Feeling excluded?Join the club

　　　　　　

Behind the bar I chatted with Chinese and foreign customers, I polished the crystal ashtrays fastidiously, and I made friends with my co-workers either through offering English lessons or through sheer persistence.

Unfortunately, Lacey\'s path to friendship with our co-workers seemed littered with more obstacles, because she was Chinese. She was not a novelty to them the way I was as an American.

Originally from Guangdong, Lacey never went to university but learned to speak English through working in a Beijing coffee shop. Her real passion was marketing, and she thought she would gain valuable experience by working at the club.

Her starting salary was 3,000 yuan ($390) a month. The typical starting salary at the club was 1,000 yuan. Her hours were supposed to be different, too, because she was supposed to work primarily on marketing and not serving customers from 10 am to 7 pm. Already less than a month into her time working there, she was forced to agree to extend her hours.

Also, her ideas for expanding club membership were constantly shot down by the boss. How was she supposed to market a club that was only open to her boss\' acquaintances?

Eventually, I was hired for a daytime job, and I left the club after much consternation. I was going to miss my co-workers, and I learned that most of them had aspirations beyond their current careers. They said they had previous jobs with better hours and better pay, but wanted to work at the club to learn from the boss.

As the chef told me: "Many of us don\'t have the opportunity to study business in school, so learning about management at the club is the best way."

Just last week I got a call from Lacey. She told me she was fired from the club. One day she was talking to a member who worked at an IT firm.

Lacey mentioned that her boyfriend was an intern for a big computer company. The member asked for her boyfriend\'s information, and the boyfriend interviewed and got hired. The boss thought this was inappropriate and constituted grounds for letting her go. "I don\'t understand," she told me. "My foreigner friends say they don\'t think that I did anything wrong."


(China Daily 05/30/2007 page18)