As you can imagine, there are not 'company Christmas parties' in China. Even in the US, at Intel, out of respect for the varied cultural and religious backgrounds of our employees, we do 'holiday parties' or 'winter parties'. In China we had a New Year party. For our group, it was last night.
Some of you might remember my post about being in China, out at a German restaurant, Phillipino band playing spanish music... The party was at the same place with the same Phillipino band.
It was a great time... really a fun evening. German buffet and free flow of German beer.
What prompted this post, what I thought you might find interesting is the clear difference in what is 'acceptable' in the US versus China when it comes to HR issues.
Here are some of the things that happened at or related to the party here in China, that you never would have seen at Intel in the US.
1) The party was advertised with the following dress code (literally, no edit): Dresscode: Cocktail Attire (Sexy, High Heels, Short Dress.....)
2) One of the MCs for the evening made a comment about all the beautiful women in attendance
3) One of the 'activities' for the event included a drinking contest - yes, literally a drinking contest - 2 teams with the participants slamming beers relay style - I admit to being a participant for this one :)
A good time was had by all (except maybe one of my drinking game team mates, who, as our 'anchor', blew a 2 person lead, not able to finish his beer, and then was headed off to the corner to blow something else... yuck.
Reinforces for me how we in the US seem to take things too seriously and how we are ruled by political correctness sometimes...
Cheers,
Joe
Monday, January 7, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
