Never mind syndrome

Probably the most annoying and frustrating aspect of working with the locals in developing countries, is the fact that their culture has seldom yet responded to the regime of work having to be done on an accepted schedule. We would probably recognise this in the culture of the Mexican people where Munyana has long been accepted as meaning that the work will be done later or tomorrow, with the decided inference that tomorrow never comes!

In Hong Kong I was soon to learn that in English the magic words were 'Never mind'. There is a Chinese language version that I can no longer remember, the same applies to Singapore, the Phillipines, and I have been told, in any country around the world where any developed nation has attempted to civilise the people.
I was involved with quite a few Chinese workers, both men and women, a lot of whom were well educated and keen to learn and advance their position, however, I was soon to learn that if hunger, the need for sleep, or just plain boredom with the job at hand intervened, the workers would just suddenly wander off the job. Mostly individual workers, this was considered by them as entirely normal, and involved us in continuous head counts, and then the evasive answers of remaining fellow workers, who never considered it their job to rat on their mates. Then when you showed signs of becoming annoyed, or you actually ran out of patience, there was always one who would come forward and even at times put their arm around your shoulder, and in a manner reminiscent of your own mother, would say 'Never mind Hammo, Never Mind'!
The early hours of the working day was always the worst. They came to work and after a few minutes a group would wander off in the direction of the nearest restaurant – never very far away in China! This was for breakfast, I never did work out if they did in fact eat before they left for work!

Wherever I worked I soon put a stop to this practice, but the scene just shifted a little – late arrival on the job was almost always the result of stopping to buy a small meal which would then be ceremoniously laid out in front of them as they squatted on the ground at their allotted work place. When I was contracted to a job that was off the beaten track, I figured that this practice would be eliminated as the workers were trucked to the job, but once again I was defeated, the truck arriving late, because they had to stop off to buy breakfast – 'Never mind Hammo'.

Then there was the midday meal, where once again it would be all into the truck (or sometimes bus) and off to eat, but the problem here was to keep the workers on the job till midday, most of them slipping off well before, and all sitting up in the bus with it's motor running, ready to go into gear at the stroke of 12! But then there was the problem getting them all back on the stroke of 1 – this just never happened! Lunch was basically only half an hour, but all the workers including supervisors and bosses would just desert the job for anything up to two hours! Even trying to reason with the site boss, would only get the standard consoling treatment and a 'Never Mind Hammo' (or the local equivalent) from the highest level!

Even when a work site reached the stage where it was becoming organised, it was only a matter of time till a food outlet suddenly appeared next to the site. This could be a bamboo and plastic sheet structure that came alive at the start of the work day, but on one occasion when such a structure near the premises was outlawed (actually forcibly removed!) it was only a short time later that a wheeled cart equipped with all the necessities for producing hot meals was wheeled into place near the entrance gate, and everything was as before! In this particular case, up next to the Chinese border the finished factory had a fully equipped upstairs kitchen and cafeteria, and the prime purpose of this was to keep the workers within the confines of the work area, also strict rules were laid down as to when the cafeteria opened for business and closed at the end of the noon lunch break. This led to all sorts of complaints. The food cooked wasn't to their liking, in fact the variety of excuses put forward as to the unsuitability of the arrangement all revolved around one basic problem, they were no longer free to slip off to a local eatery when they felt hungry! In this case the local eatery was placed well and truly out of bounds.

All this was eventually accepted, but there remained the problem of the workers leaving their jobs well before noon so that they could get a spot at the head of the stairs waiting for the door to open into the eating place. In a matter of days this resulted in a line filling the stairs and winding through the factory well before noon, and so some sort of schedule was worked out, but it didn't last long and eventually the restaurant hours became longer and longer, and opening times became earlier and earlier. With the advent of full scale production the whole problem was forgotten, and I guess the restaurant became a full time operation, conveniently placed as it was above the clientele's heads. But I would have been long gone by then, and with the absence of any non-Chinese management, everything would have reverted to the local norm!

However, somehow we managed to get the jobs done. Luckily a lot of work such as electrical wiring was sub-contracted, and the lure of good money helped a bit – a contractor having his own solutions to getting the job done. But in most cases the later maintenance job quotes proffered were so high, and the time given for completion so long, that we would sometimes just have to take it on ourselves, and in this way, just myself and my son, Bill, tackled a major rebuilding job over the few days of the Chinese New Year, and completed it easily in the allotted time. The best quote from a local firm involved more than twice the down time (they obviously couldn't get workers over Chinese New Year) and probably a dozen workers and a lot of hired machinery – the overall cost being astronomical! It was quite funny really, a contractor turned up after Chinese New Year and asked if we had made a decision yet on getting the job done, I took great pleasure in walking him around to the site, and pointing out that it had all been done! He immediately demanded to know what rival contractor had been given the task! My pleasure was very rewarding when I finally convinced him that just two Australian workers had done the job in three days without the use of a single piece of heavy machinery!
I have to say that we had more realistic quotes and time frames from there on!

Through all this ran the ongoing battle of trying to keep workers actually working, and listening to the 'Never mind' bit hundreds of times a day! There were even times when the office girl on the job would be deputised to calm me down, and so I would be treated to a softer more feminine version of the old refrain, sometimes including an invitation to have the midday meal with all the troops. I only fell for this one once! The strain of being in a crowded Chinese eating place with dozens shouting food orders at the same time, followed by the long – too long – wait for the banquet to appear, and then everyone piling your plate with their favourite delicacy – boiled hens feet and unidentifiable bits and pieces! Trying to get it down with one eye on the clock telling you that this was going to be the longest lunch hour of all time!

As a result of these problems, we (myself and my mate, the overall Aussie boss) actually found ourselves on one occasion working throughout a long hot and humid night, mixing concrete and building a new foundation under a section of heavy travelling crane track with two women – Barbara and his Chinese wife (then his girlfriend) as labourers! This was the only way that we could convince the workers how easily and quickly the job could be carried out! The next day we were able to show the maintenance foreman the result of our overnight labours and tell him, that from now on a team of workers would be required to do a section of the work every night until the whole thing was finished!

Strangely, in this manner it was possible to convince them, and they would really apply themselves to the job in hand, so many jobs were just dismissed in their minds as being impossible to carry out. This also had another effect, I soon found that if I physically worked on the job and basically dragged the workers along with me, it wasn't long before everyone wanted to be on my job, and before they knew it, they were acquiring basic skills, that they never aspired to. Also unknowingly they could be schooled into the spirit of a job well done, and from this grew pride and a far less inclination to use the 'Never mind' excuse!

Of course it has to be admitted that our culture isn't completely free of this problem, we have all succumbed at some point in our working lives to the, 'bugger this, let's go fishing' syndrome! Then again, the 'Never mind' thing isn't just used to placate you at work, it can be applied in a thousand ways – from a reply to any sort of request, through rebukes at being late for an established appointment, to an all purpose remedy for feeling unwell or slighted in some manner. In fact nothing is impossible! Never mind Hammo!