Thank God

One positive thing about working in Massachusetts, where the majority of my co-workers are Catholic, is that Good Friday is a slow day at work. And everyone leaves early, including me!

Quality control

The other day, I accompanied one of my colleagues who's responsible or product quality to one of our stores and we assessed our product. We looked for loose stitching, uneven hems, puckering, stains, shade variation, dry crocking and other product defects.

It was an interesting visit that definitely heightened my appreciation for our quality team's job. I'm not quite so detail-oriented to review product so closely, so I guess it's good I do what I do, instead.

But at the end of the day, it was nice to get out of the office for a few hours and spend some time in a mall!

Workplace boundaries

I'm growing increasingly displeased at work. It's all come on very suddenly, and I fear it's gathering momentum like the proverbial snowball. And the worst part is, I seem to be feeding directly into a vicious cycle, spiraling down into an unproductive mess.

It pretty much started last Monday, became exacerbated on Tuesday, seemed to get better throughout last week, then plummeted back down yesterday.

As I was packing up my things to leave the office, my boss called my BlackBerry (from another building on our corporate "campus") and asked me to wait for him to return for a little discussion. I thought it was in reference to a vendor to whom I'd sent a stern message a few minutes prior, but he surprised me by closing the door upon his arrival.

It seems his boss, whom I met a few hours earlier, felt I was "detached" in our meeting and not my usual self. So, he asked my boss to check in on me. In truth, I'm not terribly pleased with how things are going, but it's been a particularly painful week of nonsense. It's nothing from which I can't recover, but I guess I'm no good at masking the strain.

The problem is, when my boss comes in to ask me if everything's okay, it really puts me on edge. I don't come to the workplace to discuss my feelings. And if I'm not happy about work, I am not about to share that with my superiors. Maybe that's not the best way to deal with things, but I've seen too many people get burned when they're honest about how they're feeling. I don't need to get saddled with the "attitude" label and boxed into a position with no prospects.

And when my boss shifts gears to ask if everything's okay "at home," in a condescending, faux-caring manner, it makes me want to die. If things aren't okay at home (which isn't the case), I certainly wouldn't burden my colleagues with my personal problems. Maybe I'm old-school, but work is work and home is home. In many cases, I'll build friendships that cross from work to home, but if this has not happened naturally, I resent anyone who tries to force it. And I'm not about to unload or moan about my cat nanny or lack of fun bars to my boss.

I'm told our HR partner may contact me to check in on me as well. That should be a fun conversation. All this "caring" just makes me want to find a new workplace.

Ching chong ching chong

I never claim to understand Chinese, but once in a while I surprise myself when I hear something or remember the word for something. Last week, for example, I was pleased to order a piece of cake in Hong Kong and asked for a plastic bag so I could take it with me. It's the little things.

At work today, I met with a group of vendors, two from Hong Kong and two from Korea. In the middle of my spiel, I mentioned an initiative I hoped these vendors would invest in, and one of the Hong Kong-based folks said to the other in Cantonese, "They always ask us to cut costs, but then ask us to do extra things."

To which I replied, "Well, we see these minimal costs as investments that will reduce costs over time through..."

It was a nice moment.

Trying teamwork

In the past few days, I've endured several of my most irritating pet peeves at work, such as:

* Being appointed scribe in a small group breakout session
* An all-day team offsite
* Collective wordsmithing
* Group editing of PowerPoint on a projector
* Being put on the spot to present without any warning

It hasn't been the best week at work.

Annual performance review

Yesterday I had my annual performance review with my boss. Here's a nifty tip for you managers out there: If you would like to have a constructive conversation about performance, do not schedule it for the morning your employee returns to the office from a 3-week trip to the other side of the world and it's probably a good idea to let him/her know what the subject of the conversation will be.

My meeting invitation was simply "Touch Base," which, after three weeks out of the office, I took to mean simply that my boss wanted to catch up. But when he handed me a piece of paper outlining my bonus for the year, I realized I had stepped into my review. Simply put, this was one of the most confusing and frustrating conversations I've ever had. Throughout the hour, I was told many different things, paired together below to highlight lunacy:

1. You need to be more strategic. You need to pay closer attention to details.
2. You need to have a more aggressive stance on which factories we should not be using. Never stand in the way of business needs when it comes to factories we should use.
3. You're taking on too much work. You need to reach out and support other parts of the business.
4. I'm pleased with everything you've accomplished this past year. You will not be receiving a merit increase.
5. The only way to increase your compensation is to get promoted. I do not know what you need to do in order to get promoted.

And the irony? I got to work in a good mood, thinking how much I was looking forward to making progress on the work ahead of me. I left in a decidedly worse mood, thinking how much it blows that I am woefully under-compensated for the work I put in.

Also ironic? The fact that my boss insists the bottom-line message is that I have done a wonderful job and that I have a bright future ahead at the company. It's clear to me that he was struggling to provide feedback, but instead of offering anything constructive, he babbled some platitudes and counted down the minutes until our meeting ended.

Dining in

Usually when I travel, I'll have room service a few times. This week in Hong Kong, however, my family has been in town, so I've been dining with them or I've had work-type dinners.

And at each meal, it's been more than a feast! We've had suckling pig, hand-pulled noodles, dozens of dumplings, hot pot and countless other delicious, delicious yumminess.

But now the family has left and I ditched the reception for today's conference, so I got my room service groove on. It was disappointing. And expensive.

Hong Kongference

I spent the afternoon at a conference at the stingray-shaped Hong Kong Exhibition and Conference Centre. I found only three of the nine presentations at the confernce, billed as something about sustainability in the supply chain, to be relevant to me.

Other presentations were either too technical for me (something about fungicides to be used in treating leather, anti-mold mechanisms, hide prices, etc.), but they were mercifully short.

When I looked up how to get to the Centre, I feared I might get lost from the MTR to the building, but smart Hong Kong built a bridge over several blocks of streets, directly to the facility. It was neat being in the iconic building, but I'm ready to get back to the office.

Radioactive dinner

For dinner last night, I met a woman who does similar work as I do, but works for another brand, based in Asia. She suggested a Japanese restaurant near her office and I love sushi, so I was game.

We entered the empty restaurant, sat at a table and began perusing the menu. It occurred to us that maybe sushi wasn't the best idea at the moment, but we threw caution to the radioactive wind and enjoyed our meal.

Let's talk about sex, baby

Today was one of those days that make it all worthwhile. I feel inspired, that my work is meaningful and that there's a sense of purpose behind what I do.

For a bit of context, let me rewind a day. At one point during yesterday's Mekong Delta tour, our guide discussed the country's problem with population control, contributed in part by an unwillingness to discuss sex in Vietnamese culture. As a consequence, not only is unwanted pregnancy on the rise, so are STDs like HIV/AIDS.

Cut to today's factory visit. We recently partnered with a Vietnamese factory to invest in a factory-based health education program for women in developing countries, and today I had the chance to observe a training session.

Since the training was conducted entirely in Vietnamese, I didn't understand the content, but I got a sense of the discussion from the condoms, leaflets and birth control pills that were being used as props and handed out. I especially liked the photo used on one of the instructor's slides, pasted for your convenience above.

Entering today's training, I was worried that the training session might be fruitless, given my understanding of the discomfort surrounding talking about sex. The women in the session, however, seemed very engaged throughout the doctor's presentation. And when it came time for questions, they were eager to learn more! The participants seemed hungry for this information and it was clear that these concepts were new to them. I was relieved to see this level of engagement and felt good that our investment was not in vain.

Today's visit also included a meeting with the factory's management team, who shared some of their experiences in implementing the program. Sure, they cited some frustrations, but most of them had to do with logistics and not the core content of the training. Everyone seemed to believe in the importance of delivering health training. There are opportunities to deliver the program more smoothly, but nothing that cannot be overcome.

But what I didn't expect was to hear the factory managers cite this investment as a potential competitive advantage. Even though the training program was launched only a few months ago, they have already seen participants taking these learnings back to their families and communities. The factory is beginning to earn a reputation as a preferred employer and people in the community seem to appreciate the added investment in worker education. In a time when all factories, across all industries, face tremendous challenges in recruiting Vietnamese workers, this is an obvious business benefit.

In thinking about my career path, I never would have imagined that I'd spend a day at work sitting in a sex ed class in Vietnam, but today has turned out to be one of the most gratifying days of my career.

The doctor is (reluctantly) in

For my travels this past week, our buying agent sent along a babysitter who met me in the Hong Kong airport on Monday and basically stuck to my side until today. I appreciate the support, but it does get tedious spending all your time with someone you don't know very well and who doesn't speak great English. To be fair, I didn't really try to communicate in Cantonese, which would have been an utter failure.

Yesterday, on our last day together, our relationship hit a new point (I don't know whether it was a high point or a low point.) where my friend decided to share. I guess he got to the point where he thought he could trust me with details about the past six years of therapy he's enjoyed.

We talked about many different topics, including the following:

* His trepidation about getting married several years ago. It's no surprise that his now wife encouraged him to seek therapy.

* The pressure he faces as a Chinese man to support his family.

* Societal pressure that discourages him from getting in touch with or expressing his feelings.

* The "little boy" who lives within him and the wall that surrounds him.

* His fear of accompanying me on this trip to Indonesia and Vietnam because he'd never been to either country and because as he "counted down" the days to this trip, his imagination created frightening scenarios of what was to come.

* The conversations his adult self has with his inner little boy in order to convince himself to try new things.

He shared all these things and more, leaving me a bit dumbstruck and unable to respond. I felt like I should also share my personal challenges, but I barely emote, so I didn't go down that route.

I will never again ask him his weekend plans, the catalyst for this major overshare.

Body image

Upon arriving to today's factory near Ho Chi Minh City, the production manager proclaimed, "You are a big man!" Every single time I go to Asia, people comment on my body. It's so uncomfortable, especially in a business setting!

This factory's senior management team is Korean, while all the middle managers and workers are Vietnamese. The Koreans are mostly expats on assignment, so there's a management dorm where they live, and it was in the dorm where we gathered for lunch.

Again, the production manager felt compelled to discuss what I look like, so he turned to me and said, "I like your body. I want my body to look like yours for the ladies. Are you married?"

I said I was not married, and he gestured across the table to the Vietnamese HR manager with the horrible teeth and said, "Cindy is not married either!"

::nervous giggles::

So, this is what good looks like

The first factory we visited yesterday in Indonesia was one of the best I've seen from a corporate social responsibility perspective. The factory managing director was eager to share with me some of the community investment work it has implemented, some at the behest of another customer, but others that it initiated to fulfill business and community needs it identified. Some of the highlights to me included the following practices:

CNG Power - Apparently, Indonesia sits on a huge pool of natural gas, so this factory converted its power supply to compressed natural gas. The factory has realized tremendous cost savings due to this transition and mentioned that the amount saved was so significant that they could not reveal how much it was!

Wastewater Treatment - Years ago, the factory realized it was having a negative impact on the environment when blue geese were appearing nearby, due to the dyestuff in its effluent. Since then, the factory invested in an on-site wastewater treatment facility that ensures all effluent is free of chemicals and harmful dyes.

Infant Mortality Campaign - Apparently, the region where this factory is located has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the country. Factory management found that some women workers would get pregnant, go on maternity leave and their babies would die. The women would suffer from extreme emotional devastation, return to work once their maternity leave was finished, then immediately try to get pregnant again, resulting in less productive workers and the potential of another few months out of the office. To combat this, the factory has embarked on an extensive infant mortality campaign, that includes not only education, but also training and nominating capable midwives for factory workers. The factory has seen great success in reducing workers' infant mortality rates, and continues to find benefit from this investment.

Community Health Clinic - After the factory realized workers would take time off to care for their sick husbands and family, it invested in a community health clinic that provides healthcare services at a substantially reduced cost. The clinic is used by factory workers, their families and others in the nearby community - a visible symbol of the factory's commitment to the community.

Outreach to NGOs - One of the most surprising initiatives is the factory's proactive outreach to local, national and international non-governmental organizations. It's tough to get large multi-national corporations to understand the potential benefits of partnering with NGOs, but this one factory already has seen the power of learning from civil society organizations.

There were some other initiatives that puts this factory among "best in class" in my mind, but what I was most impressed by was the factory manager's attitude toward these initiatives. She understood both the business and social/environmental benefits of these programs, realized where her team did not have expertise so brought in the right community partners and eagerly searched for additional ways the factory could support its workers and community.

If only more factories took this approach, I might be out of a job! But the world would be a better place.

Disco office

On Monday, I had a meeting with a prospective vendor in midtown New York City. The office was in a typical office building that didn't seem very special ... except that it used to be Studio 54!

So strange to think that cracked-out celebrities danced the night away in the same place where I was discussing how we could better protect human rights in developing countries.

The longest short week

Why do the short work weeks always feel like the longest? I guess with 7:00am meetings and doing work after getting home, it was bound to feel like this.

Wool brunch

It's Sunday in the middle of a three-day weekend. So, you'd expect me to take the day off from work and enjoy the time off. Thanks to my job, however, I've become one of the retail industry voices on wool and animal welfare - at least to a group of Australian wool farmers who are trying to promote their progressive farming practices. And when the CEO of an organization representing a group of Australian farmers is in Boston for only seven hours, it's only polite for me to make time for him.

Thus, I trekked down to South Station, met this fellow when he arrived, and went to a nearby restaurant to discuss sheep. During the course of our conversation, it became clear that he added a Boston stop only to meet me, so I'm glad I didn't blow him off like I wanted to!

In the end, it was a good conversation, I got a free brunch and a nice bottle of Australian wine, so it was time well spent. I just wish he could have made his trip during business hours.

I shall need a typewriter and an abacus

You can imagine how I felt this morning when I arrived at work and realized that I had forgotten my computer at home! I was paralyzed for a second. Do I go home and retrieve it? But I had a 9am meeting I couldn't miss, so I just headed into the office.

I found someone else's old laptop and logged into my account, but couldn't get much to work. No printer. No e-mail. It was basically a non-starter.

Finally, after an hour with IT, I was up-and-running and I could begin my day! At 1:30pm. I thought "the cloud" was going to fix all this.

All the single ladies

Yesterday I had a lunch meeting with a consultant in a fairly empty pan-Asian restaurant. Our server was a frumpy-ish, middle-aged woman who clearly thought she had better things to do than her job.

It was obvious that our lunch was focused on a workplace discussion, since we were throwing around words like "executives," "factories" and "ridiculous." Our server, however, insisted on foisting the day's Hallmark holiday on us and greeted us by saying, "Happy Valentine's Day!" with a big frown on her face. "I guess when you're single like us," she continued, "you have to work on Valentine's."

I guess I missed the memo. Who knew I was free to take yesterday off?

Token panda

My employer sponsored a table at a regional human resources diversity celebration last night, and thanks to my Asian-ness, I was invited along. As expected, I got to hang out with the HR folks at our table, representing as the only non-white individual!

Some people might be offended by invitations based on ethnicity, or having to be the token minority, but I usually enjoy a free meal. Even if it's the typical hotel banquet fare of a wilted salad, rubbery breast of chicken and dry pastry. But I wish I'd known that last night's event would not include any wine! There was a cash bar upon arrival, but once we were all ushered into the main ballroom, it was H2O all the way.

Good thing the event was a 10-minute walk from my home.

Where is my febreeze?

For lunch today, I had some sort of wrap containing roast beef, cheese and caramelized onions. Now, sadly, my office reeks of caramelized onions and altoids. Thank goodness I have no more face-to-face meetings today.