Juice Lady
chats
Juice Lady
I came to know the Juice Lady after visiting twice the juice bar where she works. Friendly, outgoing, and customer-oriented, Juice Lady, who is now in her mid-twenties, is a rare bred of sales person one can find in town. She always tries to chat with her customers with the intention to learn more about their needs and more importantly, to build up long-term relationships with them. She understands well that it is only with a base of loyal customers that can bring recurrent businesses to keep a small store well alive in a competitive environment.
With four years of store management experience at a multinational fast food outlet under her belt, Juice Lady is now ponderinng about her professional future. She once dreamt of building up a fresh orange juice business empire in Hangzhou one store at a time. But the upcoming urban redevelopment on Dongpo road had forced her boss to shut down the juice bar business long before a breakeven can be achieved, thus cutting short her dreams of investing her future in this area. Her only dream now is to move on and move up from where she left off before her current stint. She wants a challenge in her professional life. She wants to learn. She wants to grow. Ideally, she would like to become a store manager again and perhaps in an even higher position in the service industry. The only problem she now faces is her lack of formal qualifications.
The highest level of education Juice Lady has attained was a technical college education where she learned about the art and production of silk crafts. She has mimimal knowledge of English and computers that many employers demand in present days. And she is eager to attain these skills too for the sake of landing a job she likes. But she couldn't afford the tuition fees until she finds a decent job; and a decent job won't come to her until she upgrades her skill set and formal qualifications. It is like a vicious cycle.
Will she, and many others who are bright, trainable, ambitious and have good work ethics as well as several years of work experience, be able to break such vicious cycle? It all depends on the society.
But with an oversupply of highly qualified human resources in many urban centers, it would be difficult to imagine any big and resourceful companies will the spend the money to re-train such group of people, let alone to accept their relatively low qualifications.
So it seems, enterpreneurship may be their only way out, to stay alive and to realize their potentials in a globalized market economy.
Technorati Tags: Hangzhou, people, conversations
Juice Lady
I came to know the Juice Lady after visiting twice the juice bar where she works. Friendly, outgoing, and customer-oriented, Juice Lady, who is now in her mid-twenties, is a rare bred of sales person one can find in town. She always tries to chat with her customers with the intention to learn more about their needs and more importantly, to build up long-term relationships with them. She understands well that it is only with a base of loyal customers that can bring recurrent businesses to keep a small store well alive in a competitive environment.
With four years of store management experience at a multinational fast food outlet under her belt, Juice Lady is now ponderinng about her professional future. She once dreamt of building up a fresh orange juice business empire in Hangzhou one store at a time. But the upcoming urban redevelopment on Dongpo road had forced her boss to shut down the juice bar business long before a breakeven can be achieved, thus cutting short her dreams of investing her future in this area. Her only dream now is to move on and move up from where she left off before her current stint. She wants a challenge in her professional life. She wants to learn. She wants to grow. Ideally, she would like to become a store manager again and perhaps in an even higher position in the service industry. The only problem she now faces is her lack of formal qualifications.
The highest level of education Juice Lady has attained was a technical college education where she learned about the art and production of silk crafts. She has mimimal knowledge of English and computers that many employers demand in present days. And she is eager to attain these skills too for the sake of landing a job she likes. But she couldn't afford the tuition fees until she finds a decent job; and a decent job won't come to her until she upgrades her skill set and formal qualifications. It is like a vicious cycle.
Will she, and many others who are bright, trainable, ambitious and have good work ethics as well as several years of work experience, be able to break such vicious cycle? It all depends on the society.
But with an oversupply of highly qualified human resources in many urban centers, it would be difficult to imagine any big and resourceful companies will the spend the money to re-train such group of people, let alone to accept their relatively low qualifications.
So it seems, enterpreneurship may be their only way out, to stay alive and to realize their potentials in a globalized market economy.
Technorati Tags: Hangzhou, people, conversations
