Quality Issues

We continue to enjoy our surroundings and learn new things everyday. My most recent lessons have been in the quality that goes into the work here in China. It is no wonder that there is lead in our toys, because although there is no question whether or not the Chinese are hard workers, when they fix something it is not always done right the first time, or the second time, or the third time - do you get the picture?! Let me explain...

My first exposure to poor quality came the second night we were here. My children were filthy because I had been too tired the previous night to give them a bath, so I gave in to my cleanliness gene and put them in the tub. They were happily playing away after many warnings of, "whatever you do, do not drink the water." I'm zoning out while sitting on the toilet lid next to the tub, just like I did in the states! All of sudden, there is a big bang and my tush is through the toilet lid and almost touching the toilet water. Yes, the toilet lid broke with me on it!!! I'm not that heavy, so I have to blame this on poor quality. Now one would think that after a person falls through a toilet lid, when it is replaced, a better quality lid would be put on so it won't happen again. Not here, they just replaced it with the exact same lid. I guess I won't be sitting on the toilet anymore!!

Our second lesson in quality of workmanship came after we had been here about a week. I was laying in bed - it was a peaceful morning, the kids were still sleeping and all of a sudden I here water coming from somewhere! I listen upstairs to see if one of the kids had flushed the toilet, nope, it was still quiet. I get out of bed and then I see water dropping onto the floor in our bedroom. It is dripping slowly out of the ceiling. I call Grace (one of the managers here) and explain the problem. She sends someone over immediately. It turns out that a pipe has a hole in it so they put tape around it. You read right - tape over a hole in a pipe! Now I'm sure in their mind they had fixed the problem at least for the moment. I told Grace that that was not going to work and thankfully she did have them replace the pipe after I explained to her that after a few days, the tape was not going to hold the water back. My mind was screaming, "have you ever heard of MOLD?"!!!

This last bit on quality has to do with Dan at work. The people here do know they have issues in quality, but I don't think they really know how to fix it. At work, Danny's employees are trying to work out the kinks so they had a quiz "show" about quality. Apparently this quiz "show" went on for several weeks until they were down to just 2 or 3 teams for the finals. They asked Danny if he could sit in on the finals and hand out the trophy. He did sit in and to hear him tell the story just made me giggle. They took this quiz very seriously and he said that when he presented the trophy the people were as happy as could be and the audience was cheering like crazy! I couldn't believe that a factory with 1500 employees could take time out of the day to play the quality quiz "show" game. I guess they are trying to move in the right direction!!

In all honesty, I do believe that China is growing so quickly and they have to get things done so fast that they just don't have time to worry too much if it is going to last. There are so many service people here that fixing something is not an issue. I was teasing Grace the other day. We were talking about the Olympics Opening Ceremony and I told her how impressive it was. But I said that I couldn't believe that a country could put on such a spectacular show and still not be able to process credit cards!!! Yes, it is a little behind the times here and things break quite often, but the people make up for all this! Their kindness and hospitality continues to amaze us and make us thankful that we are here!