User Comments - Grambers
Grambers
Posted on: Sales Part 2: Determining a Customer's Purchasing Power
October 18, 2012 at 12:21 PMThis would never have happened in the UK, or in China for that matter.
为什么呢？因为。。。
If you failed to spot a whole twenty bucks from the change you received, this strongly implies that you were receiving a whole bunch of change (which might also explain why it required two blokes to hand it over!:)). I can only guess that the very smallest value dollar bill you were handing over was a 50, but most likely it was a 100. This is just too large a single bill to be having floating around in circulation. It's reckless. It virtually begs arseholes like the two you encountered to try it on. In the UK, despite virtually nothing costing much less than £10 these days, the largest bill you'll see on a day is a £20 note (excepting the private members clubs of Mayfair where you might get a Siberian billionaire using a £50 as a nosepick). In China, where you need several thousand RMB just to get your child treated for a common cold in your local hospital, you have only the poor, lowly, Mao Zedong-splattered 100 RMB to work with. In other words, in those countries you'd have been struggling just to find the right currency bills just to make up the amount that you were being charged for you fuel, ie. no risk of being diddled on a grand scale.
In Hong Kong, conversely, you'd have been screwed.
Don't blame the little guy. Blame the system!
Posted on: Sales Part 2: Determining a Customer's Purchasing Power
October 18, 2012 at 12:08 PMYour Dad sounds like a total geezer, Guolan! I wish I had known him earlier. We might have changed the world. Alas, I now fear it's too late. The kids are already running riot:)
Posted on: Sales Part 2: Determining a Customer's Purchasing Power
October 18, 2012 at 12:05 PMYeah, nicely summarised. Wish I had that knack for succintness (note to self: stop using words like 'succintness')!
I swore that when I had kids I would never, ever allow them to go near a McDonalds for fear of corrupting both their minds and bodies (despite being a regular 'user' of McDonalds meals myself). I now have two children and we have an almost weekly McDonalds 'treat' which, much as I hate to admit, we generally all enjoy. Gah.
I fear that if Kay is tuned into this conversation, she will be rapidly writing me off as a potential customer of Chinesepod's more high end services:) No need to ask where a customer's kids go to school, just ask whether they enjoy McDonalds Happy Meals. If the answer is, 'Er, what the hell is a Happy Meal?', you are IN BUSINESS!
Posted on: Sales Part 2: Determining a Customer's Purchasing Power
October 18, 2012 at 9:04 AMIn principle, I think you're quite right, John. The aspect of deception would probably enhance any hypothetical moral offence. However, lest anyone think I was being personally abusive, the second paragraph wasn't referring to the specific Chinesepod example, or meant to suggest Kay, or her advice, was 'morally repugnant'. Rather I was making the broader point that kids are often used as a way to gain access to the adult consumer (who generally has more cash to squander/lavish/burn/waste). What Kay is suggesting is certainly different to advertisers applying pressure to adults by directly appealing to children (who can then pass on that pressure in the form of incessant bleating/whining, "I want this Daddy", "I want that, Mummy" etc.etc.). However, I thought I'd draw attention to the principle of involving kids in transactions in which, really - morally (one might even venture) - kids have no place.
Posted on: Sales Part 2: Determining a Customer's Purchasing Power
October 17, 2012 at 9:30 AMThis from the translation: "What this means is that you should determine what kind of person this is, then tell him what he wants to her, then let him buy something".
To once more quote Bill Hicks, I bet you people sleep like ******* babies at night, dontcha?
Sorry Chinesepod folks (and Kay). I still love y'all. It's just that to my mind - warped as it was with left-wing claptrap in my sensitive teenage years - this salesperson series is starting to read like the Beelzebub Papers.
Posted on: Sales Part 2: Determining a Customer's Purchasing Power
October 17, 2012 at 9:23 AMYou gotta love this sentence...
这个，这个可能就有点，有点那个了
...literally, "This, this, perhaps, is a bit, a bit, that."
...so entirely vacuous and yet pregnant with potential meaning. I've said it before, I'll say it again: it often seems to me the Chinese language's greatness lies in its potential for ambiguity. A single sentence acts much like a vacuum bag into which all kinds of possibilities may - or may not - be poured.
Posted on: Sales Part 2: Determining a Customer's Purchasing Power
October 17, 2012 at 9:16 AMThere's 'subtle' and then there's SUBTLE! If a salesperson manages to insert a question about the client's child's school without making it sound like a blunt attempt to figure out whether they have cash-to-burn or not, then I may actually gain a bit of respect for the Salespeople Of The World. I rather suspect, though, that in most contexts such a question would be greeted with the response, 'Er....what the hell has my child's school got to do with your product, you nosy so-and-so?'
Though perhaps the Consumers Of The World have become numb to having salespeople, marketeeres and advertisers of all persuasions try to get at their wallets via their kids. It's the most direct and morally repugnant route. And history seems to suggest it works.
Marketing Part 2 over.
Posted on: 李开复炮轰做空机构Citron
October 16, 2012 at 12:39 PM哎哟，主持人的声音都即熟悉又舒服啊，Vera你好像是最近发表Fan Death那个高级课程对话的女主角吧（以及很多很多其他的）？
至于课程的内容，谁也不会讨厌那种做空机构，烦得要死。对他们来说赚钱是儿戏而已，像去澳门打轮盘赌似的。Grrrrrr...
Posted on: The Mysteries of 而 Revealed
October 11, 2012 at 10:06 AMHow can something be a 'heavy burden' if it's an integral part of the 'good life'? Ponder this one, and I think you can reach a point that the ostensible pop quote above does fit quite nicely with Confucian philosophy. I'm not Confucian scholar, but he has hardly seemed like much of a Catholic when it comes to guilt about/denial of earthly pleasure. What I'm trying to say is that, when one takes the right philosophical approach, one is surely able to revel in a burden (ie. or put another way, you can enjoy hard work)
Posted on: Sales Part 2: Determining a Customer's Purchasing Power
October 18, 2012 at 12:37 PM那个人有点，有点那个了...
Depending on the context, the person in question could be a prostitute, a drug-dealer, an avowed Maoist, mad, in need of a shower, sleazy, too poor, too rich, etc.etc.
Ambiguity. It's the stuff Chinese dreams of made of!
Your name is very cool, by the way. Any relation to the fruit?