A Bryson in China: Easy Mondays

Monday, September 10, 2007

Easy Mondays

Mondays. Not really that bad in China. At least for us Americans.

If you’re an American working with American companies, Mondays are usually pretty quiet. It’s just amazing. You come in on Monday all geared up for the week, open up email, and there’s nothing there. You see, most of us have cleaned up most emails on the recent Saturday. But with the difference in time zones, our Saturday is after all Americans gone home from their Friday. And they haven’t gone back in to work to send any more emails.

Today was like most Mondays. No emails, so I worked on quality in the factory. Didn’t make any calls to the States, since I don’t want to wake anyone. And then………..I had another one of those peculiar things happen that only comes with being the only American at a Chinese company:

In the early afternoon I got a call that “the driver had arrived to take me to another factory.” Only thing was, I didn’t know I was going to another factory. He and most everyone here kept insisting that he had instructions to take me with him at 2:15 PM. Funny that I couldn’t remember why.

Then it finally occurred to me. There were some visitors at the factory from France. Maybe he was here to take them to his factory. Sure enough that was the connection.

Now I wasted about a half hour trying to figure this out. Everyone involved kept insisting that this driver had instructions to take me. Turns out he had instructions to take Westerners. But me being the only Westerner working at my factory, everyone just assumed that meant me. It’s sorta like how I become operator when anyone calls speaking English. I automatically get the call, whether it’s for me or not.