term. Halfway through December they bother to inform the staff when vacation begins, and you find out that you have booked your flight three days before the official end of term. So, even though you have no classes then, your grades and reports will have been done, and your contract states you don't have to have non-teaching duties, your boss decides that you are not allowed to leave. You have to show up at the New Year's party and sing (and I am NOT KIDDING when I say this) Edelweiss and Auld Lang Syne. Failure to show up at the party and act out the part of Foreigner on Parade means you will be docked three days' pay, as well as give three days' pay back to the school (a total of six days' pay) and work back the three days with free teaching when you get back--even though you are missing three non-teaching days.
But wait! There's more! As you scream your way through negotiations, a darker story emerges: last year, a Chinese co-worker, pregnant, submitted her final grades and reports on a Monday. The term was over, and the teachers were expected to report to school and sit at their desks from 7.30 a.m. to 7.30 pm for the next four days, until the "official" end of the term. This teacher went into labor, and had a C-section early Tuesday morning. When she was released from the hospital--still unable to walk--the school principal sent the school accountant over to her house to collect from her four day's salary. That's right, to take money BACK from her for having missed four days off the official calendar. This is told to you, right to your face, as an example of why they can't back down on your position--they can't give you what you want because "it wouldn't be fair to the teacher who had baby."
I've just been asked by a major publishing house--one of the biggest in the world--to put together an immensely time-consuming project, which would require all my contacts, my knowledge and expertise. I am expected to get cracking on it RIGHT AWAY despite the fact we have no signed agreement. Having been burned so many times in past, do you really think I am willing to play this game? Just to top it off, the Project Leader--a local, as you might surmise---wants my input on various other projects. As much as I love this type of work--and being an expert in this particular field in both China and the US-- I am shaking my head and saying firmly but sweetly, "Sure, as soon as we have a legally binding agreement regarding my payment."
My friend Dot (not his real name) has similar stories in publishing and TV. He, being male, and being married to the lovely Jay, whom everyone in education and publishing over here knows and loves, is seldom screwed on these projects, but it does still happen to him occasionally. For example, a well-known director, a friend of his wife's, asking him as a favor to come on his TV-show: Dot thought ok, the favor is that it's a last-minute thing, less than 12 hours to prepare (late night phone invite for early morning shoot.) He goes--the director thanks him at the end of the day, and asks if Dot will do him another favor and come again the following week. Dot agrees, and leaves, unpaid, thinking oh, he'll get paid at the end of the next shoot. A week later, he comes, he shoots, the director shakes his hand and thanks him a lot for "helping him out" and pointedly asks Dot if his wife has dinner waiting for him.--i.e, hinting that Dot is NOT invited to the usual post-shoot dinner, where everyone gets drunk and paid. Bottom line: two days' work, no payment. I did an entire seasons' worth of writing and acting for a television series through my work place and never got any payment for it--my boss flippantly told me they'd forgotten to work out a payment agreement but I could have some time off if I wanted--which never happened as I was constantly slammed on Friday afternoons with huge work assignments to be completed on Monday mornings.
Lulu used to work on a television show when she was ten: the wardrobe mistress would call her say, ten o'clock on Thursday night and tell her to bring in a ballerina outfit, white tights size 10 , a soldier's helmet, etc, which wasn't even used on Lulu but used for other shows! We would also get late-night phone calls telling us to find, for example, a Russian boy no older than ten who could roller blade, a blonde girl, not fat, who could speak Chinese and French, or six children under the age of seven who could shout the state capitals in under a minute. We complied, but under duress, thinking the whole time, "Who are these assholes that they think they can palm their jobs off on us?" And what sort of asshats were we that we did their bidding?
So many people here (and to be fair, not just here) rise to their level of incompetence, then spend a considerable amount of time flexing their muscles and forcing everyone under them to do their bidding, cover their tracks, and line their pockets. The subordinates are not plotting how to create a more perfect working environment, they're mentally tabulating who owes them what, how they can use so-and-so, and what they can do to be "rich man" when it's their turn to be boss. I am leery of doing business with business people, but I am especially leery of local hires for international companies, because I know, even with a signed agreement, the following will happen: deadlines will be shifted, priorities changed, good material rejected (only to mysteriously reappear under someone else's name with another company, usually run by their cousin) and tempers will fray under the constant penny-pinching and criticism. Given the way I feel about this, I must be insane to even consider doing this project, even WITH a contract.
Picture this: you, a professional in good standing with many credentials, are asked to write up a sample of something--say, a new book series. The deadline given is very tight--almost impossible--but you stay up all night and produce something quite good. The person who requested it takes it, spends oh, a month and a half looking at it, then tells you (or worse, your boss) that it's terrible, a disappointment, not what they wanted, and half-heartedly agree to give you a second chance. But wait--this time their specifications are completely different. The first time they wanted a book series for the X market--now it's the Y. Your boss screams at you for your stupidity and inefficiency and "lets" you have a "second crack" at this client, "letting" you spend your entire weekend--a holiday weekend and your kid's birthday, to boot--creating a scope and sequence for a six-year book project with a sample chapter for all levels. Due Monday. Without use of say, an artist, to provide artwork, so you have to spend hours on the Net finding suitable clip-art and pictures and hoping it's copyright free...You meet the deadline. The client takes the material. You don't hear from them again. Your boss decides to withhold your salary because "you didn't earn the company any money." (Come to think of it, it was a North American company that did that to me.)
Six months later you are in a book store, browsing, and you see a familiar-looking title. Two, in fact. Lo and behold, there are your samples, fleshed out by different writers with varying ability in both writing skills and the English language, but still, it's your two samples. Your work. For which you slaved away, were humiliated, missed your kid's birthday and WERE NOT PAID FOR. Would this make you leave the publishing industry? Run back to your home country? Run to the nearest bar? Having repeated this scenario with different publishing companies, I can tell you I've done all three and that's probably why I left publishing and television production for teaching.
But wait! Let's say you sign a contract for a big-ass school. They tell you to buy a round-trip ticket so you can fly home at Spring Festival but refuse to tell you WHEN vacation officially begins. They also make you submit three bids proving you have indeed purchased the lowest-priced ticket. It's non-refundable and you can't change anything on it. At all. You book it, a tad nervous because you're not quite sure about this and a little uneasy, but you book it, pay for it, and then find out the first day of school that the school WILL NOT reimburse you for the full flight, as they've decided not to reimburse round-trips for the new staff (even though your contract says they will) and if you don't like it, you can quit. But you can't quit, because they are illegally holding your Foreign Expert Card, and besides, the hiring season is over and it would be a drag to find another place to live and another job now that it's September, so, pissed off, you begin the term. Halfway through December they bother to inform the staff when vacation begins, and you find out that you have booked your flight three days before the official end of term. So, even though you have no classes then, your grades and reports will have been done, and your contract states you don't have to have non-teaching duties, your boss decides that you are not allowed to leave. You have to show up at the New Year's party and sing (and I am NOT KIDDING when I say this) Edelweiss and Auld Lang Syne. Failure to show up at the party and act out the part of Foreigner on Parade means you will be docked three days' pay, as well as give three days' pay back to the school (a total of six days' pay) and work back the three days with free teaching when you get back--even though you are missing three non-teaching days.
But wait! There's more! As you scream your way through negotiations, a darker story emerges: last year, a Chinese co-worker, pregnant, submitted her final grades and reports on a Monday. The term was over, and the teachers were expected to report to school and sit at their desks from 7.30 a.m. to 7.30 pm for the next four days, until the "official" end of the term. This teacher went into labor, and had a C-section early Tuesday morning. When she was released from the hospital--still unable to walk--the school principal sent the school accountant over to her house to collect from her four day's salary. That's right, to take money BACK from her for having missed four days off the official calendar. This is told to you, right to your face, as an example of why they can't back down on your position--they can't give you what you want because "it wouldn't be fair to the teacher who had baby."
I've just been asked by a major publishing house--one of the biggest in the world--to put together an immensely time-consuming project, which would require all my contacts, my knowledge and expertise. I am expected to get cracking on it RIGHT AWAY despite the fact we have no signed agreement. Having been burned so many times in past, do you really think I am willing to play this game? Just to top it off, the Project Leader--a local, as you might surmise---wants my input on various other projects. As much as I love this type of work--and being an expert in this particular field in both China and the US-- I am shaking my head and saying firmly but sweetly, "Sure, as soon as we have a legally binding agreement regarding my payment."
My friend Dot (not his real name) has similar stories in publishing and TV. He, being male, and being married to the lovely Jay, whom everyone in education and publishing over here knows and loves, is seldom screwed on these projects, but it does still happen to him occasionally. For example, a well-known director, a friend of his wife's, asking him as a favor to come on his TV-show: Dot thought ok, the favor is that it's a last-minute thing, less than 12 hours to prepare (late night phone invite for early morning shoot.) He goes--the director thanks him at the end of the day, and asks if Dot will do him another favor and come again the following week. Dot agrees, and leaves, unpaid, thinking oh, he'll get paid at the end of the next shoot. A week later, he comes, he shoots, the director shakes his hand and thanks him a lot for "helping him out" and pointedly asks Dot if his wife has dinner waiting for him.--i.e, hinting that Dot is NOT invited to the usual post-shoot dinner, where everyone gets drunk and paid. Bottom line: two days' work, no payment. I did an entire seasons' worth of writing and acting for a television series through my work place and never got any payment for it--my boss flippantly told me they'd forgotten to work out a payment agreement but I could have some time off if I wanted--which never happened as I was constantly slammed on Friday afternoons with huge work assignments to be completed on Monday mornings.
Lulu used to work on a television show when she was ten: the wardrobe mistress would call her say, ten o'clock on Thursday night and tell her to bring in a ballerina outfit, white tights size 10 , a soldier's helmet, etc, which wasn't even used on Lulu but used for other shows! We would also get late-night phone calls telling us to find, for example, a Russian boy no older than ten who could roller blade, a blonde girl, not fat, who could speak Chinese and French, or six children under the age of seven who could shout the state capitals in under a minute. We complied, but under duress, thinking the whole time, "Who are these assholes that they think they can palm their jobs off on us?" And what sort of asshats were we that we did their bidding?
So many people here (and to be fair, not just here) rise to their level of incompetence, then spend a considerable amount of time flexing their muscles and forcing everyone under them to do their bidding, cover their tracks, and line their pockets. The subordinates are not plotting how to create a more perfect working environment, they're mentally tabulating who owes them what, how they can use so-and-so, and what they can do to be "rich man" when it's their turn to be boss. I am leery of doing business with business people, but I am especially leery of local hires for international companies, because I know, even with a signed agreement, the following will happen: deadlines will be shifted, priorities changed, good material rejected (only to mysteriously reappear under someone else's name with another company, usually run by their cousin) and tempers will fray under the constant penny-pinching and criticism. Given the way I feel about this, I must be insane to even consider doing this project, even WITH a contract.
I guess, until everyone inside and outside China starts believing the country actually has laws, regulations, etc (well some anyway), then no one is going to abide by them - Bastards! No wonder there's a 'snatch and grab' attitude over there. People never know when they are going to be screwed over by someone else.
ReplyDeleteUntil then, we can only wish the most life-interrupting case of eczema on every last one of those who feel it's fine to screw over their employees and colleagues. Yes, a nice dose of insane itchiness and bleeding, oozing, cracked skin sounds like a fitting punishment.
In the meantime, I guess you could slip in a few choice sentences in your work - 'Hi, my name is Zhou and I think you have a really great rack!'
Sho 'nuff! Oddly, I've been screwed over by foreign people in China --usually married to locals--far more severely than actual Chinese! What is it about a man that turns him into a sadistic greedy bastard the second he thinks he has it made? That said, the Chinese publishers have done more than their fair share of screwing people over too.
ReplyDeleteThe foreign guy seems to think that having a local wife gives him permission to be bad. Maybe there's just as much screwing over outside China, it's just done way more subtly - you know with a bit of foreplay. The Chinese just get straight to it, don't bother with wasting precious time and energy on the foreplay.
ReplyDeleteOh well Miss Zanne, just keep on soldiering on and pull out your tired and tattered copy of The Art of War and see what he has to say about ambushing publishers. I wish I had a great solution to your problem, apart from biblical plagues - I'm thinking the whole business there is a biblical plague sent down from above.
I guess you could start in on their foul sense of dress in your text - 'Gee, Xiao Mei, that's a really rank pair of shoes you are wearing, today. You really should stop dating that guy from Ohio.' 'Hey, Li, I didn't realise you could put together D&G and Versace in such an unsightly way!' 'Really, Zhou, you sense of style is completely reppellent.'
You could do a whole unit on the 'upbeat' stylings of Beijing, including snaps of the worst offenders. It would be hilarious - of course job ending but great. And you could follow it up with a unit on the wonders of the buffet diner!