manninchina

I need your help, and it’s fairly urgent. We’ll start small, I promise.

Tomorrow (any time between 11am and 9pm) head down to the Silk Market. You’ll find a strip of coffee shops/small restaurants on the east side. Just focus on one, for now … Subway. Yes, the Subway all of the westerners flock to after a few hours of being nagged, hit, cornered and ripped off while shopping in the market (but, everything is real, so it’s worth it).

What you need to do:

1. Get people to stand in line. I know it’s not a large space, but assuming there is already someone there ordering, it’s easy to figure out where to stand. Please guide the customers.
2. Get people to make a decision on their order in 30 seconds or less. Usually, there is at least one person in front ahead, so that gives them an additional 30 seconds to make up their mind. I realize Subway is new to many people here, but it’s bread, fake meat, some veggies and your choice of sauce. Please encourage the customers not to ask too many questions and just make a decision.
3. Have a talk with the Subway employees. Tell them it’s best if they just focus on one customer at a time.

So, that’s it. I’ll look for the results two weeks from now to see if we’ve got any improvement. Don’t worry, it only gets more complicated from there!

Is it…

• The girls at the market yelling and pulling at you to get you to buy a fake purse?
• The dvd guys saying “hey, dvd? dvd? dvd? dvd?”
• The women, holding babies, trying to sell you “sex dvds”?
• The constant spitting and snot rockets flying around the side walks?
• The ring leaders of the beggars sending little kids out on the streets to hang on you and whine to get $1 out of you?
• The taxi drivers who are always looking for the “long ride” with the foreigners, so they either…
  • Decline to take you where you want to go
  • Drive slow as hell to piss you off
• The people outside of restaurants/bars yelling at you and getting in your face to get you to come in?
• The guys on Sanlitun bar street trying to get you to go to a “lady bar”?
• Belly shirts?

There’s a lot of talk in Beijing these days in regards to manners. There’s even a “Miss Manners” in Beijing. They also have people going around town fining people for spitting and not standing in line (I have yet to see any of this in action).

I don’t know anyone, Chinese included, who likes when someone bugs the hell out of them to try to get them to buy something. Why do people around here think the way the act will entice people to buy?

There are rude people all over the world. But, in Beijing, I think it comes down to the fact that many Chinese just don’t know how manners are defined by the rest of the world. Many people seem worried about the massive number of migrant construction workers in the city; I think that should be the least of everyone’s worries.

My view…there are going to be a lot of pissed off and annoyed people in Beijing one year from now.