05.30.07

The Tale of Adamum and Johnny

Posted in Barbershop at 11:33 am by Benjamin Ross

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No sooner do I write a column about the lack of conflict in the barber shop, when the first visible conflict emerges. The incident happened yesterday, and it involved two of the more interesting characters in my daily life. The first of which is Adam.

Adam is one of the most forwardly verbal Chinese people I have ever met. He’s the one who during my first ever conversation with him, indicated proudly that his dream was to illegally immigrate to the United States. Adam’s candidness stretches further than his future plans however. He suffers from a bit of a macho tough guy complex and thus is very open about his sexual conquests which he frequently discusses with the other employees. Last week he asked me a string of personal questions requesting to know the size of a particular part of my body as well as how long it takes me to complete a particular activity which requires the use of that particular part of the body. I would not have found these questions nearly as invasive had they not been asked in front of four of my other coworkers, who were all quite embarrassed by the situation as well. I responded with overly exaggerated sarcastic replies, and with Adam sensing he was not going to receive the information requested, the situation calmly dispelled. I also find Adam likes to pick on other people, mostly in a joking fashion, but I could see how it could potentially bother an overly-sensitive individual. He is the only employee who mocks my Chinese mistakes. Rather than get defensive, I usually just throw it back in his face by over-emphasizing the mistake in future conversations.

Despite all of Adam’s quirkiness, he is authentically interested in improving his English, which when I first met him was practically nil. When I gave him the name Adam on my first day, his pronunciation was so bad that he could only pronounce it “Adamum.” Even the other employees could pronounce it properly. Sensing the opportunity to give Adam a little taste of his own medicine, the other employees now jokingly call him “Adamum” as well.

For the past week, Adamum and I have been doing a language exchange of sorts. I have been teaching him English, and he has been teaching me the Fuzhou dialect. Our lessons have been going well and are a nice break from the usual probing sex questions and macho talk.

The other character involved is Johnny, who has now become officially the most annoying person I have ever encountered in China. Johnny is young, only seventeen, but he is immature (even for his age) and I am finding more and more he is lacking of many social skills. When I first began working in the barber shop, he was one of my favorite employees, because he would talk to me the most. Now I am finding the reason he talks to me so much is because he is ostracized from the rest of the group. I now understand why.

All day, Johnny follows me around the shop. If I sit down at one table, he will be there within five minutes. If I get up and move to the next table, he will inevitably follow me there. Whether I am reading the newspaper, talking to somebody else, working, or staring off into space, he always starts spouting inane comments at me. The problem is that what he says never has any content to it. After an entire day of being bombarded with his comments, I honestly cannot remember a single thing he says. It is that bad. He also finishes every sentence with a goofy laugh as if somehow what he has just said is funny or cleaver…it isn’t.

But more than anything else, Johnny’s tendency to butt himself into situations where he is not needed is absolutely driving me crazy. For example, during my hair wash training, I usually wash one of the master’s hair, and have a little brother by my side to coach me, usually Xiao Fang or Carrottop, who have both been working in the shop for several years. Johnny is easily the most worthless employee in the shop, not to mention he has less than a month more experience than me. When Carrottop and/or Xiao Fang are training me, Johnny always shows up by my side, giving me suggestions which usually run counter to what the others are trying to teach me.

In an even more blaring example, during my Fuzhou dialect lessons from Adamum, Johnny frequently sits next to us to listen. Now, if he only wanted to listen, I wouldn’t have a problem, but the issue is that he insists on helping Adamum teach me. This would only be a minor problem if Johnny actually spoke the Fuzhou dialect. The problem is he is from Sanming, which is on the other side of the province where they speak a completely different dialect. Since there is no system of Romanization for the Fuzhou dialect, most of our sessions consist of Adamum repeating a word, and me copying his pronunciation. As Adamum is doing this, Johnny always pipes in with his own attempt to pronounce the word, as if somehow it is necessary for me to listen to two people pronounce it at once, one of them who doesn’t even speak the damn language he is teaching! To put it in perspective, imagine you are studying Chinese with a native Chinese speaker. Whenever your Chinese friend pronounces the word, a Korean sitting next to you who has taken one semester of Chinese pronounces it for you again, insisting that his pronunciation is better than the Chinese guy.

I have come to assume that the reason Johnny annoys me so much is because that the others don’t like him either, but I had yet to see any outward displays of this. That was until two days ago when Adamum was giving Johnny a haircut. I know I mentioned this before, but Johnny’s most striking feature is that he looks like a girl, and most people he meets think he is one before they hear his voice. Apparently he doesn’t mind much, because his hairstyle only accentuates this fact. It goes down to his shoulders in back, and in the front, the bangs slant down from one side to the other covering up his left eye, and leaving the right eye revealed. Johnny has always been proud of his unique hairstyle and one time he explained to me to me that, “This is a personality hairstyle. It fits my personality.”

As Adamum was cutting Johnny’s hair, he “accidentally” cut the bangs in a straight line, thus revealing Johnny’s left eye. This changed the entire look of Johnny’s hairstyle, as his mysterious face was now visible to all. As soon as his precious bangs dropped to the floor, Johnny rumpled up his hair, ripped off the barber cape and ran to the back of the shop sulking. Adamum perceived to giggle about the situation he had “accidentally” caused.

Up until this point I had been afraid that I was the only person who Johnny truly bothered. The following day when I was sitting at a table with Adamum, Cheng Qing, and Johnny, Cheng Qing asked if I wanted to play pool with him after work. For the past two weeks Johnny has been inviting me to play pool with him as well, and every night I tell him I am too busy. Partially, this is true, but the main reason is that he is simply so annoying that I cannot stand to spend any more time with him than the eleven hours per day we spend working together. I did not want to hurt Johnny’s feelings, so I politely declined Cheng Qing’s request at first. Five minutes later, I asked Cheng Qing to step outside for a cigarette. As we headed out the door I told him.

“Listen, I have something I want to tell you, just don’t repeat it to any of the other employees. Actually, I do want to go play pool tonight with you, but I just didn’t want to say so in front of Johnny, because he asks me to play with him every night and I always refuse him. You know he is kind of…well, immature, and….”

“I don’t like him either, and neither do any of the other employees,” Cheng Qing interrupted (the word he used was 讨厌 which is somewhere between “dislike” and “hate.”) His words came with the tone that what he was saying was so obvious and definite that what he was saying should have been known to all. “He is annoying, and he doesn’t listen to orders. I know what you are thinking. Don’t worry, I won’t mention anything.”

What I find interesting is that I now had conclusive evidence that Johnny was not only driving me crazy, but the rest of the staff as well. Yet until this point, I had yet to see anybody respond to it, other than Adamum who is a little quirky himself. Had I been working a regular job in the United States, and not purposely been trying not to rock the boat (as I am doing now) I would have told Johnny directly to leave me alone a long time ago. Had he not left me alone, the conflict would likely have escalated as I would have probably been much less civilized about dealing with a person like Johnny. Yet, Adamum’s “mistake” was the first instance in which I had seen of any other employees outwardly revealing their dislike for him as well, and as I mentioned earlier, Adam’s actions are often very far from what one might consider “typical Chinese behavior.”

In other news, my goatee is now orange…pics coming soon.

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