This Lunar New Year, don’t be distracted by the cute and cuddly rabbit, but be on the lookout instead for the ‘ruthless chicken’!
When I first arrived in Hong Kong, I was a little squeamish when eating out with friends and the crispy chicken was due to arrive. Fish aside, I wasn’t used to food arriving with its head on the plate. I quickly got over my squeamishness and have enjoyed countless dishes of delicious crispy chicken since, as well as ducks, geese and pigeons that also seem to be eagerly watching you as you eat them.
But recently I became aware that perhaps I had good reason to be terrified of the chicken head that stared at me from the plate: during a recent CNY lunch with the team, I was told about the feared Guangdong folk custom of the ‘ruthless chicken’.
In most organisations in the region, the employer will arrange Wei Ya banquet (尾牙, an end-of-year meal for all the employees) to thank them for their hard work during the previous year. However, the meal isn’t necessary all bonhomie: if the boss wants to fire an employee, folk custom has it that the boss will spin the plate so that the chicken’s head faces the unfortunately individual who then must find him or herself a new job. The firing of the employee in this manner is sometimes described as ‘eating the ruthless chicken’.
One explanation as to why the chicken takes on this sense of foreboding originated in Taiwan, where “chicken 雞” has somewhat a similar pronunciation as “jia 加”, meaning “extra”, it is a metaphor for someone who is redundant – and therefore in the firing line.
As an employment lawyer, I am not sure that I fully endorse the use of ‘ruthless chicken’ as a practice for sound human resources management. It did, however, get me to thinking (after almost 20 years of giving it no consideration whatsoever) how the words “sacked” and “fired” came to describe terminating an employee’s employment. A quick Google search revealed that the etymology behind “sacked” was pretty straightforward: historically (I assume before basic employment protection laws were enacted), when an employee’s service were no longer required, they were literally given a sack and told to fill it with their belongings and get out.
The background to “fired” is however, more interesting. It was not invented by Donald Trump for his show The Apprentice, whatever he himself might believe; indeed, he tried to trademark the phrase, to no avail. One popular theory is that the phrase came from a bullet being fired – or ejected – from a gun, just as a employee whose services are no longer required is ejected from the workplace. However, perhaps more fun is the story of Thomas Watson, the star salesman at National Cash Register Company, who in 1910 had an argument with his boss and the company’s founder John Henry Patterson. They were disagreeing over whether mechanical or electric cash registers were the future. Patterson considered Watson had overstepped the mark by challenging the boss and ordered that Watson’s desk be carried outside and set on fire! Watson was, therefore, “fired”. (Since every cloud should have a silver lining, it’s heartening to know that Watson went on to become the Chairman and CEO of IBM and one of the richest men of his time.)
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