The company I worked for made cell phone casings and, during the Bush Jr. era, decided to ship the job overseas to China. I was almost fired off with the rest of the workers until my boss found out that I'm fluent in Mandarin. My mother's insistence on teaching me had finally paid off.
I was to go with one of the chief executives as a translator. On one of the connecting flights, though, he found out that hiring a translator in the country once he got there was actually cheaper than bringing me with him, a fact that had evaded his attention because of an error in calculating the difference from yuan to dollar, I suspect.
He fired me after he got the hotel in Beijing, because there was no point in him to pay my hotel fees. I was alone with very few resources in a foreign country. I may have spoke the language, but the culture was almost completely alien. I couldn't afford a ticket home (the executive had been holding the tickets, and had instructed the hotel staff to keep me away from him) and the American embassy was going to take several months to review my case. Meanwhile, I was living as an illegal.
Fortunately, while at an internet cafe, I met a local factory owner who needed workers because of a new contract he'd picked up. He took pity on my situation and offered to let me work until the embassy had sorted my problem.
When I showed up, the factory seemed strangely familiar. And then I realized what the factory owner was making.
Cell phone casings. He'd hired me for my old job.
No comments:
Post a Comment