Spent almost 2 hours with mom over the phone and Zoom tonight... helping her send tuition receipts out to Chinese School parents. There's sooooo many things so she's doing wrong. She's adding so much waste. She creates images..edits them..then creates another image. It takes her hours upon hours to create these receipts... and she is so inefficient. That's not how you work. That's not how you run a business. The school is so dysfunctional... Lord knows how they've remained in business.
So many times... I almost lost it. "我拉左上去。" Where???? Where did you "pull" it mom?? She doesn't know. She doesn't realize that she has both an Outlook/One Drive account and a Gmail/Google account.
But in the midst of all this... she said something, "我整左個table..." How does a 73 year old, Chinese lady know how to create a "table" in Word or Google Doc?? Mom.... she's come a long way. And that's when I settled down.
RESPECT. That's what it is. RESPECT.
She really doesn't know how to run a business. Nor do their school board. Yet they keep running. They don't have to "hire" her and get a high school student. Yet... they still have mom do all the administrative work. This Chinese school can fold and they won't lose any sleep. Yet they keep churning away in the midst of competition, pandemic and what I call "business ignoramus."
I changed my attitude. I need to exercise my patience and give back to the very school that got me to where I am today. I ended up sending out all those receipts using mom's account. I started teaching mom on how she's mis-managing this school. I told her there's a better way. But I fell short of revamping their system - I'm not the person to do it - maybe.
It's 11:30PM.... I worry that mom is tired and cranky. And she says, "I'm wide awake. Rarely do I get your full attention and you're not yelling at me." My heart shattered.
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