Poisonous Gas Mask in the Office?!

On the 4th day of work, we moved into this well-designed and nicely decorated office. In addition to the state-of-the-art facility, gourmet coffee and teas, green plants are all over the office, on everybody’s desk, along the aisles, in the meeting rooms and break rooms.

Everyday, the facility people will come to take care of all those plants for us!

How wonderful! A huge bonus of cheap labor cost in China. I cannot help thinking. No way my friends in the US get this type of treatment in the office.

While we are setting up our desks, the facility people came by and gave each one of us a pouch, similar to the 1 lb brown-sugar bag we get from the grocery stores in the US, except the bag is wrapped in some colorful plastic. (See the picture on the left)

YiTing put hers behind her monitor. Noticing that I did not know what to do with mine, she took mine from me and put it behind my monitor too.

“What is this? What is this for?”

“Oh, the office is just finished with the construction and decoration. The building materials in China often contain some poisonous chemicals called formaldehyde, due to the poor quality control. So, we have the pouch and all the green plants in the office to help absorb the poison ejected from the building materials”

“What the ….?!?!?!”“Is this another joke of the day?!

I did notice that a few people walking around in the office wearing a mask.