Day 8- June 8: Ring Ring Ring

Another early morning and another day of data collecting marketing data for Gung Ho! Pizza. Today, Alex, Harry and I were working in Guomao an upper class business district where Gung Ho! is considering placing their second location. We decided to stick with the tourist act to collect data…basically acting like a lost tourist in the hope that someone would take the time to help us out. About an hour into our survey collecting (we had five results), Alex and Harry announced that this was the time they ate lunch at school and they were hungry. Reluctantly, I agreed to take an early lunch break and Harry picked out an authentic Japanese restaurant. The food was actually delicious! I had a noodle soup that had slices of duck and a few vegetables…of course it is hard to eat soup with chopsticks and one giant spoon, but I managed. After lunch we went around a two-block area collecting results, we actually had a decent amount of success and matched the number of results we got the day before. The area was really cool as well. It was an underground mall that was connected by tunnels and featured high-end stores. Outside they had a few really large stores attached to the skyscrapers, including a five-story Tiffany and Co. location. Once it got to be 3:30 PM (15:30 as they say here) we headed back to Gung Ho! Pizza to do some POS training. John met us there and gave us the run down of what to do. Basically, we were supposed to talk to the sales people in English and help them understand things they didn’t know, as well as practice their general English speaking abilities. I was teamed up with three girls and it was fun to talk to them in English, as well as helping to teach them my native language. We started out by reading the menu, then I pretended to call in (I made a phone ringing sound as a joke and they laughed for a solid two-minute period) and place an order, and finally we practiced small talk. They seemed to make improvements and they also tried (to no avail) to teach me Chinese. After that I got on the subway and headed back home. It was Wednesday night, so everyone met up at Lush for Pub Trivia Night. Our team lost, but it was still a great time. Afterwards we went down to Pyro Pizza, which had been transformed from a nice pizza restaurant into a full bar/ dance floor/ nightclub. It was a really fun Wednesday night and a great way to wind down after a long day of work.