the lady in green

This is an actual email from a factory owner in China, explaining why he is unable to ship goods prior to Chinese New Year as previously promised. BS or what - you be the judge. My favorite bit in italic below…

“As I told you last email which we had an issue on this style.  This is nothing to do with the style, but it is a problem of the production line to make this style. In fact, all factories are facing the same problem in China which the factories have lacked of workers due to the financial crisis back to 2008.  We had lucky that we did have enough workers for the production.  Even we had workers left, we were able to find the replacement shortly.

However, once closer to the year end, there are lots of uncertainties which we never faced previously.  The most ridiculous reason that the worker needs to leave early is because next year is “Tiger” year in Chinese calendar.  The rumor is if you marry in the year “Tiger”, your husband may die in accident.  Therefore, lot of girls left early without notification to get marry before CNY. 

The most important is one of our production supervisor’s dad died accidental which we need to allow him to go back home immediately.  Due to some workers left as well as the supervisor, we needed to re-allocate the workers in other production lines.

Since it happened at the same period and year end, we could not have time to hire replacements immediately.  We have put this style into other production line immediately.  However, we are not able to make the same delivery as previously quoted.  We know it is very urgent, but really cannot rush out.  After review the production last few days, the best delivery will be on 2/8 for first portion and the balance will be after CNY – around 3/15-20.  I know this is extremely late.  Hopefully you can work out with the customer.  We will response for the consequence.  I’m so sorry.”