Shanghaing it

I arrived in Shanghai days ago with a hectic schedule, averaging 3-4 meetings a day. I've scheduled a dinner meeting every night, so by the time I get back to my hotel room, I'm pretty wiped. But I plan to be blogging daily again.

One of the stories I'm pursuing here is about the difficulties of doing business in China. One big problem is that workers don't feel empowered to make decisions on their own -- and that can can adversely affect how they perform in the workplace as well as customer service. I found some good examples my first night.

When I checked into the hotel, I was told my room wasn't ready and they would send a maid up to prepare it. I asked to stash my bags there and have the maid work around them. Minutes later, I went upstairs and the room looked clean, bed made, fresh towels on rack. Shortly after a maid came up and was quite confused why she'd been summoned to clean a room that had already been made up. With my month's worth of Mandarin, I tried to explain to her that the room looked clean and she didn't have to do it again. She insisted anyway--and remade the bed, pulling apart the new sheets to put on newer sheets!

At lunch, I ordered tea before we actually ordered our food. We ate from a fixed-menu that includes tea or coffee. I asked if they could count the tea I had already ordered and drunk as the tea from the fixed menu. The waiter waved his hands no and to underscore the point, shook his head too, as if it was the most ridiculous request. Later, I asked for more bread and out came the hands and bobbing head again.

Couldn't they have just charged me more for the bread? My companion, who is Chinese, said that would have required going to a supervisor for approval. And then I'd probably be talking to the hand anyway.