Chapter 264 - 200: Screwed Over Again

"You all saw Yanghe Commerce’s live stream. The sales figures were astounding—they pulled in 4.1 million in a single session. We have four stores. If each store does one stream a month, and I’ll even be conservative and say you only have to do half as well as them—that’s not too much to ask, is it? That means our four stores can generate 8.2 million in online sales per month."

Dan Biao and Zhang Li saw the sheer horror in each other’s eyes.

’Fucking hell, can you even do the math like that? He completely ignores all the decisive factors: product sourcing, the streamer’s talent, the platform’s follower base and customer acquisition, not to mention online subsidies. He just crudely multiplies some numbers? For fuck’s sake, "just do half as well as them." If it were that easy to get results, why the hell would we even run physical stores? We should just shut them all down and go completely online. We’d save on rent, renovations, and a ton of labor costs.’

Seeing their expressions, Li Yang was immediately annoyed. "Look at you two cowards. You’re all talk when you come to me asking for money, but the moment I ask for results, you start rolling your eyes.

"Since you’re just starting, I’ll lower the target again. 500,000 per store. That’s not too much, is it? That’s 1/8th of what Yanghe Commerce did. If you still think that’s too much, fine. How about you two, and your stores, accept 1/8th of their pay? Would you be okay with that?

"Besides, Yanghe Commerce did that in a single stream. I’m allowing you to stream every day for a whole month. By that math, you only need to achieve 1/200th of their performance each day. That’s not hard, is it?"

Dan Biao remained silent. He couldn’t tell if that bastard Li Yang was genuinely this clueless or just playing dumb. ’Online sales need traffic! Yanghe Commerce has tens of thousands of viewers for a single stream. When our stores do it, only a handful of people watch. Our traffic is a thousandth of theirs! Is this really just a matter of comparing the number of streams or stores?’

"Alright, just looking at you pisses me off. You have no backbone. Completely unwilling to take any responsibility as managers. Since I gave you a chance to speak and you didn’t take it, I’ll just make the decision. Your job is to execute it perfectly.

"Starting next month, each store under the Live-streaming Operations Department must achieve 300,000 a month in online live-stream sales. If a store hits over 80% of that target, they’ll get a 2% commission. If they don’t, there’s no commission. I’m letting you off the hook this time, so there won’t be any punishments for now.

"But I’ll give you three months to adapt to this policy. If you still can’t meet the target after three months, I might have to implement penalties. You need to understand, this is a good thing. Foot traffic is low right now, so it’s better for the staff to be live-streaming than just standing around idle in the stores. The company even has to invest in streaming equipment for this."

Dan Biao and Zhang Li remained silent, but their minds were churning with curses.

’Let us off the hook my ass! The stores can’t even hit 300,000 a month in offline sales right now. You’re telling a bunch of clerks who’ve never live-streamed in their lives to do it, with a monthly target of 300,000? Who the fuck would be willing to do that? It’s obviously just working for free again. Good thing you didn’t set any punishments. If you had, the day of the announcement would’ve been the day the stores collapsed.’

The two of them decided to just agree for now. Worst case, the stores just wouldn’t do the streams. It’s not like they’d get the commission anyway, and they wouldn’t put any real effort in even if they were made to.

"Understood, President Li."

They were both familiar with this routine. Since there was no punishment, they would just agree and then feign compliance, not bothering with such a meaningless task. But who would have known that Li Yang would immediately follow up with, "I’ll have HR monitor the daily streaming duration for each store. If it’s less than eight hours, both of your base salaries will be cut to 80%."

’Li Yang, you motherfucker! You’re not punishing the stores, you’re punishing us! How are we supposed to manage the stores like this?’

"What? You have a problem with that?"

They had no choice but to argue now, as it directly affected their own interests. Dan Biao was the first to step forward and say, "President Li, this doesn’t put any pressure on the stores. It will be very difficult to get them to stream for eight hours. Could we change the punishment?"

Zhang Li chimed in, "That’s right. If there’s no punishment for the stores, they won’t care. They definitely won’t follow our instructions properly because they’re not the ones getting penalized."

Li Yang nodded. "Fine. I’ll take your suggestion. If the stores don’t comply, we’ll penalize them too. Their base salaries will be cut to 80%."

Dan Biao and Zhang Li were horrified. This was not the outcome they wanted. Now the punishment included the stores. When word got out, the story would be that the benevolent President Li didn’t want to punish the store staff, but the two managers felt the stores wouldn’t perform without punishment and strongly insisted on including them.

Leaving Li Yang’s office, Dan Biao’s face was a mask of utter defeat. He thought of Xia Jie’s salary at Yanghe Commerce and began to fall into a deep self-doubt. He was different from someone like Zhang Li. Zhang Li was Li Yang’s nephew; he probably couldn’t leave this company even if he wanted to.

But Dan Biao was different. He believed he had some real management skills. Should he really just stay here and indulge Li Yang’s foolishness? Back when business was good, Li Yang mostly stayed out of operations, and things ran relatively smoothly. Now that performance was down, he started nitpicking everything. He never bothered to investigate or listen to feedback from his subordinates, instead just arrogantly jumping to conclusions and rolling out one ridiculous policy after another, throwing everyone below him into chaos.

Dan Biao honestly didn’t know how he was supposed to continue working like this. Just a few days ago, his boss had given him a raise, and he’d thought he was a pretty decent guy. Today, a single new policy effectively cut his pay to 80%—it was a pay cut in disguise.