Thick face, the Chinese way? or the Universal way?

June is the time to give performance appraisal to my employees. I got a 29 year old sales/branch manager， we give him the name, Bob, who has been working for us for the last 3 years. He came to work with us with supposedly, some sales experience. As it turned out, nothing really shows that he knows how to sell. So, we worked so hard by giving him trainings, sales assistants he can use, pre-establish accounts and a good territory to work with. Really, gave him what any sales can't complain about. So? What is the result of his 3 years of sales? Yes, he brought in about 15,000 USD in 3 years!  Really!  That amount of revenue probably won't even be able to feed mice in our house. (We have mouse coming into our house recently.)

So, a few weeks ago, Bob starts to remind us about how he needs to get his yearly appraisal. And, on the side, he says that it is his chance to get salary raise. When I heard this, I literally almost fell off my chair! Fortunately, my immediate response was, 'Raise? How can you be sure that it won't be a salary reduction after appraisal?' I was in real shock and later one, and couldn't kept thinking about how in the world Bob has the audacity to ask for a raise?  The more I think about it, the more I get confused. What caused him to get that kind of mentality to ask for a raise?  I haven't gotten the courage to ask him about it. 

His face skin is at least 2 inchese thick, I swear. If I were him, I would be worried about getting fired by now. Bob must think, for some reason may be, we can't lose him. Perhaps he thinks that if we lose him now, we may end up losing some of our key customers? Yes, those customers who haven't brought one dime into our company. Perhaps, this is the way how our young Chinese people behave nowadays? 

No, that's not fair. I think Bob behaves like one of my daughters. We have been trying to remind our daughter to report to us her recent financial account status. We let charge some money on our credit card account for her mail order business. (Everyone told me that is a No No thing to do.) A credit card in the hands of a growing adult is sure way to poverty and debt.)  So, we gave her ultimatum, no financial report by this Sunday night, a fine of 100 usd will be levied against her. So, the deadline came and past. We asked her why. Her answer was, 'I have two tests coming at the school!' We even said that you just send us what you got in hand, OK? After several talks, reminders, emails, QQ messages, and it all came to like this. Does it really make sense? 

So, what is my conclusion? I think Bob thinks that he is our child, not an employee. Over the last 3 years, we have created a monster! To be fair, this got nothing to do with 'Chinese way'. This is the result of our own doing. We are the one who helped Bob to build that 2 inch thick face. May God save us!

I am a blogger! A courageous one, indeed.

My user id is greatmomchia. I created this Gmail account in honor of my dear mother, who has done nothing in her life but to love and encourage me in all her life. I heard that one way to prevent senility is to write blogs. So, here we go! No matter how ugly my English may be. So if my children laugh at me, that is ok. After all, I can write in English, Chinese and even Japanese. That is more than most people can do. With encourage from my daughter, here is my first try at writing a blog. In the past I thought about writing blogs about doing business in China.  I gave that up because you never know who may come after you if you share your true but ugly business experiences in China. Someone in China may come against you personally because it may rub them the wrong way.  
Here I am, in the lazy afternoon, sitting on a couch in the lobby of Nature Resort location in Lonely Beach, Chiang Island.  
Since I was small, I never liked reading books. In my college years I would pray late in the night for God to help me to turn in my essay assignments. I escaped the essay class with a 'B'  (I think that is because my teacher felt sorry for me.) That was a real painful excruciating experience.  I almost think that was version of equivalent experience Jesus had his last prayer in the garden of... However, my sweat didn't turn into blood.  So, now years later, I am ready to do the impossible;start writing my own blogs. Put away the fear of revealing my poor English, just do it!