05.27.07
Barber Shop Hierarchy
Yesterday was an exceptionally busy day at the barber shop as customers flocked in for haircuts, washes, and perms. At about 3 o’clock I looked around the store and noticed that all nine of the little brothers and little sisters were occupied either giving hair washes or massages. I was sitting near the front door chatting with Cheng Qing and two other unoccupied barbers when two middle-aged women walked in the door.
“2 hair washes,” one of the ladies said to Cheng Qing. He looked around the room, saw that all of the little brothers and little sisters were busy, and told the lady “It’s going to be about a twenty minute wait. Why don’t you sit down and have a drink of water?” The women sat down at the one of the tables, and Cheng Qing returned to his chat with me and the other two barbers. The women sat chatting and glancing around the shop for about 5 minutes, and then decided to leave.
I should point out that everything the little brothers and little sisters can do has been done already hundreds of times by the barbers. All of the barbers worked as little brothers for several years before graduating into hair cutting. Seeing that all of the little brothers and sisters were unavailable, wouldn’t it have made more sense for two of the barbers to wash the women’s hair themselves? Instead, they went back to their conversation and 24 RMB walked right out the door.
This situation can be justified by the hierarchy system imbedded into the barber shop food chain. There are three main levels, and they are primarily based on experience and expertise.
At the lowest level is the little brothers and sisters. A little brother or little sister begins their career in the industry with hair washes and massages, and gradually moves on to learn how to 做发 (zuo4 fa4) which includes dyes, curling, and perms. The little brothers and little sisters are also responsible for menial shop tasks such as sweeping hair, folding towels, bringing cups of hot water to customers, and cleaning the shop every night.
The second level are the barbers whom we call the 师傅 (shi1 fu4) or “masters.” The masters sole responsibility is cutting hair. Occasionally they help with a dye or a perm, but never once have I seen any of them do a hair wash. They are also exempt from clean up duties.
Finally, on top there is Mr. Zheng, the boss. Mr. Zheng’s daily routine is similar to the masters except he is able to show up to work a little bit later every day, and his haircuts cost 50 RMB instead of 30. He also serves as the teacher for instructing the masters in their hair cutting technique.
There is one other level which is a little difficult to place in the hierarchy, since their job is mainly clerical, and that is the two managers, Ling Ling and Xiao Huang. I call them “managers” but a better description would probably be cashiers. Their jobs are to stand behind the counter, handle monetary transactions, and make sure the little brothers and little sisters are keeping on task (when there is a task to do). They are also exempt from cleanup duty. Their position is above that of the little brothers and little sisters, but their hierarchical relationship between the masters is still a bit foggy to me. If I had to guess, I would say they are just below them.
The reason I bring up this hierarchy is because it often determines what work gets done, or more accurately, what work does not get done. Two of the advantages of becoming a master is that you can read the newspaper during cleanup time and you are completely exempt from hair washing, which is viewed as the least desirable task in the shop.
This is markedly different from service industry jobs I have worked in the US where workers at the top of the hierarchy will frequently scoop back down to the bottom in times of need. For example when I was 15, I worked as a sacker in a grocery store. During times when there was a high volume of customers, the managers would often take time away from their tasks to work as cashiers or even sackers, until the flow of customers died back down. If there was something more important which needed to be done, they would tend to it, but as long as labor was in need and they were available, they would help out.
After work yesterday, I told Mr. Zheng what I had seen, and asked him his thoughts.
“This is a very, very bad situation,” he commented, “and it is like this in all barber shops in Fuzhou. The masters don’t want to do any of the hair washes. But this does not make much business sense. It must change and I think it will change.”
My own personal view is that this example represents the deeply engrained sense of hierarchy and status in the Chinese psyche. By putting in years as a little brother, the masters, in addition to a higher salary, have also earned the privilege of not washing hair. Relegating them to the occasional hair wash would be undermining their status in the store which they have earned through years of hard work. In a sense, it would be akin to eliminating one of their benefits. This is a situation that Mr. Zheng has to deal with or else risk angering his employees and possibly risk them quitting. As angry as Mr. Zheng was that the two middle aged women left his store without getting hair washes, this certainly will bode better than losing two of his top barbers.
Yu
said,
May 27, 2007 at 11:45 am
I think this sort of hierarchy must apply to all service related jobs in China, and it might help to explain why we, as westerners, can get frustrated when there are people just standing around when we feel they could (and should) be helping us. It is hard, as a westerner, for two reasons. First, we cannot see the status of the people. It is hard to recognize the hierarchy. And second, we are used to a more informal sense of power hierarchy.
It is common in the US for the boss to chip in when there is a need for them. The boss will chip in to do some menial tasks if required. In the US, as we get a promotion in the service industry, it usually means we are responsible for doing more things, not less. For example, when I worked in a video store, I moved from a cleark to a opener/closer. My responsibilities increased, but I was still responsible for the previous taskes. The store manager, who had been there longer, also still did these kind of cleaning tasks or shelving movies. We still took turns to some extent, though the lower you are in the hieracrchy, the more you do the crappier tasks. But if it was really busy, the boss would be expected to help or the boss would be looked down upon by the employees.
Also, I think there is a little less concern for loss of customers in China. After all, there are so many people, that if some customer walks out the door, there will always be another one to come in.
harrison
said,
May 27, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Hey Ben,
Why didn’t ypu wash their hair or at least one of them?
harrison
said,
May 27, 2007 at 1:34 pm
sorry, you not ypu
Shopgirl's Shanghai blog
said,
May 27, 2007 at 5:59 pm
But most of the times, the same person have washed my hair as well as cutting it.
Benjamin Ross
said,
May 28, 2007 at 12:27 am
Shopgirl-
That is probably because you are going to a “low class” barbershop. Usually in the “mid class” and “high class” salons, it is separate, but in the lower ones the masters do the washing as well. Being a master in a lower class barbershop requires less training, therefore the masters there often have to do the little brothers and sisters jobs as well.
Side Note: When I am actually paying for my haircuts, I go to the low class barbershop as well.
Benjamin Ross
said,
May 28, 2007 at 12:35 am
Harrison-
I should have mentioned in my original article, I am still at the very bottom of the barber shop food chain. I am still in my “probationary training period” so my responsibilities revolve mainly around washing the master’s heads for now. I am not allowed to do paying customers (other than personal friends) until I pass my all my training.
joyce
said,
May 28, 2007 at 9:40 am
many people they don’t know this detail about the barber shop.your blog tells many,if i didn’t read it,the barber shop pictured me most just a bunch of weird-hair guys.ha~
James Chiang
said,
May 28, 2007 at 12:08 pm
I think another point is if the masters do washing customers’ heads, they couldn’t earn extra money or just earn a little extra money. The barber shop is not belong to the masters. They are just the emploees, so they just do their own responsability(hair cutting) is ok.
ash
said,
May 28, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Ben is there a proper training schedule, or is just on an easy come easy go basis – say you wash heads for three months and then you get to do a perm or something?
Benjamin Ross
said,
May 28, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Ash-
I asked Mr. Zheng about the typical training schedule once, and his response was that it takes anywhere between two weeks and two months and is based on how quick the new little brother or sister learns. The other employees help out with the training, but it is really up to the new employee to make the most of it, since he does not start getting paid until training is completed.
Peter
said,
May 29, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Here in Denmark, it is normal to get both a hair wash and a haircut by the same person. On the other hand, there are way fewer people working in the shops so they are much busier. If you want a haircut you have to call in advance. Often I have waited 3 days, because I wanted one particular woman to cut my hair. She never f… it up, unlike many others have done repeatedly
Funny how smaller things are different.
Benjamin Ross
said,
May 30, 2007 at 12:17 am
Peter-
I think the “appointment culture” you have in Denmark and we have in the US, is a major reason our barbershops are so much more efficient. When I get a haircut in the US, I make an appointment too, except for Sunday which is walk in day. Whenever I get a haircut, I show at the scheduled time, read a magazine for 2 or 3 minutes, then get my hair cut. Just before my barber is finished with my hair, the next customer walks in. It’s really a beautiful system. The problem is that this is just not the way things are done in China. One time Mr. Zheng was asking me about differences between barber shops in the US and those in China, and I brought this up. He said that for the top hair dressers in China, especially those in Shanghai, appointments have to be made, but for regular, and even semi-high end shops like ours, this just isn’t the way things are done. Because of this he has to employ extra staff to minimize the times there is more work than workers. Of course this also creates the situation where there is a great amount of time where there are too many workers and not enough work. Whereas in the US (or Denmark) we would just space out the customers over the day and trim the staff. I think as China modernizes and becomes increasingly international, they are adopting more of this “plan in advance culture,” but it is going to take a long time for it to seriously catch on.
Ann
said,
August 4, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Hi Ben,
Thanks for sharing your experiences! Your posts are always interesting to read.
I’m chinese & I visited Hefei two weeks ago. I went to a semi-upper class hair salon like the one you worked in. The 师傅 who permed my hair asked me for my contact info (& washed my hair too), so I gave him my email address. Is it common for them to ask female customers that?
Benjamin Ross
said,
August 4, 2009 at 11:15 pm
@Ann
I’ve never actually heard of any of the 师傅 asking for contact information of customers. Maybe some stores do that to keep a customer list or something. Or maybe he was just looking for a date. Did he ever call?
Marian Rosenberg
said,
July 27, 2011 at 12:28 pm
I was working as an interpreter for an international sporting event and the person in charge of my office says “go copy these papers and collate them” which has me in a pretty snarly sour mood cause I’m foreign staff and a translator and surely there are other people who ought to be doing that.
About five minutes after I’ve finished doing the copying (which involved taking the papers over to the copier and handing them to a secretary so that I wouldn’t damage The Machine with my total lack of copying machine -fu) I’m sitting at a table in the hotel lobby collating and stapling and generally being in a grumpy mood about it.
Then the coach of the Chinese National Team came over “do you know when the such-and-such a schedule is going to be ready?”
“It’s the third set of documents I’m supposed to be collating cause nobody has any translation tasks for the translator”
“Oh.”
And he sits down and starts collating documents with me.
He could do it because everyone knew he was a personage instead of a mere person.
By and large, however, whenever I’ve got Chinese coworkers, the important people never ever let the random outsiders see them performing actual work even when the work that they are carefully not letting outsiders see them do is work that they won’t let us plebes do.