Comments on: Yoga lessons in Suzhou’s SIP – Maggie gets a Web site

By: Avi

Avi — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 03:54:59 +0000

About Revenge of the Nerds, did you know the main jock guy is J.D Salinger’s (catcher in the rye)son? Why do I know this?!

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 05:26:04 +0000

@Gin: Just let myself or Maggie know. We all still need to meet for drinks.

@Stuart: Yeah, I’d heard of it happening quite a lot as well, but you just always sort of assume it’ll happen to some shady business on the far side of town… but I guess when it comes to China and business, it’s all shady and all Farside™

@維特利: Yep. The primary business of the studio where Maggie worked was selling and applying beauty products. As such they had a legion of young girls just waiting to make any woman that entered feel like she needed their help to feel beautiful. The girls were paid a small salary and made commissions on product sales (which, judging by the state of the business, wasn’t much). Every month on payday a bunch of the girls would bail because it was such a craptastic job. In doing so they’d lose the salary that the boss had been holding as “security”, but as it was the current month’s payday and their purses were flush, I guess they preferred to just cut their losses.

As all these girls were working “illegally” (no contract, not a proper danwei, etc.) if they did give notice they’d run the (very real) risk of just being canned on the spot, no money at all.

By: 維特利

維特利 — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 04:55:03 +0000

>company keeps one month of salary as “security” to stop employees from not giving notice and just ditching on payday (deterrent or not, it happened ALL the time).

Does it mean that employees forsake their one month salary? That’s quite a sum…

By: stuart

stuart — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:17:43 +0000

I’ve been reading a lot about business ethics in China in recent days. Maggie’s story doesn’t surprise me in the least.

Good luck with the new venture and the website. If I’m in Suzhou and need a good stretch, I know where to go.

By: Gin

Gin — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:07:44 +0000

How perfect! I’ve wanting to find English yoga classes here, and have just been too busy to look around yet. I’ve got to talk to hubby, but I think I may be in touch with Maggie soon!

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:20:36 +0000

@維特利: We will likely put up a Chinese version eventually, but right now it is monolingual because she’s marketing herself to the somewhat under-serviced English-speaking expat niche here in SIP.

By: 維特利

維特利 — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:53:37 +0000

Good yoga site design but how come it’s only monolingual?:-)

>Fortunately for Maggie her skills are 100% transferable

Lucky she. I worked for my ex-company for 5 years and after I was let go I realized that the skills I have are related to proprietary technology of that company and are not in demand on the market.