Every time a person in torn clothes walks by, the “bâr” dog barks—though it’s not necessarily because the dog owner intended it or even directed it. The bâr dog often ends up being harsher than its own owner.
----Lu Xun
A few days ago, I went to Taixing to start work, but I hadn’t even put in a few days myself before I quit and ran. The store manager was just… ridiculously over the top. Before I even got there, people had already heard that plenty of students came and then didn’t last.
There were two or three other young guys. One was 18, the other 22—both not long out of school. One of them wanted to “run” (get out), so he left next month. He came to ask for my opinion. When he explained it, he said he’d come here in April, but it turned into tendinitis. He wasn’t healed up from seeing doctors yet, and then the dog manager called him back to work. After taking good medicine, it got messed up again—I guessed it was because of what he did during the rolling/flattening process (擀胚). There was also a four-year veteran employee, a bit of a show-off. And there was a two-year employee who came with a young-student kid-mom; she was pretty kind to me.
Then there were the male dog manager and the female dog manager. The female dog was especially good at “teaching me a lesson,” and she’d use white-eye looks at people whenever she felt like it.
The manager’s clothes weren’t like ours. Ours had to be red, but the manager wore gray. The manager could take 10% of the split each month. That was better—probably over 2,000. I saw what the pay looked like last month: about 1,500 for ours. And their wages were higher than ours.
But the dogs basically didn’t do much of anything. They’d just be particularly good at making other people do the things they wanted. And they’d stand right at the hamburger station and the front desk where they greeted customers, facing us, calling out orders—what we needed to do, what we needed to get. Sometimes if they spoke more quietly, they’d blame us anyway. Sometimes the old employees didn’t know if they were joking; they’d cackle and curse them out: damn you, kill you thousand times.
What made me especially furious today was this: I was originally rolling/flattening the dough, and then the male dog told me to roll it immediately—more and more—no matter what. But at that time there were already very few orders, and it seemed like he was deliberately putting pressure on me (and later he admitted that). Then he told me to put three in a row into it. I was terrified I’d put the dough right in front of the oven that was about to start. Heat waves came rolling in—sometimes it made people feel like they were toasting a fire in winter. In the end, because I didn’t put three in, the male dog yelled at me, asking if something was wrong with my hands. I took the yelling and didn’t say anything.
The most ridiculous part was at lunch. Nobody told me to rest, nobody waved me over to take a break, and nobody even said you could rest. I didn’t verify whether that was really a thing. The two-year veteran employee quietly told me later that I could rest for half an hour—because when they did the calculations, they were actually deducting it from our time. But before that, I had absolutely no idea.
After that, I felt like there was totally no dignity here. It was completely different from a factory. The manager had overwhelming power. Whoever they wanted to mess with, they’d mess with. No wonder—most of the food service industry is young people, unlike in factories. And they wouldn’t even move you to another position or anything. If you weren’t adaptable, it was just abuse. They also wouldn’t be patient and teach you properly. The female dog would just say something—“I teach it once.”
But I’m still full of Confucian stubbornness—especially this morning when I resigned. This is also my own fault.
When I was about to leave, I hesitated. Should I go or not? Then I saw a few new young guys come in for interviews. I thought this was a good moment. If I brought up quitting then, the manager would lose face, and I could also expose and criticize them.
But honestly—someone like me, who always likes the doctrine of the Mean (中庸主义), and who still wants chances to return to my own comfort zone, it takes courage.
Sure enough, when I went to tell the male dog, he said, “Today you can’t leave. You still have to work another day.” The female dog pouted out her red lips and cursed: “Fuck…” She said that me suddenly leaving without notice wasn’t allowed, and then she just left me hanging on the side.
I thought I’d already been polite enough with them. During probation, I originally wasn’t going to keep working, so I just didn’t. In the end I only said one line: “I really can’t stand you treating people like this!” Then I threw off my work uniform and left.
But later they said they wanted the work uniform washed and brought back. Since I was desperate to get away, I just walked out of the shop, clocked out, and went home. The male dog chased out and asked me:
“Leaving today counts as absenteeism (I only worked three hours), and there’s no pay.”
“Okay. Then when will you bring the uniform back?”
“Tomorrow afternoon at 3.”
“What reason?”
“My own reason.”
“Go.”
Honestly, it was indeed my own Confucian stubbornness. I got forced out, yet I ended up saying my own fault. Along the way I was furious—I threw that humiliating red work uniform away. But the truth is, my stubbornness was big, yet it wasn’t a complete struggle. And at that time, I didn’t really go after those few people who were following along. They might be little-elite types, not necessarily expecting much, but there were totally ways to spread the word and mess up their recruiting—yet I didn’t do that.
After I got home, that dog manager called me again and again. Finally I let it ring for a bit and picked up. He actually told me to go back and sweep the drainage ditches. A joke. He said “go” and now he was “asking me to come back.” I was really speechless—and I didn’t go.
He threatened that I hadn’t had any contract contact, but for insurance, I had later submitted my own contract termination agreement. I really was being considerate. And this was still during probation! Yet they still wouldn’t let it go, barking like crazy (see below).
