Other Duties as Assigned

The Chinese like to be very efficient with everything they do...well, almost everything. While their driving is nuts, it's a kind of organized chaos. The longer I'm here the more I realize it's actually pretty efficient. I found out the other day that Mr. Liu has three different routes getting us to and from work every day based on the time we leave. If we leave at 7:45am, we go one way, if we leave closer to 8am, we go another, then we take a totally different route home. 

Riding an elevator is comparable to their driving habits. There is an unspoken "no man left behind" policy when that door is shutting. They have no problem cramming 20 people in so no one has to wait. And once you think there isn't room for another person, the elevator door opens two floors down, and somehow room is made for three more people to pile in. Personal space does not exist here. And even though I have not ridden on one, I pass about 40 busses a day going to and from work and it seems that this mentality is the same for buses. People are sitting, people are standing, people are sitting on each other's laps, ugh, could you imagine riding Septa like that? Vomit. 

The bathroom is a whole other adventure demonstrating efficiency, but that deserves its own dedicated blog post. I am waiting to write this post for a very specific reason and today is not that day, so stay tuned. 

And while the Chinese are so incredibly efficient in many ways, there is one thing that is puzzling me at the office. On two separate occasions, I have gone to the printer and it has been out of paper. The first time, I walked back to my translator to ask her where the paper was. She asks me how many pages I printed, and I tell her three. She walks over to a table and gets three pieces of paper and hands them to me. Ok, weird, but I go with it. The second time happened yesterday. I walked to the printer and the paper is out. I walked to the table where the paper is, and there is a guy there counting sheets of paper. He leaves, then I pick up the entire pack of paper he put down, discard the packaging, and walk back to the printer with it. I approach the printer and don't you know this dude is there placing his 4 sheets of paper in the printer drawer! He promptly closes the drawer, presses the button, prints and boom! He's done his print job and that damn printer light is blinking again.

Back at home in the office, we have two printers, both of which I would like to smash with a baseball bat. Everyone and their mother is constantly fixing these things. Who knew that I'd come across the world and have to deal with a whole other kind of printer problem. Why is it so hard?! You're already putting paper in the printer, just carry the entire stack and save everyone (me) a trip! If someone did this at home, you'd undoubtedly make snarky comments followed up by printer drawer slamming. It is what it is I guess, but I've accepted responsibility for this new job for the next two weeks. At the end of the month when I need to fill out the document of everything I've accomplished here, I'm filing this under the description section, "other duties as assigned."