I heard about an interesting hiring practice today. Apparently it’s somewhat well known by the locals. Most fast-food places, specifically McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut, will not hire people who are not from the immediate area. The motivation seems to be largely based on mutual understanding.

Today I was talking to somone, we’ll call her Rachel, who’s mother is from Changzhou but married someone from Wuxi, the next city/county over. As such Rachel was born and raised in Wuxi, but now studies and lives in Changzhou. She is equally fluent in both dialects and isn’t detectable as an outsider when talking to people here in Changzhou. But, as the story goes, her national i.d. is marked with Wuxi, and so unless she wants to go through a long process (which if I understood correctly, involves blood draws and DNA testing), she will always be local only to Wuxi.

While in college, she applied to work at one of the many fast-food places downtown. She was told the Wuxi deal wasn’t really a deal at all since she could converse fluently like a native of Changzhou. Two days of flipping burgers later, she was let go. Another manager found out about the Scarlet 夕.

But, pretty much anyone who would go to McDonald’s speaks Mandarin, I though, and they certainly don’t do this sort of thing in the more typical restaurants. Unless a quite elderly grandmother decides to treat her grandson to a nice cold 新地, it seems like this would never really be a problem. And, as any foreigner in China knows, picture menus abound.

I’m pretty tempted to ask about this next time I’m at Starbucks to see if the same applies. I know they’re required to have some basic level of English in order to work there, which makes a bit of sense given the kinds of people I usually see ordering a [insert Starbucks joke drink here].

I then wonder where the line is drawn. I’d assume Wujin is close enough, but I’m not sure about Jintan and Liyang unless it’s based solely on the card.