Too Much Work or Too Many Workers?

2006-03-03

Bartłomiej Magierowski

Imagine a large Chinese pharmacy, let's say three hundred square meters, offering traditional and modern medicine... and now imagine that when you enter this pharmacy, you cannot even walk freely because everywhere there are female employees from the staff. Literally every three meters there is one or several workers from this very pharmacy.

A small restaurant, a side street. Pleasant, elegant, clean, offering a dozen or so delicious soups with bones, noodles, green vegetables, and duck. Inside there are four tables, with four stools at each one, meaning they can serve around sixteen to eighteen customers in total. This small restaurant employs four waitresses, two cooks, and two young men delivering food. In Poland, the owner of such a restaurant would probably hire two people. The fact is that this small restaurant is doing quite well; they know how to promote themselves, take care of customers, and above all, cook delicious soups.

There are hundreds of such examples. Every day in a Chinese market I encounter a security guard whose job is simply to stand at the entrance and welcome customers. Going one floor higher, there is a female employee handing out shopping baskets or carts. Walking between the shelves, I come across dozens more employees who walk around the aisles or every three days move cookies from one shelf to another. At certain hours, there are sometimes more employees than customers. I simply have to walk around them, avoid them, and wait until they pass or finish rearranging something on the shelves. Hair salons look similar: two girls at the entrance welcoming guests, another girl at reception, five more girls washing customers' hair, several hairdressers, and these are not even large salons. The situation is similar in good restaurants: at the entrance there are one or even four beautifully dressed girls greeting guests, and inside there is a whole group of waiters and waitresses.

Recently, while walking through the city center, I came across four parking attendants. I wondered what four men in coats and orange scarves were doing standing in the middle of the pavement. Judging by the work of one of them – he was pointing with his hand where a car should drive – they were parking attendants. I wonder whether one person could have stood there instead, or whether they could simply have waited at the parking area. In Poland, an employer would probably hire one doorman and make him run between the reception desk, the building, and the parking area.

I always wonder how such companies, institutions, and restaurants can function, how they can employ so many people when there are almost no customers there. From an economic point of view, the reasons could be various: very low salaries for this whole army of employees, very high prices of services or products, lower taxes and practically no compulsory insurance contributions, or perhaps some strange business activity and money laundering. This entire army of workers simply has jobs in order to have jobs, and it does not mean they have to be extremely busy. On the contrary, sometimes they simply waste time.

Looking at all this from another perspective, most business owners know how important quick customer service, reliable assistance, cleanliness, and an elegant welcome are. All of this requires manpower. Chinese people are generally not lazy. A friend of mine recently quit her job because she said it was boring: nothing happened, and she only counted every hour at the office until she could finally go home at 6 p.m. Of course, people are different, but those who care about a good job, good salary, and personal development certainly will not sit around doing nothing while receiving a poor monthly wage.

How does all of this function in the Middle Kingdom? How can they maintain so many employees? But after all, at least these people have jobs and some smaller or larger income. And if the managers of these companies, restaurants, hotels, markets, shops, and pharmacies can afford such a large number of employees and still make a profit, then I certainly will not tell them not to hire people. Some of those employed will sometimes avoid work or be less active, while others will be very busy or busy only at certain times of the day (in restaurants during lunch hours, in hair salons in the evening, in markets on weekends, etc.). And in Poland... well, we have an army of unemployed people, hiring anyone seems absurd and simply does not pay off, and those already employed can be fired at any moment because twenty more people are already waiting outside the door. Sad, but true.