Well... I guess it is time for another posting. We have not written recently, even after getting a record 5 comments on our last posting. This story happened a while a go but I will share it with you anyway, because it is kind of funny.
There is an Ikea in Shanghai, that most expats and middle/upper class Chinese get a lot of their household goods from. It's just like back home but for people with a bit more money. Don't worry, we tried to buy as little as possible, because you're right - it is pretty boring to come all the way to China and buy things at Ikea.
One day, early on in our experience here, a group of us unemployed, lazy, good for nothing husbands of working wives decided to take a trip into Shanghai to go to Ikea. We planned it all out the day before, met early in the morning the day of, and set off to the "Big City." First off, getting there was an adventure of its own... the train system really is not that easy the first time you use it if you don't know Chinese. However, we arrived safe and sound and made our way into the Subway system, and got on one of the lines according to where one of us thought Ikea was. You would think that in a group of 4 guys going to Shanghai one of us would have looked up the specific location... but not us. If you really think about it, even though Ikea is pretty big, it is like finding a needle in a hay-stack in a city like Shanghai. However, when we emerged from the subway station at our destination, we could actually see Ikea looming in the distance... Incredible. We were on top of the world!
Once we got into Ikea, we had to stop for lunch because it had taken so long to get there. That took about 30 minutes. Then we actually walked into the Showroom area at which point Adil, stopped to talk (as best he could... and he did quite well) with one of the Ikea staff about shipping... little did he know. During this 20 minute... yes 20 minute conversation, 2 of us (Carlos and I) sat on a couch waiting, while the fourth (Josh) went to go sleep on an Ikea bed. Just imagine what that looked like, it makes me laugh whenever I do. We stick out like sore thumbs here, and this guy is certainly no exception, and he went to sleep on an Ikea bed by himself for 20 minutes. Back to the story though.
After this conversation, the two of us that had been waiting for the conversation to finish and Adil set off again into the showroom. We might have made it another 45 feet before Adil stopped for his second conversation that lasted for at least another 10 minutes, maybe longer but Carlos and I left him before we could find out. By that point we had kind of figured out how the day was going to go. Carlas and I, and Josh who had this magical power of disappearing and re-emerging out of nowhere made our way SLOWLY through Ikea. At one point I think we even doubled back through most of the store to find a spoon that would fit into a top of a spice container. We went that slow! By the time we got out (3 hours after we got into Ikea) we were pretty exhausted from shopping. So we packed up all of our stuff and sat down to wait for Adil.
Judging from the first 50 feet in the store we knew that Adil was going to be slow, but I think we need a different word for slow. He was sloth-slow... painfully slow, and we discovered this when we called him 20 minutes after we were done and he told us that he was almost done but had a lot of stuff. One Hour Later he emerged... One Hour! He appeared like a CN train in the city, slowly snaking his way through as you try to count the compartments he is pushing. It looked like two compartments at first... a standard shopping cart, and one of those flat bed things for big stuff. However, the third piece was behind him and forced him to have to keep running back to get it after he pushed the first two a certain distance.
At this point, the three of us were getting impatient, and were starting to get worried that we would miss our train back home, because we had already bought the ticket for it. So, we started to conveyor belt Adil's load of stuff through the till. I would get a piece from Adil, pass to the clerk, who would pass it to Carlos for packing up, Josh was off somewhere... who knows where he kept going. Finally we got everything through the till. Adil hands the clerk his credit card, and of course, just to make the day complete, it was denied. You have to be kidding me... denied. They then try it a couple more times because Adil is positive it should work. It doesn't, so they end up shutting down our clerk's line (which is no small feat in China), and about 6 staff members come over to help. Adil asks them to phone the bank... he tried to get money through an ATM... nothing was working for this poor guy, and he was getting pretty stressed. Meanwhile, Carlos and I could not stop laughing long enough to even tell the other guys that we were in serious risk of missing our train. While this fiasco was going on a young Chinese guy came up to us and offered to ship our stuff home, for a cost, rather than using Ikea's service. Through bouts of laughter we explained the situation to him, which he chuckled at it. He then came back to us a few minutes later and offer to buy the stuff for Adil, ship it, and Adil could pay him back from his home. The guy offered to do all of this for 600RMB... about $85 CAD.
Adil thought about it for awhile, and decided there was nothing to lose (except the train that we were missing, that Carlos and I were pretty vocal about). Adil makes a deal with this guy, and takes about 15 minutes to do so (he is a machine... a very slow machine).
With minutes to spare, we run from Ikea, run to the Subway, run to find the train, lose Josh about 6 times in the process, and miss our train by two minutes. Needless to say, we got on another train (much later), and made our way back to Suzhou for about 10:30PM. So, to sum up our day... we left Suzhou at 8:30AM, took a train for one hour to Shanghai, went to Ikea, and returned to Suzhou for 10:30PM. An excruciatingly slow day.
The next day, the rumour floats out that the whole Ikea, credit card being denied thing was a scam. Apparently, the guy that bought and shipped Adil's stuff (who got it early the next Morning... just as planned), told Adil that he does this for a living. He pays Ikea staff to not put through CC's of foreigners, and then comes in to save the day himself, and charges a fee in doing so.
Carlos, and I would have bet our house that this was not true. We thought that Adil was just a little embarrased and was using that as his story. However, it turns out that it is true. We have now been back to Ikea a couple of times, and everytime we go we see this guy, as does everyone else on our staff. Even Adil went back, and was approached by the guy again, because the guy did not remeber him. When Adil flashed him a bunch of cash, and told the guy he did not need his help this time, the guy just laughed and asked if he had "helped" him before.
It ends up the guy at Ikea is so nice that Adil used him again to ship his stuff, for a reduced price of course, but this really is how the guy makes a living. We have come a cross a number of these little scams... the ones that don't really hurt anyone, but is just some crafty guys way of making a living. I was going to tell you about a few more of them, but my fingers are tired from typing so it will need to wait for another day.
