An Exercise in Futility

Ever since I've gotten here, my mother and grandmother have been telling me to go to the fabric market and get clothes made. I put it off until the last couple of weeks, but have had coworkers and friends get custom made shirts, pants, overcoats and other things without incident. Last Tuesday one of my coworkers said he was going back to get some shirts made so I asked if I could come along. I brought a pair of black pants that I have that fit perfectly for them to copy because I had heard that they could copy anything.

I had given away the card of the shop that one of my coworkers had recommended, but there are three floors of different shops and after looking at a couple we settled on one on the third floor. I gave them my pants, picked my material - a navy blue with a small pinstripe - and lining and after some hard bargaining agreed to a price of 100RMB for the pants with the promise that they would be ready on the following Friday.

On Friday Chris and I went to the fabric market together under the presumption that my pants would be ready. We wandered a bit and then headed to the third floor. I saw the sales girl's face drop as I walked in which is never a good feeling. The three people inside started arguing in Chinese and I could follow the conversation. They were saying - she could come Saturday, Sunday, they're not here today, what should we do, what should we say? They then flat out told me the pants weren't there and could I come back tomorrow. I work all day Saturday and Sunday and told them as much. They then asked if they could deliver them to my house. I said no - if they're not right, then I would still have to come back and I didn't feel like dealing with that.

We settled the issue by saying that I would come back Tuesday (today) for the pants. Thus, after Chinese class today I hopped into a taxi and headed down. Guess what happened? I made my way to the third floor and saw what appeared to be a deserted booth. I waited a minute and the salesgirl came back. Her face fell.

Let's say that there were several more phone calls to the boss about the girl with the black pants. They then told me to "Wait a moment." The pants weren't done again. At this point I was worried I would never see my old black pants again. When you're 5'10'' in China you can't just buy pants off a rack and not having my black pants for a week was limiting my wardrobe options even more so than usual. Then, the boss showed up with my black pants - but not the new blue pants. We had the discussion again - they're not ready, can we send them to you? We'll deliver them to your company, to your house, to your...

So now I was negotiating with the boss. Once again I explained that I didn't know if they were done correctly. He finally said to me: "I will bring them to you myself. If they don't fit I will give you your money back." We settled on a time of 8pm this evening.

At 8:15 my buzzer rang and I let my visitor in. He handed me the blue pants. They looked really good - the inside was copied, the pockets, lining looked okay. I tried them on.

They were three inches too short.

He tried to convince me that that was the length of my black pants and they had copied it. I put the black pants back on and showed him. His face fell. He made a telephone call, then asked me to take the black pants off so he could measure them. He looked at the hem on the blue pants - it was about an inch and a half. He reached into his wallet and gave me my money back.

All of that work, all of that time - wasted. Before he left he tried to convince me that for 10RMB they would turn them into capri pants for me. I don't know about you, but navy blue pinstriped capris would be pretty hard to pull off at work and are probably a mite formal for around the house. I turned him down. He left with the pants.

I won't be recommending this shop. Chris has ordered a suit from another shop. He is supposed to pick it up this weekend. If it is successful, maybe I will try that shop - but not for a while. I need to rebuild my energy after this exercise in futility.

Q - Ever had your own exercise in futility? Please share.

Hope you all are well. A silver lining in this is that almost all of the transactions in this story were conducted entirely in Chinese, including one telephone call. Today is my five month anniversary of being in China and I am extremely proud of how much I have learned here.

Cheers!