stuff

The stories have been piling up, so here goes. . .

When I came to China in June, I was assigned a car and driver by the company. We had him for 5 months without too much trouble, and then the wheels started to come off the wagon.

It started about a month ago. We have our driver pick up our tutors and bring them to our house 2 nights a week for our Chinese lessons (yes we need 4 tutors for 2 hours every week to teach us how to say ‘hello’ and ‘excuse me’. Chinese is hard). After the lessons, the driver takes them home and he goes home for the night. Well, one night the tutoring company owner wanted to take our family out for dinner after our lessons (I think she felt guilty about becoming a wealthy Chinese woman solely based on the revenue generated by our family). So she took our family to the restaurant while the driver took the tutors home and they told the driver to pick us up at the restaurant.

Well, he made it to the restaurant about 20 minutes after us. He came into the restaurant, walked into our little private room, spit on the floor and walked out. Now I’m no cultural anthropologist, but I’m pretty sure in most cultures this is not considered a sign of affection. Then the driver called my translator and told her that he wasn’t feeling well so he needed to go home and that our family would have to take a taxi home.

The next week, I had a little heart to heart with the driver and told him that where I come from, spitting on the floor is considered slightly rude. He listened politely and explained that he doesn’t make a lot of money and we should pay him more if we would want him to work longer hours.

So we struck a deal (nice little psychology experiment). I would pay him an extra $15 every week, and he would do whatever we needed him to do. He would be nice to people, not complain about anything, and drive whomever we wanted wherever we wanted. So basically he needed to become someone he wasn’t for money.

As you might expect, this little experiment went according to the textbooks. He gets his money for a couple weeks and acts like a perfect gentleman. Then after 3-4 weeks the true colors start coming out. A tutor called him to arrange a pick up and he told her that he wouldn’t pick her up. When we confront him on his breaking of our little covenant, he calls the tutor back to a) apologize b) share some quality recipes c) yell at her and tell her that she is the reason he’s going to get fired. You’ll have to send me an e-mail to get the correct answer.

So we were done with 2nd chances at that point. We called HR to get a new driver. Turns out my boss is relocating back to Germany so his driver was going to be free. We worked out a little swap. I wasn’t sure exactly how the switch would go, but since our driver was an angry little man, I assumed it wouldn’t go smoothly. I’m not always right, but sometimes I am.

The switch was supposed to be on for Saturday morning. Friday afternoon, our driver gets wind of the switch. He asks for a meeting with HR and me and I manage to defer. He had to take my wife and 2 other wives to meet at a dinner where we were finishing our recruiting of a German engineer to backfill my role. So our driver took the 3 women to a hotel, but then decided he was done and took off. The 3 women had to find a taxi to come to the dinner. This was a good orientation for the German couple to realize that in China, not everything goes as planned.

So Saturday morning, I get a call from the translator saying that they didn’t know who would pick up our family that day. The old driver had not returned the minivan and the new driver had been using a sedan. So we got picked up by the new driver in a loaner minivan. We met up with another couple for a visit to an orphanage, and our van was there at the meeting place. We get out of the loaner van and shake hands with the owner of the car company that rents the cars to JCI. He said he had 'taken care of the situation' and that our old minivan was ready for us to use.

Now I’m not sure what it means ‘to take of a situation’ in China, but I don’t think I will be asking any questions about what happens to a guy who strands 3 foreign women in the middle of the city and then steals the car of his employer. I know he’s unemployed now, but I’m curious if he still has all his digits and limbs. I’m guessing I will never know.

My wife wants to add an editorial correction: The last paragraph was written in jest and mostly to add humorous content to this blog post. We don't believe anyone was harmed in the making of the this blog post.