Why I hate Chinese New Year... in the context of work

The last few days have been one of my yearly nightmares. Yearly? you might ask. Well yes, it is the period that I dread so much. It is called... the Chinese New Year.

Don't get me wrong. It is not about the celebration, it is not about the Chinese culture, (well... a little), it has nothing about the holiday itself but the ethics of shipping from China. Yes, you can say 'huh?' now. But read on and you will understand.

So my business, in summary, gets stuff in China, bring it here to the US, and that of course involve shipping. You think it's already complicated to import things from China, well try this: the period before Chinese New Year, freight forwarders will scramble to get their customers' goods out of China before the "cut off dates". These dates will vary depending whether you ship LCL (Less Container Load), which is calculated in CBM (don't ask me what it is), and FCL (Full Container Load), which also has many options: 20 foot container, 40 foot container, and 40"HQ or High Cube, and 45"HQ.

Now, vessels or I should say ships, that's the actual commercial ships or merchants ships, are the ones who can say what and how many can be loaded in their vessels at one time. Those scoundrels will actually lessen the number of ships going out before Chinese New Year, so that they can increase the price knowing that the demand of shipping will be high, because less ships are leaving China! And not only that, factories will actually close down (and their workers leave work) one to two and a half weeks before the actual holiday!

You might be yawning right now at all of this explanation. Well, like I say this is why I hate Chinese New Year. Let me explain more... so you can really fall asleep now. My shipment, yes, my source of headache the last few days, supposed to be leaving February 2. Well guess what. The factory is actually down to only 3 workers working at their facility now, (the other 167 has left the building hopping trains to go home to their villages!!), so my projects are not going to be finished on time. So scratch that ship date. Further more, I learned that my shipment is actually less than FCL load so why the heck I want to pay 120% more for that, and so I needed to not only find a new ship date but also schedule for LCL! The good thing is, LCL has more chance of NOT being offloaded on the vessel. So making this shipment an LCL actually makes sense.

Unfortunately, the only date available is February 8, which is a week later than scheduled. I will be in so much trouble about 3 weeks from now, because I have to call 3 clients and explain why the shipment is late - they might scream at me for that - but hey, at least it will still be a February shipment. And, I will save about $800 on shipping charges.

In Indonesian, there is a saying "Masih untung... " which translates to, thank Goodness for .... Which is to say, always look from the bright side. It's a tough attitude to follow, but now that I have a blog to vent, I feel that it's possible.