Good Me, one of China’s largest tea store chains, had a hard lesson in public relations this week after internet users decided its punchline video about workplace discipline was not funny, not at all.
On Wednesday last week, one of China’s largest tea chains found itself at the center of an online storm after a video emerged of employees for the company apparently wearing cardboard signs and makeshift cardboard handcuffs to enforce workplace discipline — public displays of shame that had disturbing echoes of the country’s political past.
The offending post, made on September 17 to the official Douyin and Xiaohongshu accounts of the Guangdong operations of Good Me (古茗茶饮) — a tea chain with more than 5,000 locations across the country — showed several employees on site at a Good Me shop standing with their heads cast down, their hands bound in front with what appeared to be cardboard cup holders. Handwritten signs around their necks read: “The crime of forgetting to include a straw”; and “The crime of knocking over the teapot.”
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For China’s media and internet authorities, the Cultural Revolution is generally not a subject to be talked about at all. And for many Chinese who remember the period, which was ended by the ouster and arrest in October 1976 of the so-called Gang of Four, it remains a silent source of pain and fear.
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Most comments on the video on both platforms expressed shock and ridicule at what seemed to be extremely unfair and inhumane treatment of employees on the one hand, and an acute lack of good taste on the other. By Wednesday the video had been removed and Good Me was scrambling to contain the damage.
You know, I think a good rule of thumb is if someone finds humiliation “funny”, they’re generally kind of an asshole. Even if everyone is in on the “joke”, it’s revealing of a certain kind of mindset.
According to a report from Shanghai’s The Paper, the incident involved the company’s branch in Shenzhen’s Longhua district, where an employee involved in the filming said it was intended as a joke, and that the three employees in the video had volunteered to take part. The employee said the branch did not punish employees for small mistakes like forgetting straws.
On Wednesday afternoon, Good Me issued a public apology through its Weibo account. “We’re sorry,” it said. “We were playing with punchlines, and it went all wrong.”
Whether or not you might trust that statement, I do think it’s worthwhile context. This post seems to be making a mountain out of a molehill – even the actual article’s title/subtitle makes it clear this was a joke – and I find that in very poor taste given how high tensions are on this topic.
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OP omits the context that they posted this as a joke/meme. Still horrifying, like if you parodied the Nazi-era Star of David.
You know, I think a good rule of thumb is if someone finds humiliation “funny”, they’re generally kind of an asshole. Even if everyone is in on the “joke”, it’s revealing of a certain kind of mindset.
From the article, emphasis mine:
Whether or not you might trust that statement, I do think it’s worthwhile context. This post seems to be making a mountain out of a molehill – even the actual article’s title/subtitle makes it clear this was a joke – and I find that in very poor taste given how high tensions are on this topic.