Chapter 392: Flattery Backfires (2)

She whispered, “When we rented this place, we agreed not to bring any guys back.”

“You should have told me sooner. If you had, I would’ve taken you somewhere else.”

Huang Lingyu led him into her room without a word. ‘How could I answer that?’ she thought. ‘He wanted to come, so I couldn’t just refuse, could I? I was mostly just afraid of making him unhappy.’

She was in the master bedroom. Since it was a rental, there wasn’t much extra furniture. He’d been to Zhu Jing’s room before; these girls liked to keep things clean. Their places were all pretty similar—small, but tidy and fragrant.

Huang Lingyu turned on the air conditioner. They had been for a walk outside and were both sticky with sweat. After a few moments in the cool air, they started to feel better.

“Want to take a shower?” Yang Hui asked with a wicked grin. Huang Lingyu instantly knew what he was thinking. He had already worn her out for a whole night at the hotel last time, so there was nothing to be embarrassed about now.

With a soft “mhm,” she grabbed a change of clothes and a towel and went into the en-suite bathroom.

Yang Hui, making himself right at home, looked around the room. He even opened her closet door and peeked inside, where he suddenly spotted a familiar blue-striped pattern—

His heart skipped a beat as he pulled the garment out. ‘Lingyu really is thoughtful.’ It was identical to their old high school uniform.

He rummaged deeper and found there wasn’t just one. Their official high school uniform had long pants, but Huang Lingyu had thoughtfully bought several other sets with short skirts, like the ones you see in Japan. ‘Not bad, not bad at all,’ he thought. ‘She really gets me.’

He stripped off his own clothes in a flash and pulled open the bathroom door.

Huang Lingyu hadn’t expected him to ambush her, but when he did, she wasn’t the least bit surprised. ‘This guy is a total pro.’

—————–

「Futong Commerce」

Inside Li Yang’s office, Dan Biao and several brand operations managers were present. This time, no one was sitting; they were all standing with their heads bowed, taking a dressing-down. It was Yang Wei’s first time facing Li Yang since joining the company, and in this short time, he had already discovered that this boss was not an easy man to deal with.

“Xiaodan, what the hell is your team doing? I arranged for the stores to conduct live-stream sales, and so far only seven have implemented it. We have over 400 stores in this province! What are you managers even paid for?”

“And of the seven stores that are participating, their sales figures are often zero! A couple of them are slightly better, making a little over 1,000 in a day. Let’s just do the math. If all 400 of our stores could bring in just over 1,000 a day, that would be over 400,000 in extra sales daily. That’s 12 million a month, and 150 million a year!”

“That’s incremental revenue! An extra 150 million a year! Think of how much additional profit that would bring to the company! This is where you supervisors are supposed to prove your worth! But what are you doing? Can’t you understand something so simple? Or do you just want to collect a paycheck without doing any work?”

“And you know what? That’s just the beginning! If every store could reach the company’s target of 5,000 yuan a day, we could bring in an extra 60 million a month. That’s almost as much as our offline sales!”

Li Yang, perhaps tired from his tirade, took on a look of profound disappointment. He took a sip of water and lit a cigarette.

The men standing before him didn’t say a word. ‘You can’t just calculate it like that,’ they were all thinking. When a store starts a new live-stream account, it gets almost no traffic. It was normal to broadcast for four hours and end up with zero sales. Who would be willing to put in four hours of work every day for no reward? It was completely unsustainable.

The one store that had 1,000 in sales only did so because an employee needed to buy something and placed the order online themselves. But they couldn’t explain that to Li Yang. He’d just find another angle to tear into them. With this boss, whatever he said was right. All you could do was listen.

“And Zhang Li! What’s going on with your team? How did NLB suddenly collapse? I heard some stores are down to a single employee! What kind of business are you running? Have you seen this month’s numbers? Can you even bear to look at them? Dammit! Xiaodan, I told you, didn’t I? In a few days, I’m meeting with the new regional head of Xinyue Group, President Zong, to discuss a full partnership for NLB. If you guys drop the ball on performance, I will have your heads. For the next few days, I want you to go to the stores and sell the products yourselves. You will pull these numbers up, or else I’m holding you personally responsible!”

Zhang Li kept his head down and said nothing. Dan Biao glanced at him. ‘Poor bastard,’ Dan Biao thought. Last month, Li Yang had come up with some kind of “betting agreement” and made Zhang Li promote it to the stores. At the time, afraid of a staff revolt, Zhang Li had coaxed the store employees, telling them that if they really couldn’t meet the targets, he would apply to the company to waive the 1,000 yuan penalty.

Payday was on the 10th of this month. When the store staff saw their paychecks, they quit on the spot. Not only had they not received a bonus, but 1,000 yuan had been deducted from their base salary. Many of them ended up with little more than 1,000 yuan. What was that supposed to cover? Were they expected to live on bread and water for the whole month? Now, all the stores were demanding to know why Zhang Li had gone back on his promise and penalized them anyway.

Zhang Li had no explanation, so he just made himself scarce and hadn’t gone to the stores for days. But avoidance wasn’t a solution. Employees were resigning en masse, filling their social media feeds with attacks, complaints, and curses. Now, both Zhang Li’s and the company’s reputations were in the gutter.

Life had become impossible. If he went to the stores, he was mobbed by employees. If he came back to the company, he was berated by Li Yang. He was on the verge of a breakdown.

At that moment, Li Yang continued his blustering. “I’m warning you all, this President Zong just arrived. So far, not a single one of their business partners has been able to get a meeting with her. It’s only because of the reputation I’ve built in Qingjiang over so many years that I might be among the first to meet with her to discuss a partnership. This is a rare opportunity. If your performance affects my negotiations, I swear I won’t let you off the hook. You have to understand, a meeting with a VIP like her might only last ten or twenty minutes. If any problems come up, there will be absolutely no time for explanations.”