You're tuned in to Roundtable.
I'm Steve Hatherly today with Yushun and Yushan.
Coming up on this week's edition of The Soapbox.
Oh boy, a young lady in the southern part of China has stirred up controversy.
She posted about a five-hour nap she took at her company in protest to what she says is a low salary.
Spoiler alert, she got very little support online.
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It's time for the soapbox.
It is time for this week's edition of the soapbox.
It's the segment where we dive into something from the internet a story, a moment or perhaps a situation that sparked a strong reaction in one of us.
We pick it apart a little bit and we tell you how we feel.
Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don't agree, but it always gets interesting.
And this week...
It definitely got interesting.
Before I tell you the story, I want to know, before I brought this up at our team meeting had you heard about this young lady?
Had you seen this circulating online?
Not really.
No, it was the news to me.
So here's what it's all about.
So there's a woman in Shangqiu that's in Henan province, and she went viral after she took a nap at work.
She said she was unhappy with her salary.
She said she felt mistreated by her boss, but instead of quitting, she decided to quote match her effort to her pay.
What she was essentially saying is you get what you pay for.
So during her shift She slept for about five hours.
Wow.
Now, napping.
Everything you said before five hours, I was agreeing with.
Right.
Because napping.
OK, it's part of Chinese office culture a little bit.
Right.
After lunch, people will take a nap for a little bit.
You see it.
You see it around our offices, too.
What's the average acceptable amount of time for an after lunch nap?
You shouldn't always do like 20 minutes, something like that.
Kind of, yeah, 20 minutes to 30 minutes.
And also, it's kind of a recommended length for your nap.
You shouldn't take a too long nap.
Yeah, you're not going to bed.
No, but a power nap after lunch maybe help you have a better efficiency afternoon.
Yeah.
That's not what this lady did.
She went to bed at her desk for five hours.
So now I'm not exactly sure about how the timeline went, but her boss either woke her up or later discovered that she had been sleeping for five hours.
Then, at some point and this is a weird side story to this she took a candy bar, a chocolate bar, from her boss's desk.
And that sounds like nothing, but the boss reportedly suffers from low blood sugar.
Oh my.
Yeah, and relies on those snacks...
Because if an emergency happens, then he needs that sugar.
And he was unable to find the chocolate because she ate it.
And he nearly collapsed as a result of that.
And obviously he got super angry about this.
He accused her of acting irresponsibly.
He issued a formal warning.
He threatened to fire her if it ever happened again.
He didn't fire her at the time, by the way.
As far as I know, she's still employed there.
But that's when she posted this tearful video online.
OK, OK.
Now the video online.
Yushan and I, we were watching it this morning again and she's she is very teary eyed.
Right.
She's not bawling.
She's not like angry.
No, angry.
No, it's just.
Yeah, you can see the water has welled up in her eyes.
And what did she say in the video?
Something like, I feel like I was wrong, like this, I don't deserve this.
And like you mentioned earlier, I'm not quitting.
He told me that I need to leave this company, but I'm not leaving because I want to send this message that you get what you're paid for, what you're paying for.
That's her whole point, right?
You get what you pay for.
She defended her actions.
She said it was a response to being underpaid, to being mistreated.
Yeah, she said she's not going to leave her job.
Now, after she posted this, then on Chinese social media.
And it triggered this really heated debate about work culture and pay and professionalism.
What were some of the comments online?
One that I spotted that's very much agreed by a lot of people is that, oh, I saw this this morning.
And I can't believe what I'm reading, because napping for five hours, that's almost as long as the sleep I get in the night.
So you just get a warning after that.
That's quite kind and understanding enough from the company side.
I don't understand this.
You know a lot of people agree with that, that kind of attitude that's demonstrated through this comment too, and other people were teasing that is this just a teaser for you know, trying to get a lot of people to follow you online.
You know This is kind of a hook that you get attention and then you can create that account to be an influencer or something.
Yeah, maybe she'll start opening an online store afterwards.
Selling sleep products.
Having a profile saying I was the victim in that incident, something like that.
Yeah uh, clearly we are seeing that some of the comments are not supporting her, because i saw one user said man, i did not expect that one day i would support a boss.
Another person said The labor law stipulates that a worker works eight hours a day.
So if you deduct five hours for that nap and then your time for lunch and then the number of times you go to the bathroom, you're actually working for less than two hours sitting in front of your desk.
That was kind of the general sentiment online is that people were saying she was absolutely 100 in the wrong.
Some other people said that even if your pay is really low, it doesn't justify abandoning your responsibilities.
Other people, they said that they did understand her frustration, but not her actions.
And the overall idea was that she had taken quiet quitting too far.
She redefined Quiet quitting.
Yeah, exactly.
So not a lot of support online.
And this is what leads me to how I feel about this situation.
Here is my soapbox.
Alright, well, I'm gonna start by saying something that a lot of people online are not saying.
I actually have a certain amount of sympathy for this person, and even I was surprised that I felt like that.
But here's the deal.
We don't know what led up to this.
Maybe she's been underpaid for a long time.
Maybe she tried to speak up before and she was ignored.
Maybe she's overworked.
Maybe she's burnt out.
But she's definitely checked out.
And at some point, people snap.
And when they do, it isn't always neat and it's not always professional.
Sometimes it comes out wrong like oh gee, I don't know, taking a five hour nap at work just to make a point.
So, yeah, I understand the emotion behind it.
But when she posted online, that's where this completely fell apart.
Because at that moment, something like that happens.
The conversation is no longer about salary or fairness.
Nobody's talking about underpayment anymore.
They're talking about you.
You've gone from being an employee with maybe a legitimate grievance to the person who slept half the day and stole a candy bar from your boss's desk.
And when that happens, you lose everybody.
Your boss isn't listening to you, your co-workers definitely don't have your back and the internet not on your side.
You didn't start a movement.
You became a meme.
And the hardest truth is that, even if you were right in the beginning, now you've made it almost impossible for anyone to take your side.
This situation stopped being symbolic and started looking careless and irresponsible, and this is where I land.
I'm sorry, but yup, You probably deserve to be fired.
No, not because you're a terrible person and not because your frustration isn't valid, but because, whatever job you're doing, it's clearly not a fit for anyone anymore.
And at this point, staying doesn't help anyone either.
Doesn't help the company, doesn't help you.
You know, sometimes leaving a position is just the system correcting itself.
You move on, you find something better and honestly, a year from now, you're probably going to look back and be glad that you did leave.
Because, even if you are justified in your behavior, even if you're at a place to work that doesn't value you as an employee, you went or are going about what you wanted the wrong way.
Because this is what I really want to say.
And this is true for anyone, anywhere.
If you have a desired result, Maybe you want your partner to help more around the house.
Maybe you want your kid to study more.
Or maybe you want to be recognized more at the office, either through more respect or an increased salary.
Well, you have to take into consideration what it's going to take to get the other person to do what you want them to do.
Screaming at your partner to help more?
Probably not going to work.
Bribing your kid to study?
Maybe work in the short term, but not going to pay off long term.
And trying to nap your way to recognition?
1000% guaranteed to never, ever, ever be successful.
Oh, and posting about it online so it goes viral and then everyone in your office, including your boss, will know about it.
There may be no coming back from that one.
So, think about what you do before you do it.
Will it help you achieve your desired outcome?
If the answer is no, then don't do it at all.
Agree, disagree?
Yeah, i mean, of course, as you said um, you know, fighting for our own rights, it is definitely um supported and i think um, it is good to be acknowledged.
But the thing is that the way that we fight for our own rights, It's not sabotaging your own reputation.
Yeah.
So this is the way I think starting from a good point, but in a wrong path.
It's all resonatable what she's expressing.
If you don't know the background and context and just watch that video.
But yeah, like you said Yushun, there's a Chinese saying you killed a thousand enemy while hurting 800 of your own.
That's exactly what the lady is doing.
She is out of all the different methods that she can utilize to justify for herself, because we all understand that, of course it's hard to work if you're under whatever circumstances or whatever pressure that you are put.
Yeah, it's totally understandable.
But the way you demonstrate, it has to be powerful in order to change that very circumstances for you.
And in this case, I don't think it's changing anything apart from just making it worse.
Yeah.
Do you feel any sympathy for her whatsoever?
She didn't get a lot of support online, not surprisingly.
Yeah, but the things that when you are extremely angry, extremely disappointed, it is quite, I think, normal to act like that, because you are at the point that you
You think you are right and you are doing the right thing and you cannot get out of that kind of box.
That's a great point, because when she posted she obviously felt very strongly about the fact that she was right.
And I totally feel that because maybe I can sometimes be really – stubborn or extreme when I can be really really angry, but but the things that I may have my own way, because I tend to be Like stubborn in a debate.
And then once I get into it, I really want to prove my point.
I remember just spending hours and hours gathering all of the examples just to win an argument.
With whom?
With my friend.
That probably just didn't really matter that much.
And it's probably just a little quarrel.
And then it wasn't extreme in a very dramatic sense, but for me spending and putting that much time and energy into something that Small definitely felt a bit over the top.
I think I see what you mean.
And I think that's a great point that I didn't even think about.
Is that your argument or your debate with your friend?
Suddenly you got so deep into it that it wasn't even about the debate anymore.
Yeah.
She posted she took her time.
To make this video, this is very well thought out, right?
This wasn't a spur of the moment thing.
She made a decision to do this where she thought okay, I'm going to let the country know about this.
This wasn't closed to her friends.
This is open on Chinese social media.
And she decided that that was the right thing to do.
Maybe it didn't even become about the original issue anymore.
It seems like it's just gone off the rails completely.
Or making any possible quote-unquote revenge that she pictures in her mind against whoever employs her in some ways.
And I think for I did saw some online netizens supporting her in out of their own so many reasons personal reasons, because she is voicing for those who, In similar or the exact same circumstances, are not yet there or confident enough or worried about too much, to express the same thing.
Out of whatever means.
Oh, like other people, plenty of other people are probably feeling that same frustration.
Yeah.
Not enough recognition at the office, underpaid, overworked.
Sure, that's not a feeling that's unique to... one person or even one country.
That's true for a lot of places, a lot of people around the world.
I don't want to justify the fact that she is making a news out of all this, and it's turning more dramatic than problem solving.
But still I think yeah, sometimes you just gotta have to be the person to make the message out and clear, especially when it comes in terms of communication, because that was what I was kind of respected and known for in my previous job as an editor in an academic publication journal.
What do you mean being known for being outspoken or speaking your mind?
Yeah that, and also solving problems through communication, and how to do it in a more efficient way effective way instead of making the scene just lay everything out there and make a hot mess.
Previously I sent tens, dozens of emails every day as part of my job, which is to solve negotiation problems or just communication things with our Chinese team and the international teams.
I remember very vividly that there's one colleague from our Serbian team who had a big kind of beef with us because of the way the time lag, the way that we communicated with them and also how things are arranged so differently between the China side and the Serbian side.
So, instead of escalating things, I decided to just step in full of structure, in the sense that I drafted a clear communication schedule for my Chinese colleagues telling them okay, I see, this is what's going on on their side and I hear this person very loud and clear.
And that when they're expecting our replies, there's a lot of things we need to consider, such as our tone in the email writing, such as how we're not only arranging a work to make it done, But also thinking just how possibly it's made sense to the other side as well in terms of how they can better cooperate with you.
We're not saying that we're making things easier for each other.
We are just colleagues.
We don't have to.
But it's just, I understand how wars have their weights and how changing the little bit of a nuance within the email can change everything.
Yeah right, so somehow i become the person that gave this um, you're the peacemaker.
Unauthorized uh, or really unofficial training, email training or quote-unquote english training to my colleagues.
And I still remember, at the time I quit my previous job, that very Serbian leader who used to have a lot of issues with us.
He personally wrote back to me and thanked me for trying to make things work between our both sides.
So I think, yeah, that's one announcement make and that's one difference made.
And whatever it's made, whatever the process may seem, it's supposed to be ending on a side that's solving problems for everybody.
I understand this young lady because I did something similar.
This is a true story.
I was about 23 years old and I was working at an English institute and my contract only had four weeks remaining and I wasn't signing a new contract.
In that time, I got a new job offer, one that I was really excited about.
So I asked my boss at that institute, Can I leave my job four weeks early?
There's somebody here.
There are people here to cover what I was supposed to do.
I talked about it with my coworkers.
My boss said, no, contract is a contract.
You have to stay here for four more weeks.
And I tried to explain myself.
I said, yeah, but this is a really great opportunity for me.
And I've worked so hard for you.
I've done the best that I could.
All I'm asking you to do is let me go just a little bit early.
Actually, I was only asking to be let go two weeks early.
That's not bad.
And they said no.
So I decided to stop showing up.
For the morning classes.
Now, I felt guilty, so what I did was I told my students, look, I'm not going to show up.
Let's rearrange the schedule to meet outside at a coffee shop.
I'll give you your lessons.
You're not going to miss anything.
It's just, and I explained to my students, and they said like this, we support you.
So I stopped showing up.
Irresponsible?
Don't know.
But here's what they let me do.
They let me go.
And I was able to keep that job.
Now, here's part two of that story.
In the job that I took next, I was teaching at a public elementary school.
One day I was in the break room and the sixth grade homeroom teacher, whom I had never spoken to before, not really only said hello.
He sat down next to me and he said, what do you want to do with your life?
And I was like, what?
I was like, bro, I've got like four minutes until my next class.
He said, no, really, what do you want to do with your life?
I said, okay.
I always thought I would really enjoy television or radio.
He took out his phone.
He called a producer, his old college friend who worked at a radio and television station.
He talked to him for a couple of seconds and then he said Steve, are you okay to do an audition next week?
I said, for what?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Doesn't matter for what.
I went.
I did it.
And that was the beginning of my broadcast career.
Now, loose connection?
Maybe.
But you could also say...
I wouldn't be sitting here with you today had I not gone to that extreme at that institute.
If I had missed that job, I would never have met that person.
I'm not advocating for sleeping in the office for five hours a day.
I'm not advocating for posting negative things about your current employer.
That's just stupid.
But I am saying, if you have to stand up for yourself and go to extremes, sometimes it could actually be the right decision.
You never know.
And with that, we'll wrap up Roundtable 4 this afternoon.
Thank you so much for spending your time with us today.
I'm Steve for Yushan and Yushan.
Enjoy your day and please do come back again next time.
