Another week, another story about Chinese employees being demeaned.

In the middle of May, the Guilin branch of China Unicom held a conference where it was decided that the three departments with the worst performance would be each be given bogey prizes, in an effort to “improve” worker motivation. The “prizes” were called the “tortoise”, “snail”, and “turtle” awards.

Employees who received the lowest “tortoise” award would then have to wear a demeaning yellow apron to work which had the word “tortoise” (王八) written on the back. While its offensive enough that these are all slow animals, the term “王八” and the related term “王八蛋“ have several even less savory meanings in Chinese colloquial speech, including “cuckold”, “bastard”, “son-of-a-bitch” and “pimp”. The above photo was uploaded onto Weibo recently, and has caused heated debate.

A representative from the office later explained that the new system was being used as an “incentive” to make employees work harder. On May 27, the Guilin City Federation of Trade Unions condemned the act as a workers’ rights offence, and firmly opposed the system.

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Keywords: demean Chinese employees Chinese employees humiliated