THE Lowly Peon

On Chinese Efficiency 
28 November 2010, 12:22pm

Today, Daisy & I ran a bunch of errands. It was no different from other days where we run errands, but we both tried to, as my mom would say, surrender and release. In retrospect, it's amazing China has grown so quickly, yet still hasn't ironed out these details.

Adventure #1: Under Different Management

First, we needed to exchange some sheets we bought last week that were the wrong size. The place is much like a Bed Bath & Beyond, except in China is something of an upper class store. It has nothing but fairly good quality products, is arranged like a Bed Bath & Beyond (where for anything you need to make a full circle around the whole establishment), and has just about any home related stuff you can think of.

We went to the customer service center and told them we wanted to exchange the sheets. We knew this was possible, as we made sure of it before buying. (Ever try guessing what size your bed is when it's 10km away? It's tough.) The service rep asked her colleague, who gladly said okay, let me call the person in charge of this department.

Ah-ha. Problem the first. The store, one big home store, is actually several departments, which is owned, operated, and supplied by different businesses. We noticed then when we spent all of our time looking at beddings in one area, thinking it was their bedding area, only to find that there were about five others farther down the store.

She called some department by number, after studying the receipt we had for about ten minutes. A guy came, studied the receipt for another ten minutes, and then took off because it was the wrong department. The service person said oh sorry, I called the wrong department. No problem, we're not in a hurry.

The fourth employee arrived, looked at the receipt, and without any explanation, walked away. We were starting to get a bit frustrated. Why is it so difficult? We know where the stuff is — we could even go grab the right one and bring it back.

Apparently, she went to get the fifth employee, who finally took us to her department, grabbed the right size, and after waiting in line for a while, we were on our way.

Wouldn't it make more sense if every employee of the same store could perform similarly mundane tasks?

Adventure #2: Skirting Around the Issue

Next on our list, after a quick run and a nice little chat with Benji, was to get money back from China Unicom.

I suppose the background on this could be a story in itself: I recently changed my data plan for my iPad, eliminating the voice and SMS (they didn't advertise this as an option originally), and rather than switching my account, they had to close the old and open the new. Then, rather than moving my existing balance over, or giving me the cash, they gave me a piece of paper ripped from a full sheet that said I could come back a month later, with a four week window, to collect my money.

The little piece of paper they gave us said clearly, "Go to the Customer Service Center," a grossly uncomfortable concrete room on the second floor, obviously made that way so people don't go. No place to queue up, looks like it's under construction, and no place to sit down when you talk to argue with them. So we went to the Customer Service Center, waited for about twenty minutes, and when it was finally our turn, the guy chuckled and said you need to go downstairs and get a number.

Sweet. So we went downstairs, got a number, and waited another twenty minutes.

I can only assume they were making it as annoying as possible to encourage as many people as possible to not go get their money back. We figured it was worth well less than our time, the bus fare, and the effort, than the money we actually got back, but I couldn't bare to give China Unicom any extra money like that.

Adventure #3: Misrepresentation

Before heading home for a nice delicious Daisy-made dinner, we went to this "City Life Market", a clear rip-off of the "City Market" in Shanghai that caters to expats, with imported goods, jacked up prices, and a floor plan much like an American grocery store. We wanted to pick up some cheese and wine.

We grabbed the wine, and as we walked out of the wine section, the service woman said she needed to fill out some papers for the wine, then we take the papers to pay, and then return to pickup the wine. This is common in huge department stores in China, and drives me nuts.

Then we checked the cheese, and found the freshest cheese we could — made in May of 2010 — before going to pay. I had to go to a special lane to pay for the wine with those silly papers. Daisy waited in the other lane with the food. I handed them my VIP card and they laughed, saying they don't accept it there.

Hmm. Let's see. The card says in huge letters "City Life Market", and the name of the market is "City Life Market". The logo is the same, the store is laid out the same, the staff wears the same freaking uniforms. And they don't accept their own cards.

"Is this not a City Life Market?" we asked. "Of course it is!" "Is this also owned by Lianhua?" we continued. "Of course!" "So what's the problem?" "We don't accept that card here." And this continued for quite some time, before we realized that they simply didn't accept their own card.

So...

I'm pretty excited to get back to the states next year.