The Dinner and the Drunk Engineer

Once in a while, project teams and a few senior figures in the firm would have dinner parties with various clients. And this time, it’s Rocky’s client, Clean Robotics.

As mentioned in “The Big Head Effect”, Clean Robotics is one of the most well known brands in Taiwan. We manufacture critical mechanical components for Clean’s end products and have an incredible relationship with them.

It was a pre Christmas gathering and also our first official “team building” event. Typically in all client’s gathering, we have the following routine in a massive private dining room.

1. Warm up drink at the reception area while waiting for everyone to arrive. Long bench and chairs sits about 10, around a Chinese tea table. People start with their most comfortable drinks. I typically start with Qing Dao Gold label beer. 

At this point, people start the discussion on who drinks like a fish, what we got for dinner later (not the dish, the alcohol), strictly no business stuff. A few rounds of Gan Bei (cheers in chinese, or bottom up, depend on the situation), most of the attendees arrive, we move to the dining area.

2. Typically, approximately 30 attendees in these events, all seated around a round table with diameter more than 3 meters. Our magical salesman, Darren, arrange the VIP seatings, making sure that senior staffs from both parties has enough interactions throughout the dinner. 

3. In both Chinese and Western culture, the dinner would begin with a speech, Darren is a topnotch salesman but somehow always shy to give a speech. He’d ask me to do the heavy lifting for him.

4. The most peaceful 30-45 minutes for the night, simply because everyone is busy eating.

5. People start gan-bei’ing each other, walking around holding a bottle of red wine or whatever alcohol they can get hold of, trying to get each other drunk, and the dinner party goes downhill from this point.

A few defensive techniques I painfully learned after a number of similar gigs. 

1. Know your limit, rememberer the number of glasses you downed. NEVER let others fill your half full glass, cuz you will lose track.

2. Cause a diversion when you see people approaching. You can easily spot who’s coming at you, they have these killer eyes looking at you like a pray. If you are sober enough, you can always see them coming. I would either go to the toilet, or go gan bei someone lightweighted. Or maybe even divert the attention to easier targets.

3. As a last resort, go puke 30minutes after the gig. 

Also a few observations:

1. People takes REALLY GOOD CARE of the most disliked.

2. True character shows, knowing this helps on a business context.

3. And people utilise this opportunity to “drunk talk” business stuff. Very often, it’d be impolite or inappropriate to have certain discussions under normal circumstances. This is an opportunity to talk “Off the record” and I find this particularly useful.

Now that we understands “The Dinner”, let’s talk about the actual event.

The whole night wasn’t far off from the norm. A few highlights tho:

1. Darren downed a total of three bottles of red wine (give or take). He’s a drinking legend at the firm after all.

2. Mr OG (yeah, he was there) was “attacked” by virtually everybody, both client and colleagues. He puked inside his boss car on the way back. 

3. One of the most “liked” staff from Clean demonstrated Sherk style projectile vomit. Three restaurant staffs immediately cleans the floor with military precision and finished off by putting a layer of dry chinese tea leafs to “absorb the smell”.

Chu, Rocky’s engineer, was over the moon. Junior engineers at the firm don’t usually get invitation to dinner like this, unless they are exceptional or we need someone to fill the seats.

I believe this was the first time he had dinner with client and he’s enjoying every second of it. He actively gan bei the client’s team and make conversations with them.

“Not bad.”, I thought.

We had a brief moment of eye contact as I observed. Then he filled up his wine glass. Well, no harm to gan bei with him I guess, would be great to have a chat as well cuz we sometimes we play soccer at the factory, but never really have a casual conversation. 

“Hey, how you holding up Ken? I saw you already had quite a few with the client”

“Not too bad I guess, how ‘bout yourself?”

“Enjoying the dinner, thanks for inviting me”

Rocky asked if he could tag along and I didn’t invite him really, but I gotta play nice. 

“I’m glad that you could join us”.

He already raised his glass before I could finish the sentence. I also raised my glass and downed the full glass of wine with him.

“Thank you Ken, I really appreciate it.”

“No, thank YOU! it’s my pleasure!”

Just before we finish, the client’s project lead already waiting to gan bei us.

The night went on and I saw Chu’s face turned bright red. After an hour or two of gan bei and some chit-chat, it’s time to draw the curtain. 

Darren stand up unsteadily, clap his hands and announced.

“Thank you guys, let’s have our final toast of the night, we all need to take some rest and get ready for tomorrow” 

Only half the table managed to respond with the final toast, the other half is either asleep on the table / chair / floor and / or puking in the toilet. And yes, we will have quarterly review meeting tomorrow, this is how the Chinese get things done.

Then we have the sweep up team picking up bodies, making sure both clients and our colleagues get back safe.

Usually (if I’m not within the fallen half) I would have a final sweep before leaving, just in case anyone left something behind. 

I found a backpack, Rocky was next to me and said. 

“Oh this is Chu’s bag, he’s already gone home and I will take it to the office tomorrow”

He took his back and went home.

Couple of us are still okay, and we decided to hit our local bar for “a few more”.

On our way, Darren’s right hand man, Patrick, got a call from the restaurant. He basically takes care of Darren in China, almost like his PA.

“Hi, we are calling from Dynasty restaurant, one of the guest pass out in the toilet and you guys better come back”

(The private dining room comes with toilets)

“Fuck, someone passed out in the toilet” Patrick shouted on the taxi."

“Driver, go back to the restaurant immediately!” I shouted.

Minutes later, we are back at where we were. It’s actually the first time I went back to the dining room after a gig, and damn! It’s nasty!

The smell was “repelling”, combining alcohol and vomit, plus a bit of body odour and moldy smell, it’s pretty much the most offensive smell in the world. They must have brilliant AC and ventilation system I thought. I swear it did not smell that bad, or it could be that I was there as the smell built up and therefore didn't notice.

We rushed to the toilet and saw Chu laying on the floor, unconscious, we immediately called the ambulance and Rocky.

Rocky was on his way back home and went back to the restaurant after receiving my call.

I was a bit worried because if anything happened to Chu, we are responsible not only by common sense but also by law. People gets jailed in China because their friends are not drinking responsibly. But to be honest, in China, one can’t drink responsibly even if he / she wanted to, the culture is to get others drunk. It’s a pity that they need legislation to enforce common sense.

We tried nudging Chu a bit and he vaguely responded, which is a good sign. The ambulance arrived almost at the same time as Rocky, who volunteered to accompany Chu to hospital (he’s his man after all) and pretty much spent the night there with him.

The next morning I saw Rocky looking beat up, he asked.

“Can I go home after the meeting? I really need some rest”.

“Of course, how’s Chu by the way?”

“He got his stomach pumped, got discharged from hospital this morning, now resting back in the dorm.” (The firm provides accommodations for all staff, a usual practice in China)

“Next time don’t leave him sleeping in the toilet alright?” I laughed.

“Ken, this won’t happen again”

“I need to consider basic safety guidelines for these kind of events next time, take some rest in the afternoon.”

I never seen Chu attending ANY form of meal with any client ever again.

God bless him, he must be traumatised by the experience.