Generation Y and the HuffPo Huff

Having read both the HuffPo “opinion article” (here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wait-but-why/generation-y-unhappy_b_3930620.html )and subsequent rebuttals/backlash (depending on how snidely dismissive on wishes to be; for instance, here: http://aweinstein.kinja.com/fuck-you-im-gen-y-and-i-dont-feel-special-or-entitl-1333588443 and here:  http://iambeggingmymothernottoreadthisblog.com/2013/09/18/im-a-millenial-please-stop-being-a-douche-to-me/ ) on the so-called “Generation Y Yuppies” and why “we’re” all so unhappy… I had a few thoughts I thought worth writing down; if for no other reason than my own satisfaction.

I’ve shook my head in both bewilderment and fascinated annoyance at how this issue seems to have resonated with the American public – more often than not,it seems, in a fantastically negative fashion.  Namely, I mean how many of the replies, comments, and sentiments expressed by those having read the article seem to be in full support of its central claim… Perhaps I should back up a little bit.

I case you were not of a mind to actually read the article in question (it is, unquestionably, a slog), let me summarize its main points as I understand them:
1) Generation Y is, as a body, largely unhappy with their life circumstances.

2) This subset of Gen Y (which the author refers to as GYPSY– “Generation Y Protagonists and Special Yuppies”), absolutely believe that they are special and unique snowflakes, and the world should be tailored to their special and unique whims and ambitions.
3) Much of “our” frustration and unhappiness stems from the fact that our “delusional” expectations and life requirements are simply not met by realities.  Grandpa and Dad defined success as putting food on the table, but “we” require parades,rainbows, and unicorns puking rainbows [as graphically noted by the author] to even feel adequate.

The author then goes on to recommend these “GYPSY”s a) “stay wildly ambitious”,b) “stop thinking [we’re] special”, and c) “ignore everyone else”.

Alright.  Where to begin.

First off, the first central point is right on the money: The sub-40 crowd is – more so than not – unhappy with the direction (and specifically turn) of the national and global society and economy. The rationale, however, I disagree with.  The author puts forth the snide assumption – bases much of his/her entire graphical co-presentation on, in fact – that the youthful adults of today are unhappy not because our grass isn’t greener than out parents’ and grandparents’… but because out grass doesn’t immediately spring up into flowers.  It is difficult to for my calmly lay out how absolutely false this premise is, but I’ll give it a shot.

Gen Y is not unhappy because our lawns didn’t pop up in magical unicorn flowers….we’re unhappy because theprevious generations dumped 8000 lbs of human excrement on our lawns and told us to be happy they “fertilized” it for us.  I graduated college in mid-2008, having lived my entire life having been spoon-fed the notion that going to college and getting a degree – while certainly not any kind of guarantee of a better life –was most certainly a precondition. I watched (thankfully from afar) as that convenient little lie came crashing down around “us” that same year. The idea that education was a path to prosperity virtually evaporated.  But let’s be honest…it was a long time coming.  The 2008 collapse was, if anything, just the final nail in that coffin.  Since at least the 1990’s more and more menial, service-sector jobs have used education as a filter for employment.  It hardly mattered even before the Recession whether or not that education had anything whatsoever to do with the position in question - does one really need a high school diploma to manage a McDonald’s? – so long as the paperwork attesting to that education was in hand.  That was exacerbated by the crash of '08, as the market became flooded with degrees upon degrees, upon degrees… in such a situation, of course it became a precondition for a position.

This is totally at odds with what we’d been taught out entire lives – the education was the ticket out of the rat race.  Suddenly, education because a precondition to the rat race.  Moreover, the business-ization of higher education has driven the cost up exponentially in the past several decades… to the point that even when you adjust for inflation, post-secondary education is now more the 1200% more expensive than is was 30years ago in the 1980’s.  My father used to (and, on occasion, will still) relate the story of his youth: how in his first semester at university, his dad had a medical condition necessitating his parents to withdraw all monetary support for his university expenses.  And through his own hard work and perseverance, he worked his way through university, post-grad, and doctoral programs with wife and kids in tow.

Don’t get me wrong, I totally admire that story.  It is great, it is true, and I in no way, shape, or form disparage or lessen it… by saying there is no way in hell that I or any Gen Y person would have a snowball’s chance of recreating such a scenario.  There’s just no way.  The total cost of my father’s education cost him what a semester-and-a-half cost me.  In fact, the only reason I’m not absolutely drowning in debt is a combination of my parent’s saving my entire life… and the fact that I was an above average high school student who managed to get ~1/2 of my tuition covered by scholarships.  No matter how you slice it, the scale has been tipped in the interceding several decades… and decidedly not in our favor.

The second point of the HuffPo article levels one of the more tired, trite, and specious “criticisms” of Generation Y: that we’re all just firmly of the notion that we’re unique and special, and thus deserving of unique and special praise and reward for not spitting up on ourselves at lunch.  It has been made a thousand different times in a thousand different dismissive variations: “we” have been sheltered,“we” have been given participation trophies and “no one” has lost, “we” are teacup kids who will crack at the first hiccup or disappointment.  In essence, we are weak, coddled, and just generally less than any prior generation’s gumption, gusto, and bootstrapping-ness.

Bullshit.

I could give you numerous tales of my own failing, the times I was not given a participation trophy, but instead an icily silent car ride home from a soccer tournament we failed to do anything but lose in.  I'll spare you the details... they're anecdotal, and they to this day tend to rub a raw nerve.

These “previous” generations – from Boomers to Xers – rode one and all a rising tide… and convinced themselves they’d “done it” all themselves.  It’s interesting in a teeth-gritting sort of way to look back on the past half-century and note how often successes both personal and societal have been attributed to individual gumption, while setbacks or failure attributed to bad luck or factors beyond control.  The ultimate confirmation-bias.  One need look no further than the Fox News channel to see the most virulent strain of that mental virus, but it is in various strengths prevalent at nearly all strata of society: if I do well, it’s my own virtue; if I fare poorly, well obviously it’s not my fault.

The issue with the phenomenon is when the social strata collapses or otherwise becomes untenable, the “current” generation is labeled as “lesser than” or “entitled” or “yuppies” rather than addressing the actual issue – that the system itself has been hopelessly compromised by successive generations gaming it for their own benefits at the ultimate cost of the future.

This is the major problem I have with such “Y-shaming.”  We did not create this problem.  We didn’t instigate it.  We were not in Washington or on Wall Street when the markets collapsed and the economy went into terminal shock.  We are not to blame for the lack of jobs, or the business models that would bounce profits back without expanding employment.  Rather, we were and yet remain in the unfortunate and utterly unfair position of having been in the wrong place at the wrong time… and then (most damningly) having the gall to say, in effect, “Wait, this is not what I signed on for.  This is not what you told me was in store for me.  We’ve been lied to by our parents, and our government, and our education, and our society.”  And yet, how dare we complain.  How dare we expect a reasonable standard of living.  How dare we think we could’ve been better off than our parents – you know, that same “Dream” that our parents realized, and their parents, and their parents….

Perhaps we’re just unrealistic. Maybe wanting to be as successful as your father is just a sign of being “coddled.”  Yet the only “participation trophy” we collectively seem to be demanding is the trophy that yields us a living wage… an award saying “you do not have to work 70+ hours/week with no benefits or security just to breach the federal poverty line.”  An award the generations past were awarded one and all without them even realizing it…. they now scorn and mock us for demanding.  We ought to be content with what we have, the argument is made, even though it is manifestly less than what our fathers (and mothers) had at our age, and certainly what they have now.  The portcullis has been raised and the moat filled… and we are denigrated and designated as ungrateful “yuppies” for not having built our own castle from the scraps that remain.  Economic and business policy are continually reworked to make life more secure for those with a 401k or a retirement plan, yet for many in Generation Y, that was become about as rare as a unicorn.  TheHuffPo author cites a study showing that the idea of “job security” being an important factor is on the decline in America’s youth… but neglects to link that to the sad fact that “job security” is an absolute anachronism in a society where the average person under 40 will change jobs every 5 years.  Of course we value the idea of it less, the same way we do not value “intra-office anti-goblin measures” as a job perk.  Its hard to value something that is mythological.

And so, here we stand – Generation Y, the Millennials.  With little hope of achieving or breaching our parents’ standard of living, with little or no job security, working more hours for less remuneration… and told to feel lucky for the privilege.  Given the insanity and unfairness of the situation, how have we not, as a generation, gone totally nuts yet?  Because we’re wildly optimistic; because we know that we can make things better.  Possibly most importantly – because we value material wealth significantly less than our forebears. Can you imagine anyone in the 1980’s developing, polishing, and branding a commercial, artistic, or social product… and then giving it away at no charge?  Of course not.  The entire premise would have been ridiculous.  The 80’s was the decade of Wall Street with Michael Douglas – “greed is good”.  The premium, the pay-per-view, the cutthroat business model and hostile takeover.  Gen Y, on the other hand, is marked not by its coddledness or specialness…but by its propensity for connectedness, sharing, a greater good beyond oneself.  Never before in human history has there been a section of society so willing – and yes, able – to share ideas, desires, plans, and products…. often for no cost whatsoever.  The collaborative esprit de corps of Generation Y is our true foundational principle. We are the first generation raise with a fundamental connection to the larger humanity surrounding us on a global scale, and we are acute aware of that fact.  We are the first generation for whom communication, publication, and interaction have been a fundamental principle of being, and not some privileged facet of the elite.  Sharing is our common experience, and our individual experiences are shared.  That, ultimately, is our strength.  And that, ultimately, will steer us away from the myopia and self-interested nature of our predecessors’ collective political and economic stewardship.

So call us yuppies, call us coddled, call us weak.  Misrepresent us as you will: as teacups, as unique snowflakes, whathaveyou.  In fact, Generation Y has already begun shaping the societies of the world for the better, and for the common betterment rather than for just a few “winners”.  Call me crazy, but that vision seems a whole lot brighter than any the previous generations have had.
(CS) TAW Out.
I think I'll go home and mull this over

The Probable End of Chunshen Campus

As this coming Wednesday is the Chinese Tomb-Sweeping holiday, the subsequent schedule fluctuations ended up meaning that – in a once-in-a-blue-moon turn of events – all the teachers in my company had this weekend off.  So a group of us decided to go to Tianzifang for dinner, drinks, and general merriment.  Since Nancy and Caelan are still in Wenzhou, I was all by my onesies, but that was okay and I still had a good evening out.

But between the second… or third… or possibly fourth round of beers at the Thai restaurant we’d decided on, the conversation shifted to an interesting note; specifically, the still-ongoing legal limbo the company is in thanks to the intransigence and general dickishness of the now-former owners.  I’ve detailed extensively the eye-crossing stupidity of the He’s and their idiotic power play, but it’s been surprising just how much of a headache even this transparently illegal stupidity has managed to give the majority shareholder – Pearson – and as a result, pretty much everyone else as well.

To quickly recap, the He’s decided that they’d try to go ahead and get the school’s operating license renewed… without the Pearson name attached to it anymore.  This presented a bit of a problem, as they’d sold 70% of the company to Pearson a few years back.  When negotiations went south – culminating in the He’s temporarily imprisoning the president of Pearson Asia-Pacific in their office – the company responded by trying to fire them, and stopping book sales and any other material support to the 20+ schools in Shanghai.  The two parties went to, and are still in court.

Well, apparently they’ve reached some sort of arrangement: to the tune of Pearson buying out the remaining 30% from the He’s (though for significantly less than their initial gouge-tastic demand of 元50 million) and subsequently kicking them to the curb.  Dust off your jackets, and all’s well, right?  Well, not so much…

You see, the school license is to the He’s, and not to Pearson… so while the idea of buying out the former owner/manager might seem, to your silly Western brain, to automatically include such pivotal things as the license to operate… the glorious and harmonious Chinese way doesn’t see things in such a light.  To that end, apparently in order for Pearson to continue operation in Shanghai, they’re going to have to move their schools.  All of em.  They are not allowed to use the facilities they are currently in, because those are still license to “Learning” and the He’s.  Ain’t that a kick in the balls.

So what does that mean for lil’ old me?  It was mentioned that in all likelihood this would be happening in May or June.  It also means that a half dozen or so of the smaller, lower growth schools… like, say, mine… will simply be rolled into the larger, more centralized facilities.  So in my case, probably that shithole known as Minhang Campus.  I potentially could use this as a way to get to the nearby Xujiahui campus or something, but we’ll see.

In the wake of this, there are a fair number of longstanding teachers – including my direct coworker – who essentially thrown their hands up and said, “well screw that” and begun actively looking for new positions.  Psychologically, I’m right there with them.  One of the big reasons I’ve stayed in this position as long as I have is that Chunshen Campus is small, low growth, and out of the way.  I’m quite happy being a big fish in a little pond.  It excites me not at all to be transferred to some mega-center surrounded by people I’m not familiar with.  Nu-uh.  However, I’m still under contract until the end of August, so I’m not sending out my CV just yet.

I don’t want this post to drag on, so I’ll save my thoughts for the future for my next entry, which should be coming forthwith.  Stay tuned.

(CS) TAW Out.
Through white, and green, and grey

Another Brick in the Great Wall

I've mentioned before - well, more than mentioned... more like extensively laid out - my understanding of the relationship between the Chinese economy, and its government intervention.  But for the sake of those of you who may just be tuning in, I'll recap:

Near as I can tell, the government of Beijing does not really - and never has - understand the words "subtlety," "moderation," or "forethought."  Perhaps it's simply an unavoidable side-effect of locking yourself in an echo chamber of opinion, surrounded only by sycophants and like-minds.  Regardless, their policy toward the economy has been a heavy-handed yo-yo over the 62 years of the CPC's reign.  Through the era of Mao, it had several attempts at full regulation... with disastrous effects; tens of millions of people starving to death, purge after purge, brain drain... the works.

"You're welcome!"

Then quasi-midget Deng Xiaoping stepped up and said, maybe an open market isn't such a bad idea after all.  And it wasn't... in thirty years, China went from a third world cesspool, to a bustling, booming global powerhouse.  Since then, however, it's been a dance along the knife's edge for the CPC.  They, like any authoritarian ruling body, want control... or industry, of commerce, and of information and opinion.  That's completely at odds with the natural processes of a thriving market economy.  Their legitimacy and claim to power rests on continued economic growth, and their assertion that one shouldn't rock the boat, since (almost) everyone's lives are getting better.

It's been an either/or proposition... either the Chinese govt. chokes the life out of their own economy and people in a quixotic quest of isolation and control, or they risk instability and possibly their own loss of power by remaining open and allowing access to services, opinions, and viewpoints that might not be entirely favorable to their regime.  Shocking, I know.

And here's the thing:  Every time.  Every.  Single.  Time. the government lets up its economic and social choke-hold... the Chinese economy has bloomed and prospered.  It's magical... sort of like when you stop throttling a person they start breathing again.

Though now that I'm looking at it, 

it might not be so bad...

So, that being said, I'll get to my main focus here.  I've noticed a rather disturbing trend in the 4 years I've been here.  I arrive in China immediately following the 2008 Olympics... deemed "China's Coming-Out Party" to the world.  Heck they even promised they'd tolerate and allow protesters and dissenters to air their gripes about "human rights" and "forced disappearances" and "brutal information suppression."  Y'know... in an appropriate space...

"Right this way please, protesters... 

your platform is just ahead."

And largely, they did... sort of... follow through on a lot of those pre-Olympic double pinky-shake promises.  Foreign media access was allowed, western websites had fairly free reign, dissent and protester did have some (extremely limited) access to the limelight.

That lasted until, oh, April of 2009 or so... when the CPC realized that the June 4th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre was fast approaching... and not just any old anniversary, either, but the 20th.  Add to that a moderate upsurge in ethnic tensions and a hate crime or two in Muslim majority Xinjiang Provence (aka Uygheristan), and the ongoing colonization of Tibet, and the technocrats manning the towers along the Great Firewall had all the terror-fueled delusions of mass-uprising they needed to essentially shut down the entire internet for a few days.

Obviously, that couldn't last... and so they opened many websites back up to public use, minus a few pivotal ones including Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, YouTube, and a host of others deemed "Dangerous."  But what to do to fill that void?  Why, clone them, of course!  Make PRC-friendly versions of each of those sites, and then have the ability to monitor, delete, redact, and otherwise "harmonize" this sanitized Pod-People Internet to the benefit of the powers that be.  Ingenious.

We foreigners cried, screamed, shouted, stomped on the floor, and threatened to hold our breaths until we passed out... and finally got around to buying custom-built VPN services to tunnel through the information blockade.

"$5 a month?!  Are you f**king kidding me!?" 

- Foreigners, ca. 2009

Finally, we got used to it... there were ways out, workarounds... as Google put it during the (ultimately futile) struggle to remain operational in China while keeping their dignity, "Better to have a library with a few books missing, than no library at all."  Except for us it was more, "better to pay money for a service and get the full library, than be a cheapskate and render the internet largely useless."

But then it got worse.  It creeped in around the peripherals, often not even noticeable until it was nibbling on you pant leg and refusing to clean up after itself around the house.  Little by little, China is rebuilding its Great Firewall... and they're not only after the internet, this time.  It seems that slowly but surely, they're slipping back into another isolationist, Mao-era.  Foreign films are being forced through a narrower and narrower channel if they want to get to the Chinese screens.  There have been at least two occasions in my tenure here that the Chinese Cinema's governing body ruled that all foreign films were being temporarily suspended... until a certain (and usually hyper-patriotic) domestic film reached a target revenue.  They literally held Harry Potter hostage until people payed the ransom for the Boy Who Lived via tickets for The Founding of a Republic, a two-hour long propaganda piece on Mao and the CPC's glorious and harmonious victory for the soul of China.

"Again, you're welcome."

Recently, my own job's parent company - Pearson - which owned a 70% share of the Shanghai school it bought out in 2008... was forced out of the city by a policy change in the Ministry of Education which made such joint ventures, apparently, no longer acceptable.

And just today I read an article stating:

The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television said late Monday that under the new rules, no foreign TV series may be shown during the prime-time hours of 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. and that overseas-produced shows can take up no more than 25 percent of the total broadcast time each day.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2106770,00.html

For what I can see, China's taking everything it can use from the West, Sinofying, and has the padlock in hand and is attempting to push that gate shut again.

Like this, but possibly with fewer cave trolls.

How far will this closure go?  How much insularity, seclusion, and isolation are the increasingly interneted Chinese people willing to tolerate?  Probably a lot.  They're used to it, largely... many have all but forgotten that something called YouTube or Facebook even exists.  Let's face it, if China does one thing well, it's ripping off someone else's idea and copying it wholesale for its domestic market... the internet is no exception.  But in the mean time, might I offer you this genuine Larry Viuton bag?  I give you best price!  You buy now!

(CS) TAW Out.
No dark sarcasm

An open letter to my senior management

I wrote an as of today sent this letter to the upper echelons of Pearson Asia Pacific.  Time will tell if I get anything but dead-air and/or platitudes with absolutely no followup.  Still, it felt good to write, and my coworkers are all in agreement... and some even think I don't go far enough.  So yeah.

Should I get no response, my next option will be to find the general company listserv and go populist with the message.

And so, without further ado...

To whom it may concern,

I’d like to pose my concerns regarding the efficacy of the current makeup and revenue-target model. While this has been an annual headache for myself and my coworkers, as we all scramble to account for the hours supposedly “missed” during national holiday leave, I’ve long since stopped beating that dead horse and grudgingly accepted that any and every “holiday” is more or less one extended scheduling aneurysm of 25%-filled makeups, and makeups of makeups, etc. I am not questioning this policy in itself at this time.

Rather, this year seems to have added yet another layer of needless complexity in the form of the “revenue-target” and its incentive structure, as is currently implemented. Let me lay out my own situation, and that of my campus: I am about to go into an 8-day “makeup marathon” which will compile two entire weeks worth of classes into a single stretch of time. At its worst, I’ll be actively teaching – without anything but a lunch break – from 9am until 8:30 at night. My fellow teachers face similar, if not worse, schedules.

We proposed that the makeups, rather than having to be lumped together as previously mentioned, instead be allowed to be spaced out into the first week or two of February, as both a quality of life, and direct quality of teaching issue. This has been what has worked in the past over my 3-plus year tenure here at Pearson, and I didn’t expect there to be much resistance to the same solution this year. Much to my surprise, the idea was deemed unworkable due to the revenue-target system that has been implemented. Under this structure, the local Senior Teacher, Center Manager, and apparently even the Regional Manager would all be directly financially punished if this so-called “target” were not met. This target is, to my knowledge, developed by the financial dept. and senior management, and is continually raised if met – and again, financially punished if a given school underperforms in a given month.

Given this model, for a small, slow-growth school like Chunshen, there is absolutely no room to space classes out over the next month, or for any schedule irregularities whatsoever. Virtually any discrepancy would result in the school falling “under target,” and thereby punishing the local management.

There is, therefore, active pressure on the management to meet this goal. That is understandable. However, there is no such incentive for the teaching staff to do the same.  Consequentially, there is a considerable degree of resentment at being made to compress half a month of classes into a single week.

This is doubly aggravating on a holiday like the upcoming Spring Festival… this is a holiday that happens annually; that is to say, every year. This could have been planned for, this could have been planned around; the monthly target could have (and quite frankly, should have) been adjusted to reflect the fact that the entire country is taking a week off.

And yet here we stand again, my 4^th Spring Festival at this company, now more stressed and overworked that any of the prior three, due to the shortsighted implementation of this policy, and its disregard for an annual, completely foreseeable schedule break on its teaching staff. Meanwhile, senior management will be enjoying extended vacations, with no compulsory makeups, or near-unattainable revenue targets hanging over their heads and paychecks.

Again, I’ve come to tolerate the policy of holidays merely being deferred classes, with little more than grumbles and a resigned shrug. That makes a level of financial sense, even if it is unorthodox. What I am perplexed and frustrated by, rather, is the myopic implementation of this revenue-target system, and the unnecessary additional level of stress it puts on teachers and center managers to not only make up all holiday classes – but to also do so by the 27^th of that given month. For a school like Xinzhuang or Xuhui, with their large number of classes and staff, and therefore relative flexibility with scheduling, the stress may be less. I cannot speak for them, but for a small, slow-growth school like Chunshen, it adds a completely arbitrary and unjustifiable deadline to complete these makeups.

While I hope that my words might find a receptive pair of eyes, my experience with the managerial structure of the company tells me I’m far more likely to get a nicely-worded brush-off and be promptly forgotten in the name of slightly better returns on paper, and positions above my own receiving congratulatory bonuses for effectively manipulating my and others’ schedules to make the returns looks nicer.  I hope this is not the case, and that there might be a real and serious look into the value vs. cost ratio of this policy from an HR standpoint, rather than merely a bottom line view. I simply wish to make clear my concerns and frustrations regarding this policy, and the unwarranted additional stress it places on my coworkers and me. I do not question the financial sense of requiring makeups for even national holidays at this time… but I strenuously question the sense of mandating that it be done in the same financial month, especially for a holiday of the length of Spring Festival.

It is my sincere hope that, if nothing else, future holidays may be planned for in advance and have the arbitrary “revenue target” adjusted accordingly to reflect that schedule disruption, rather than forcing teachers and administrators alike to frantically compress a large number of classes into an extremely limited timeframe, or face the punitive action of a reduced paycheck.  It would not cost the company money, and it would certainly make many employees dread national holidays a little less.  They would still be rescheduling nightmares in the name of naked profit, but they would at least be on our – the teachers’ and local-level staff’s – terms time-wise, rather than that of an arbitrary monthly deadline.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

(CS) TAW Out.
LYRIC HERE

How Not to Blackmail your Company

Imagine you own a significant share in a major business venture – let’s say, oh, 30%.  Now let’s visualize the other 70% being held by an multinational conglomerate by the name of, oh, I don’t know… “Learson Pongman”… a publishing and education company which has its tentacles in over 70 countries and has had business dealings with my own country-of-residence for something on the order of half-a-century.

What do you do?

If your answer if to kick back, relax, and let the virtually assured dividends come rolling in… well congratulations.  Your brain is officially working normally.  Let me present you with this laurel, and hardy handshake.

If, however, your answer was to resist the 70% ownership at every turn (after, y’know, selling that 70%) over a period of 3 years, and then – and this is where it gets good - try (unsuccessfully) to fire those who disagreed/were not intimidated by you, and then unlawfully detain/imprison the president of the Asian branch of the parent company, his staff and lawyer in your office for a period of hours, under guard… well, then hello to my now former general manager and welcome to my page.  I do hope you enjoy it, given that you’re newly unemployed, and may soon be facing jail time for, well, basically going off the deep-end.

In my extended stay at – let’s drop the transparent euphemisms, shall we? – Pearson, I’ve been privy to quite a few power struggles, shifts, and complete reversals of direction.  I’ve seen promises broken, words revoked, ignored, and the supposed “values” of the company outright ignored in the interest of something called “guanxi,” which is to say, “face, relations, connections.”  I’ve become accustomed to a multinational company from the UK being run in a quintessentially – and I mean this in an entirely negatively fashion – Chinese way.  The semi-corrupt, completely opaque bureaucracy that governed my work environment had long-since become old hat.  I tolerated it because, by and large, I was able to ignore it, and the upper echelons largely ignored my backwater campus as being just too darned inconveniently located to actually come and enforce everything.

And yet, as of Tuesday, I bore witness to something completely new.  And found myself utterly dumbfounded at the machinations that unfurled quite literally before my eyes.  Nancy and Caelan had boarded their train for Wenzhou, and I’d returned home to wile away the remaining hours of the day with WoW, Skyrim, or whatever else might strike my fancy.  And so, there I was doing my best not to become food for a frost troll, when my cell phone began thrumming away with a series of texts.  It was a series of messages resembling something the Enigma Machine might churn out than an official company SMS.  It came in 4 parts, crudely cut apart at random places, and then delivered in reverse order.  Needless to say, my curiosity was piqued.  I had, along with the rest of the staff, been “invited” to a meeting at the headquarters with the aforementioned President of Pearson Asia Pacific.  Now, to explain, this was very strange because I had until now never been “invited” to any function other than the annual party.  Meeting times and places were simply sent out via email and through the local center managers that “there will be a meeting at…” and sometimes that we were “required” to attend.  Further, I had never before received a text message from the company.  It was a degree of sophistication upper management had simply lacked.  And finally, the invitation was for that very day… and while I’ve long since grown used to the Chinese vagaries regarding future-planning, this level of immediacy was again unprecedented.

So I bid my dark elf goodbye and trekked out to People’s Square out of little more than sheer curiosity.  Arriving at the building, I was greeted by a few of my coworkers hailing others down with directions.  The meeting at HQ, they relayed to me, had been cancelled and the center closed entirely.  The Asia Pacific President, Mr. Dugie Cameron and his entourage had relocated to a 3^rd floor restaurant of the nearby shopping mall, where they awaited anyone who might show up.

Once assembled, he relayed the tale of sorrow and woe to us all: he had flown in from Hong Kong to try to solve a rather grave crisis of leadership at the managerial level, one which put the entire operation in Shanghai at risk.  It seemed that somewhere in the byzantine bureaucracy of the Ministry of Education, there was some mid-level official who had taken a rather intense dislike to the fact that Pearson was operating in Shanghai/China.  So much so that when the school had to renew its license to operate in the city, this person had stipulated they would not authorize any renewal if the name “Pearson” was still attached to the company.  Now of course, the “whys” of it is sheer speculation – perhaps he’d been bribed to do exactly that, perhaps he was a jaded former customer hell-bent on revenge, perhaps an alien parasite invaded his brain and turned him into a drone for the hive cluster.  Regardless, on the last day of the year the renewal had finally gone through – with the Pearson brand stripped from it.  The general managers/minority shareholders/husband-wife pair in change of negotiations had essentially promised that Pearson was going to be removed entirely from its operation in Shanghai.

Obviously, that didn’t sit too well with the company as a whole.  And thus Mr. Cameron flew in to deal with the rogue duo face-to-face, lawyer in tow.  I’m sure expected a fair amount of static, posturing, and heated negotiation.  What they certainly had not expected was to be locked away in the office building, and placed under guard for a period of hours, and denied access to communication devices.  Yeah, that’s a no-no.  I’m not sure what the Chinese word for “false imprisonment” and “kidnapping” are, but they’re definitely on the books as a general “bad idea.”  After the cleaning lady finally came along and unlocked the door from the outside, they relocated to said restaurant.

As for the mysterious text message, apparently the normal company email system had been taken over by the duo, who had managed to acquire sole administrator-level access of the system.  There were able then to monitor, and block, any mail they so chose.  Thus, they’d been able to effectively close down the primary means of intercompany communication.  Mr. Cameron had been forced to reroute the messages about the meeting through his Hong Kong office using available cellphone contact info.

But that wasn’t the end of the paranoid craziness that had seized the GMs.  After the negotiations broke down into kidnapping, they had tried to terminate several of the upper-level staff for being “pro-Pearson” and attempted with some success to intimidate the center managers into not attending the meeting.  Several had been cowed into coming out on the side of the GMs.  Talk about backing the wrong horse.  As for the “firings,” well it turns out it’s rather difficult to fire someone who doesn’t work for you.  The employees had been hired and brought in by Pearson, thus nullifying the monomaniacal purge it seems the GMs had envisioned.

From the sounds of it, the ex-GMs had been blackmailing the company, hoping for a big payday – to the turn of $50,000,000 (yes, that’s in USD) – to make them go away.  Well, now they’re more likely to be going away for quite a while… to prison.

The open question at this point is, what becomes of the company?  The license to operate was procured under false pretenses – no, the 70% multinational shareholder did not simply raise anchor and disappear over the horizon.  So there is the possibility that the Ministry of Education may follow the letter of the law and begin proceedings to close the school down.  That, however, is relatively unlikely.  For one, it seems there is only one MoE official who took issue with Pearson’s ownership in the country.  Everyone else they’ve contacted in the Ministry seems to think there shouldn’t be a problem… so it may be as simple as just resubmitting the application to someone else.  For another, Pearson is not simply the owner of Longman Schools; they own at least two other school chains throughout the country, including the giant Wall Street English.  They create tens of thousands of jobs – most of which are for local staff, rather than foreign experts such as myself.  The company’s ability to generate currency is rather substantial, and to jeopardize that would be unwise for an economy in a precarious position.  On a related point, the last thing the Chinese government needs at the moment is yet more bad press, especially when it comes to foreign investment.  With competing entities like Disney and English First having equal stakes in the ESL industry, rocking that boat could have a significant ripple effect.  Suffice it to say, methinks this will all pan out in the end.

Still, it’s been a very interesting few days – especially since the company annual party was held the day after this all went down, including the two GMs in question.  Believe me, there were quite a few people waiting for that ball to drop (alas, it never did).  In my wildest dreams, I see there being a substantive shift in company policy away from the profit-at-all-cost mentality of the former head.  But hey, I’m not fool, and I know that it’s just as likely (in fact, much moreso) that barring a new name at the top of the billing, the status quo is likely to remain firmly intact.

Time will tell.

(CS) TAW Out.
LYRIC HERE