Our swimming pool has changed its rules for getting in. Last week, we paid the man who sat by the door and walked through to the open-air pool. Now, we have to go into the same building, up 2 flights of stairs to an office to buy tickets (torn carefully from a book of impressive looking printed tickets), go back downstairs to give the tickets to the same man by the door who piles them neatly with the others he has taken that day. Predictably, this prompted Olivia to ask "why?" and her question, in turn, made me ponder on the simple tasks that are sometimes made so complicated in China.
China is unashamedly bureaucratic and we encountered numerous examples of this when we first arrived and had to register for residency permits, etc. The police station where we registered had five numbered desks. The man at desk one checked our photos were acceptable, the man at desk 2 stamped one form, the man at desk 3 stamped a different form, the man at desk 4.... well, you get the picture! But that's almost to be expected of a government office and I had come across similar set-ups in Europe too; it's when it comes to shopping that it's more difficult to comprehend...
So, a couple of weeks ago, we ventured into town and found ourselves, for the first time, in a department store. We had visited many, many shopping malls but never a Debenhams-esque department store. We soon happened upon the children's floor and let Olivia choose something to buy with some of her birthday money. She eventually chose a Barbie handbag and we took it to the lady in the children's department with purse in hand, ready to pay. But the lady didn't take our money, she wrote us out a ticket. She handed the ticket to us and pointed to a dark corner of the store. We wandered over, rather bewildered, where we found a long desk with about 6 people sitting in a long line. We approached the first lady who smiled nicely but pointed to the end of the desk where we noticed that only one of these ladies had a cash register (begging the question what the other 5 did) so we walked over and handed over our ticket. She kept one part of the ticket, gave the carbon copy back to us and we paid our money. We then went back to the original lady in the children's department and handed over our carbon copy of the ticket and our receipt. She then took the Barbie bag back off the shelf and put it in a bag for us. Phew! This department store had 8 floors and I can only assume that each of them has a desk of 6 people and one cash register!
When I think back to shopping in UK supermarkets (and even Boots and WHSmiths),"self check-outs" were the norm. On the absolute opposite side of the coin, there are real people working every check-out in the supermarket, approximately 3 people working on every aisle, not necessarily stacking the shelves but seemingly just to advise of this week's special offers and which laundry detergent smells best, and not to forget the man who stands at the exit to stamp your receipt. Why? We have no idea but I can guarantee that his role would never be filled by a machine!
My own musings on this are that because every employer is encouraged by the government to employ as many people as possible, there is just no incentive for simplifying processes. I imagine that the man at the swimming pool was reprimanded for taking our money in that first week as it was denying his colleague upstairs a job!
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