One Piece of Watermelon

One of the most enjoyable aspects about my job in Shanghai is managing 3 local Shanghainese girls. They are all such good workers and act as wonderful translators and negotiators with our suppliers to guarantee we get the 'China price' on services, instead of the 'American price' which I assume would be 10X more expensive. Usually I provide them with daily entertainment with my strange behaviors. For example, when someone sneezes in our office, I of course always say 'God bless you', which is met by a round of giggles. They also get a kick out of my 'baby mandarin', as I like to call it, and love hearing me test out new vocabulary. The girls are pretty laid back, which is why today I was so surprised to be copied on an email sent from my assistant to our HR team regarding the daily 'free lunch' that our staff employees receives. Apparently, there was an incident at lunch that got her very worked up and I had to share the email because it just cracked me up. The email sent from my assistant to an HR manager has since triggered an investigation into our company's 'fruit policy' (no joke). It also provides a valuable lesson to all, if a Chinese woman asks you for a second piece of watermelon, you better give it to her!


Subject: One Piece of Watermelon

Dear Dick (HR manager),

I just would like to know if I can get one more piece of watermelon in the staff dining room. If we changed our policy, shanghai centre staff only can have one fruit in the dining room. That's ok. If we don't change it (the policy), why the guy called Calvin in the cafeteria refuse me to get one more piece of watermelon? At that time, I am just like a beggar only for one piece of watermelon. I do think his attitude has some problems.

Would you please give me some feedback about “one piece of watermelon”? Thank you.

Best Regards

Elian Zhang
Marketing Assistant