Thai Business Logic

[gerryha]

I have to admit it has never even flickered accross my mind to try and make a baht out of the old couple who take away our stuff. If they can grind out somekind of existence from their business, good for them. What would I do with the stuff anyway?

[Takiap]

The woman who Big Boy was referring to is in the recycling business, and she buys rubbish that can be recycled. There is no charity involved in this particular scenario, so the bottom line is, her dumb ass attitude has effectively cost her a slice of her would have been profit.

My MIL and my FIL collect all our rubbish that can be recycled, along with some rubbish they get given, and then everything is collected one every two weeks or. Most of the money they get is given to my kids, and the rest they keep. Nothing wrong with it in my opinion.

[Big Boy]

Exactly Takiap. In the beginning my grand daughters used take our rubbish home to sell for extra pocket money. All that we've done is cut out that leg of the process.

Its what Thais do, and very commendable it is too. Recycling in the UK was a bind forced on people by the local authorities. Recycling here is big business, and mine was just another example of a Thai business snubbing a client of 3 years standing through greed when they spotted my white skin.

Business logic that defies comprehension.

[Dannie Boy]

They must have been short sighted if it took them 3 years to work out you weren't Thai. But I'm with you on what you do to recycle the rubbish and give the proceeds to your grandchildren, nothing wrong with that.

[Big Boy]

LOL - I usually keep out of the way

[Pleng]

Business logic that defies comprehension.

Well maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

At the end of the day; business or not, the lady isn't likely sitting on the rewards of bulging bank book from her endeavour.

It's very easy for us to talk about morals but at the end of the day most of us will never understand what it's like to be in the same position as most of the people who service us. Back in England, if you're out of work, if you default on your debts and have your home repossessed, you still get sheltered from the elements and given just about enough money to feed yourself (maybe not on a particularly nutritious diet, but it'll keep you alive, at least...)

So what were this woman's motivations for trying to make an extra couple of hundred baht from you? It's unlikely that she did it so she could afford the deposit on a nice new condo sooner. Perhaps she's had a bad day/week being ripped off by another of her clients and she wanted to make some of the money back so she could buy herself a bottle of sangsom to compensate, and to hell with the consequences. Or perhaps she needed the extra couple of hundred to keep hold of her knee caps as without it she'd be defaulting on a debt payment? In which case, long term business strategy is probably the last thing on her mind.

The point I'm making (I think...!) is that it's easy to pass things off as poor business logic when it may or may not be. Yes, maybe it was greed, and she'd finally decided that it was time to 'rip you off'. But I find that hard to believe in this particular situation seeing as she'd serviced you for so long. So in this case, I'm willing to think that she knew she'd probably lose your custom but either didn't care, or didn't see that she had a choice.

[Homer]

I have an understanding of the Thai logic in these examples. Who knows, maybe it's correct.

A Thai jacks up the price on a farang and loses a customer. Property owner jacks the price when a lease runs out. A thriving business moves or goes out of business. Property sits empty for years, so owner realizes less income than if he'd accepted a moderate increase. In both cases not trying to jack up the price is an unrealized business opportunity. That outweighs the loss of a customer.

[Homer]

Selling rubbish?

Is everyone using the same terms? My apartment produces 3 kinds of stuff to be disposed of. First is useful only to hungry dogs and someone needing paper to start a fire or dirty plastic bags. Landlord pays for someone to take it away. Second is plastic bottles. Landlord has an arrangement for someone to collect. No idea if money changes hands, but I know she chases others away who are collecting bottles. Third type is all the possibly reusable crap left behind by tenants. A vendor buys that by the kilo, with different prices for different goods. Why kilo? Beats me. Maybe transportation costs are significant.

[Big Boy]

Pleng, I understand where you're coming from, and I believe the concept of getting paid for waste is brilliant - much better than what happened in the UK before we left.

My wife was a loyal customer of over 3 years standing. Neighbours jumped on the band wagon whenever my wife phoned. If she needed to rip somebody off, it should have been the occasional neighbours rather than my wife. If my wife doesn't phone, my neighbours will never get the opportunity to use her. She's really bitten the hand that feeds her, and my wife has simply moved to somebody else.

My only involvement in the whole process was buying some bins for the grand children to store their booty, and I will carry the bins to the front gate when I know the lady is due. Apart from that, I simply observe from afar.

[Big Boy]

Selling rubbish?

Is everyone using the same terms?

We sell 5 types of rubbish (most segregated in bins as it happens):

1. Empty clear plastic bottles (water bottles).
2. Empty coloured plastic bottle (mainly milk bottles).
3. Empty tins and glass bottles.
4. Cardboard waste - folded down and stacked into the largest box.
5. Full boxes of empty beer bottles - segregated by brand.

[hhinner]

Another good example might be the old CJ convenience store on the railway road between sois 80 and 88. I heard it closed because the lease was ending and the landlord decided that he could squeeze more rent out of CJ for a new lease. That didn't go so well.

[hhfarang]

^ Very common story. One of my very favorite restaurants directly on Phetkasem road closed about three years ago. I knew the (Thai family) operators well and they told me the owner was nearly doubling the rent so they were having to close at the end of the month. When I left Hua Hin last December, the place still sat empty with a sign out front.

[StevePIraq]

If they can see you are not doing well the rent will stay much the same, once they see you have a successful business the rent skyrockets. My wife's sister was renting a little shop at 7k per month, she started doing a roaring trade, upon lease renewal the owner wanted 16k, so the sister closed and moved elsewhere.

Shortsighted and greedy

[Gregjam]

Perhaps you should remove the word "business" and just try to understand Thai Logic or lack thereof. My observation is that learning is done by experience and reaction to visual stimuli rather than analysis. Business is making money so next door copies it. If an outsider can do it better purely by technique and application then ban them from doing that job. As with many SE Asian countries the majority of the successful big businesses revolve around local figureheads and behind the scenes lies a foreign manager, just look at most of the big hotels. A lot of the big companies here are Chinese-Thai, a certain telecoms person comes to mind. Until children are taught to think rather than learn by rote (copy) change will be slow.

[handdrummer]

there is no western logic in Thailand and there's no reason there should be any. as a friend, who's lived here for 50 yrs. told me upon my arrival, "leave your dna at the door". it is frustrating and I think of Thailand as the land of everything backwards but if one is going to live here it is what it is.