Country Driving [185]
Years later, Master Luo could still rattle off intricate details from the times he had been wooed by competing bosses. He was like a former debutante: he told these stories wistfully, recalling every hotel, every restaurant, even the dishes and the prices. After the second boss offered to double Master Luo’s salary, he accepted, and soon that company was successful, too. When the next one came calling, Master Luo’s status had risen, and thus the courtship became more elaborate. “We went to eat at the Golden Garden Hotel twice,” he said. “We also went to the Auspicious Garden twice, and then once at the Golden Dragon, and once at the Golden Beautiful City.” By the time Boss Gao and Boss Wang entered the picture, they represented the fourth bra ring factory to hire Master Luo, and along the way his monthly salary had risen from less than two hundred dollars to more than seven hundred.
Whenever Master Luo left a company, he followed a set protocol. He didn’t tell his current boss about the new offer, and he tried to collect any salary that was still owed to him. Then he asked for a few days’ vacation, explaining that he had to attend to urgent family business in his hometown. Sometimes he left a few worthless belongings in the factory dormitory, to make it look like he’d be coming back. And then he simply changed his cell phone number, started work at the new job, and avoided everybody from the old company. In Chaonan, he had done this three times, at three different bra ring factories, all of which were located in the same neighborhood.
“Don’t people get angry about this?” I asked.
“Of course!” he said. “But by the time they figure it out, they can’t do anything about it. That’s why you can’t tell them ahead of time. If you do, they’ll try to find some way to make you stay, probably by withholding salary or threatening you or something.”
“What if the new job turns out to be bad and you want to go back?”
“Well, that’s a problem,” he said with a grin. He told me his last jump had been easier, because Lishui is located hundreds of miles from Chaonan. This allowed him to maintain the fiction that he might eventually return to the old job. Every now and then, Master Luo popped his previous SIM card into a cell phone, used the old number, and telephoned the former boss, explaining that unfortunately he was still in Hubei because of a serious illness in his family. This was the kind of solution that’s propagated in Chinese self-help books like Square and Round—if a lie works, fine; otherwise just burn the bridges. Nobody thinks long-term in a development zone, and nobody looks backward. “Going to a new job is like gambling,” Master Luo explained. “You leave and you hope that the new factory does well. If it doesn’t, then you probably can’t go back to the old job and the old life. What’s in the past stays in the past.”
LISHUI WAS THE FIRST place where Master Luo gambled and lost. Boss Gao and Boss Wang gave the technician a raise from his previous job, and they promised more money if the factory succeeded. But after they ran into financial problems, they reduced Master Luo’s salary, and then they stopped paying him at all. Perversely, this was the most effective way of preventing him from jumping to another job. If they continued to give a lower salary, he’d probably abandon the factory, but he was less likely to leave if he was owed significant cash. All summer long, at the end of every month, Boss Gao and Boss Wang made excuses and promises, hoping their debt would keep Master Luo in Lishui. They were desperate not to lose him—he was the only employee who understood the Machine.
In development zones in southern China, summer is often a sluggish time. For many factories, the production schedule picks up in the fall, to prepare for the Christmas buying season in America and Europe. But weather