Dear all,
I am an American living in China, trying to break back into the workforce here after having spent 18 months back in the States. I got back here just over a month ago, and have been constantly sending out resumes. On the 1st of November, I accepted a short-term internship at a local publishing company editing the English translation of one of their annual periodicals. (I don’t want to tell you what it is. It’s shit.) There’s no contract, no signatures, no money, and no work visa, but I wanted to ‘get my feet wet’ as it were, so that in case I couldn’t find anything by New Year’s I could put this on my resume and go to school to buy more time for job-hunting. I agreed orally that I would keep working until December 10th, when my visa expires. (It actually expires on the 17th, but I didn’t want to be up to the last day.)
Over the weekend (November 15th), two things happened. The first is that one of my applications got back to me. One quick interview later, I now have a real job, doing what I’m good at (more copy-editing of business periodicals), paying good money, and providing a work visa. This is basically exactly what I wanted. They couldn’t give me a precise date, and they still had to work through the paperwork, but the interviewer told me that I’m the man he wanted for the job.
The second thing that happened is that I essentially finished my work for them vastly ahead of schedule, and completed all the copy-editing. Now, since they still have me for more time, they wanted to move me to doing layouts. I know nothing of doing layouts; I’ve never used InDesign, never seen it used, they don’t have any documentation, and it’s even on a Mac. In short, they have taken me from doing something I know very well how to do, to something I have absolutely no idea how to do. On Monday, I told them that I’d accepted the job and would have to leave soon, but couldn’t tell them the precise date, and told them tentatively that I’d definitely work out the remainder of the week and Friday the 23rd would be my last day, but couldn’t promise more.
This evening, after I left the office, I got a call from the job. The real job. They want me to start on the 3rd; I had assumed it would start on the 10th or so. This gives me a week to find an apartment; right now I’m living in a hotel room. Since ordinary Chinese office hours are 9-6 (with 90 minutes for lunch), finding an apartment after work would be very difficult.
However, very shortly after arrival, I told someone that I would come and visit them in Hangzhou (I’m in Shanghai) this coming weekend, leaving during the day on Friday, and had largely forgotten about it until just recently. As it’s a very dear friend of mine, I’d still like to visit them, especially since one of my friends here is coming with me and it’d be a group thing.
The most scrupulous thing of me to do would be to bosh the trip, work through next week, and then show up Monday after next at the new job. While I pride myself on being a man of my word, I think that’s an unreasonable expectation on me to jump straight from one to another, especially since I’m still living in a hotel.
On the other hand, the easiest thing to do would be to call Friday my last day, call in sick on it to go to Hangzhou, and then spend the week apartment hunting. But that’s wholly beneath my honor, to call in sick on my last day as a cover for going on a vacation.
In theory, my options are as follows - work out the end of the week (Friday 23rd) and then spend the next week apartment-hunting at leisure, or work to the end of next week (Friday 30th), but call in sick on the 23rd and apartment-hunt after work. After writing this all out, I think honor compels me to choose the former, but I am open to clever thinking or other lateral ideas.
Other data points that may or may not be relevant:
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The person I’m visiting in Hangzhou is a woman that I’m kinda-sorta in love with, and last time I was here we were kinda-friends kinda-more, but it’s been 18 months and maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder and I can try again for romance properly, I dunno? Anyway, she’s the only person who specifically asked me to bring her something from America, and I need to get it to her.
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The people at my internship have treated me with all respect and grace, and I have no personal grievances with anyone there whatsoever to help me justify going off in a huff.
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I’ve never been apartment-hunting in China on my own, and would rather give it too much time than too little. At the same time, I don’t have valid work papers and can’t move in yet anyway until I get one.
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I seriously have done everything for my internship project that my skills qualify me to do, and all I’m doing now is pecking at a keyboard chimpanzee-style. If I worked non-stop on the InDesign layout stuff for a week and a half, I might be able to accomplish what someone actually familiar with the program might do in an hour. By my judgement, we have passed the point where I am meaningfully contributing to the company.
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My boss at the internship has already started looking for a replacement for me - or rather, for someone to do the next phase of the work.
Advice is always appreciated. I’d like to tell my boss by lunchtime tomorrow.