Chapter 114 Chapter 114 New Store Busy
Ding Min got Ning Shaoming's approval, and immediately went to find his nephew after returning home: "Sister-in-law, where is Xiaoyong?"
"Upstairs," his sister-in-law saw that her brother-in-law was laughing so hard that his teeth were exposed. She thought it was probably a good thing and quickly shouted upstairs, "Xiaoyong, your uncle is looking for you, come down quickly!"
"Oh!" Ding Yongji came down from upstairs in his slippers, "Uncle, are you looking for me?"
"Didn't you say you wanted to learn a craft? I've made an agreement with your Third Uncle Ning. He's willing to take you in and let you learn from him. After you've learned, you can work in his store in the county town. It's up to you to decide whether to start out on your own or continue to work for him."
Ding Yong was surprised and asked, "Really?"
"How could this be false? Don't you see how close I am to him? I didn't ask him before because he didn't want to hire anyone. Now that he is opening a branch and recruiting people, he must be willing to give priority to his acquaintances! But you have to learn from him and work hard in the future. Don't be lazy again!"
"I know. It was impossible to learn a proper skill before. The masters were unwilling to teach, fearing that others would learn and take their jobs."
Ding Min also knew that what he said was true: "Well, those who have skills have been like this since ancient times. It's not easy to meet a good master."
Speaking of this, his sister-in-law had something to say: "That's right, one time your eldest brother paid money for Xiaoyong to learn, but who knew that after paying the money, he was still treated like a servant by the master. He even had to pick up the children from school and help them with their homework. What do you think of this? He didn't learn any skills, but just became a slave!
This time I should be meeting a good person. I often go to Ning Laosan's house to eat, and both he and his wife are good people. ”
Ding Min said: "I can't guarantee anything else, but my brother doesn't mind others opening their own shops after learning from him. After all, people nowadays know that doing business can make money, but only a few people can really make money. As the old saying goes, a master leads you to the door, but the practice depends on the individual. Whether you can make money after opening a shop also depends on your ability."
Ding Yong couldn't wait any longer: "When should I go?"
"He said it depends on when you are free, but at the latest in three days."
"Then I'll go tomorrow." Ding Yong often went to Ning Shaoming's house to eat. When there were not many customers in the restaurant, he would occasionally stand at the kitchen door to chat with Ning Shaoming and Ning Shichun and watch them work.
Everyone in the family disliked him because he was a poor student and not smart enough.
But Ding Yong knew that Ning Shichun's academic performance was worse than his. If he could learn it, there was no reason why he couldn't, and besides, those tasks seemed quite simple.
In order to get their son to stick with it, Ding Min's elder brother and sister-in-law also made a bold move, saying: "If you can stick with it, and go to work in the store in the county town in the future, we will buy you a house in the county town."
Now Ding Yong was even more excited.
Zhao Ruyue and Ning Shaoming had originally agreed on an interview time of three days later.
However, after the news that they were recruiting spread, more and more people knew about it, and more and more people came to ask about it.
Some of them are related to them. If you reject too many people, you can't be sure that gossip will arise.
They simply notified those who had registered their names that day and went to the county town for an interview the next day, intending to make a quick decision.
However, Ding Min's nephew Ding Yong came to the store in town to help early the next morning.
Ning Shaoming happened to be free in the morning, so he taught him. He didn't teach him difficult things on the first day. He just taught him what he thought were the simplest methods of cooking and frying rice noodles.
Cooking rice noodles is both simple and difficult. It seems that as long as you are not a kitchen killer and don't be distracted while cooking, you can cook the rice noodles to a satisfactory level.
However, if you are not careful, the rice noodles will easily be overcooked. If the heat and the time of taking out of the pot are not controlled well, the rice noodles will appear to be uncooked, but when the customers pick them up with chopsticks, they will break as soon as they pick them up. The taste of the rice noodles will be bad.
Stir-frying rice noodles requires more skills than boiling them. It is not enough to get them to stick to the pan once or twice. You have to make sure they do not stick to the pan most of the time. You also have to fry them in a way that looks oily but does not taste greasy.
Ding Yong didn't expect that the job seemed simple, but it actually involved many tricks.
When he cooked rice noodles for the first time, he looked at the clock carefully, keeping an eye on the heat and time, and the finished product turned out quite good.
After I succeeded, I felt that this job was so easy that I could learn it once I tried. However, I was a little careless the second time and the rice noodles got mushy at the bottom.
I took it seriously the third time and didn’t make the same mistake again.
But it would be too troublesome to look at the meter when cooking each portion. Others don’t look at the meter, and they don’t have to be as careful as he is about the amount of seasoning to add. They just go by feel.
It was then that Ding Yong realized that it was not easy to make something that looked simple, especially when it was to be sold. It was not enough to make it just averagely. Each one had to be made well. Otherwise, with so many restaurants around, why would they choose your restaurant? The guests spent money.
However, Master Ning taught very seriously and carefully. He explained everything in detail, and his tone was very calm without saying a single swear word.
Unlike the masters he had met before, who would teach him once and then let him do it by himself, and would scold him if he made any mistakes. He would also be scolded if he did not follow the steps he taught.
But those steps are not strictly required to be done in that way.
Just like in a bowl of rice noodles, if the customer asks to put both chopped green onions and coriander in, it makes no difference whether you put the chopped green onions first, or the coriander first, or put the chopped green onions and coriander together in the wok and then put them in the pot at the same time.
As long as there was no problem with the finished product, it was fine. But in the end, he was scolded even though there was no problem with the finished product, and the scolding words those masters used were particularly dirty.
But now, he had a bowl of rice noodles in which the pork offal was overcooked, and the pork intestines were as tough as rubber shoe soles and he couldn't even bite them. He was not scolded, but just teased in a good-natured way.
Under this teaching method, Ding Yong's enthusiasm for learning not only did not diminish, but he wanted to learn better even more.
When Ning Shaoming was doing other things, he also asked him to watch and asked him to help from time to time.
After seeing it, Ding Yong realized that cold noodles just look like rice noodles that are cut wider. In fact, the preparation method and ingredients are completely different from rice noodles, and there are more steps. No wonder other restaurants in the town can only imitate the ingredients but cannot produce such a taste.
There is also bread making, which is more complicated. Ning Shaoming told him: "At the beginning, you have to remember the ratio of each ingredient, but this is not absolute. After you learn it, you can also try to innovate."
On this day, Ding Yong was dazzled by what he saw, but his excitement subsided.
The idea I had at the beginning, to open a shop right after learning the skills, is not so urgent anymore.
He finally understood why Ning Shichun was not in a hurry to open a store even though he had learned enough to support a restaurant, because he still had a lot to learn!
In the first few days that Ding Yong studied here with Ning Shaoming, Ding Min and Ding Yong's parents came to see him secretly several times without Ding Yong noticing, but Ning Shaoming knew about it.
Seeing how hard Ding Yong studied, they were finally relieved. His parents were so happy that they ran to the county town to help him look for a house.
But after that they never came to see secretly again, and every time they came they came to eat openly.
But sometimes when I eat what Ding Yong makes, I can’t help but feel a little excited.
It was the first time for Ning Shaoming and Zhao Ruyue to become bosses seriously. They didn’t quite know how to choose people, so they went to the city temporarily, searched the Internet for a long time, and learned for a long time before they felt less anxious.
The people who came for the interview didn’t know that they were nervous before the interview and cheered themselves up in their hearts. Their bosses were also nervous and they were also cheering each other up.
Zhao Ruyue: "Let's not panic. Even if we have to pretend, we have to act as if we are confident."
Ning Shaoming: "Yes, don't panic, but don't shake your hands..."
Ning Shixia passed by the door and looked inside.
But this time when she saw her parents acting silly, she was not as nervous as the first time.
Anyway, mom and dad’s illness will get better on its own.
Facts have proved that when we get nervous before doing many things, we are actually just scaring ourselves. After we actually do them, we will find that it is nothing special.
Zhao Ruyue had this feeling. After interviewing everyone and selecting the right employees, she recalled how nervous she was before the interview and couldn't even empathize with herself a few hours ago.
"In fact, our family is just a small shop, and the requirements for hiring people are not that high. There is no need to do that, right?"
Ning Shaoming felt the same way: "That's right. We have learned from this experience and will not do the same thing next time."
However, this experience is also quite rare for them. At least next time when they encounter an area they are not good at or something they have never done, when they tell themselves not to be so nervous, these words will have some effect.
After the employees are recruited, the first thing they do is training. It’s not a very professional training, but mainly to teach people in different positions what they need to do, and to teach the waiters how to deal with guests and some special situations that may occur.
Ning Shaoming's side is a bit more troublesome, but Zhao Ruyue's side is very simple.
"You are mainly responsible for the hygiene of the store and selling things. You will get a commission for every unit sold. I mentioned this during the interview, so I won't say more now. In the next few days, you should memorize the prices of different MP3 and MP4 players as quickly as possible, and be nicer to customers. Oh, and learn to distinguish the real ones. I think you can do this, right?"
Following behind her, the girl who looked very young but had a determined look in her eyes nodded: "Yes, I often help my grandma look after the money."
"That's good. I will buy you a small money detector light in a few days." It's like double insurance.
The girl she recruited was called Su Shengnan. She had just graduated from junior high school and was sixteen years old, so she was not considered a child laborer.
Among the applicants, there were children of Zhao Ruyue's relatives from her mother's side, but after much deliberation, she decided to hire Su Shengnan.
Su Shengnan is the only child in her family. Her family conditions were pretty good before, and raising only one child wasn't a big pressure.
Later, her father fell ill and could not work, and had to see a doctor and take medicine all the time, so the family became poor.
Her mother went out to work and sent money back every month, and her grandmother stayed at home to take care of her father and her while she was still in school.
Originally, after Su Shengnan graduated, she also wanted to go out to work with her mother, but her grandmother was uneducated and timid. When her mother sent money back, her grandmother did not dare to be the first to go to the post office to withdraw the money. She always took her with her and asked her to sign for her.
So Su Shengnan couldn't go out to work, so he thought about finding a job near home so that if anything happened at home, he could go back to take care of them.
Zhao Ruyue took care of Su Shengnan in the store for a few days. After she got used to the job, she went to the restaurant next door to help Ning Shaoming.
For the two stores that Ning Shaoming is in charge of, the bakery is fine. After he makes the bread and puts it on the shelves, the salesperson only needs to help the customers get the bread and collect the money.
The waiters at the restaurant have to help customers take orders and collect money, and after the customers finish eating, they also have to clean up the dishes and tables.
Restaurants have the most customers, and they come in waves during meal times. When there are few people, they are so idle that they fall asleep. When there are many people, they are so busy that they can't even sit down in the restaurant.
I also had to buy two stacks of plastic stools, one taller and one shorter. The taller ones served as tables and the shorter ones were used for sitting. I put them in a long row at the door, which looked quite spectacular from a distance.
And the chef hasn't been trained yet, so Ning Shaoming has to take over on his own.
Fortunately, when their restaurant opened in the county, the quality of the rice noodles cooked by Ding Yong had become relatively stable, but he still needed to practice making fried rice noodles.
For example, the preparation of cold noodles is more troublesome in the early stage, but it is very simple to mix, and even children can do it.
The original plan was to let Ding Yong practice in the town for a while and come back once he had a stable catering business, but now he can’t take care of that.
The business in the county town had been open for only two days and Ning Shaoming was unable to take care of it, so he asked him to come to the county town to help.
Even more unprepared than Ding Yong were his parents. They had thought they could take their time looking for houses, but he suddenly wanted to go to the county town right away.
Even if we buy the house right away, we can’t live in it right away, so we can only rent a single room for him to live in temporarily.
At least I don’t have to run back and forth every day.
After Ding Yong was transferred to the county town, Ning Shaoming was still the busiest person. In the morning, he prepared the dough for making bread and cakes in advance, and then went to the restaurant.
After being busy during the restaurant's breakfast rush, he would hand over the restaurant's less busy time period to Ding Yong and run to the bakery next door to make bread.
Fortunately, he hired two bakery apprentices. When he was not in the bakery, the two apprentices could help check the fermentation of the dough. When baking bread, they could also help check the quality of the bread baked in the oven. If they felt there was anything wrong, they would come and tell him.
If there was nothing wrong and the bread was baked, they could take it out and send it to the front to put it on the shelf themselves, without having to go back to him, which saved Ning Shaoming a lot of trouble.
Ding Yong gritted his teeth and started working in a restaurant in the county town. Unexpectedly, under pressure, the food he produced was much better than when he worked in the town.
Zhao Ruyue went to help, running between the front and back kitchens. When the kitchen was busy, she also helped cook rice noodles or mix cold noodles.
After half a month, almost everyone lost several pounds.
Fortunately, the activities they held when opening the store only lasted for half a month. After that, there were no more activities, so the number of customers decreased a little, and then gradually stabilized.
By this time, Ding Yong had also gained experience, and Ning Shaoming finally didn't have to run back and forth all the time. He only needed to go to the restaurant and bakery when they were not busy to teach Ding Yong some things he had not taught before and point out where he needed improvement in what he had learned.
After Zhao Ruyue had some free time, she found that Ning Shaoming had lost a lot of weight. She suddenly felt a little scared and urged him to find two more apprentices: "Don't do this again in the future. Look at your clothes. We bought them for you before we went to work. Now they look empty."
Before they went to work, they didn't eat as well as they do now. Ning Shaoming was doing heavy work in a brick factory, but he was not as thin as he is now.
Ning Shaoming himself didn't feel anything: "I'm not busy now, the lost flesh will grow back slowly."
Zhao Ruyue said sternly, "That won't work either. We need to find a time for our whole family to go to the city for a comprehensive physical examination."
Ning Shaoming looked at her stern face and finally understood who his son looked like.
In the past, she always had a smile on her face. People said that her son looked more like his father and her daughter looked more like her mother. Now it seems that her son looks a lot like her.
"Okay, let's go together as a family at the end of the year when we're not so busy and the kids are on vacation."
As the two were talking, four children came running in, chattering: "Uncle Ning, Aunt Zhao, we're here!"
Zhao Ruyue smiled again and entertained her son and daughter's friends: "It's just right. We have packed up and the car will be here soon. Are you hungry? Do you want to eat something first?"
Today is Ning Shiqiu's birthday, and he also invited several friends from the county to have dinner at his home. Since Zhao Ruyue said that there was a car available to pick them up, the parents of the children agreed.
Today Ning Shaoming and Zhao Ruyue did not go home early. They waited for them to finish school and picked up these children before going back to town together.
Several children shook their heads: "We need to save our stomachs for Xiaoqiu's birthday cake!"
"Uncle Ning, Xiao Xia said that you want to make a three-layer cake for Xiao Qiu. Is that true?"
Ning Shaoming nodded: "It's true, it's already done. I'll bring the cake back to town with you guys later, but it's in the freezer of the bakery next door. It's packed in a box, so you can't see it now."
As they were talking, Zheng Xiu drove up, stopped the car at the door, and honked twice.
Ning Shaoming got up and went to the bakery next door, pushed the cake out on a cart, and put it in the trunk, because the three-layer cake was too big and too tall to be carried directly.
Several children couldn't help but exclaim when they saw the cake box, and the topic along the way was all about the cake.
Even Yao Ju, who usually spoke the least, had seen three-layer cakes before in the city, and this time he couldn't help but talk about it with everyone else.
It was his first time attending a friend’s birthday party. He had a gift in his schoolbag, and as soon as he arrived at Ning Shiqiu’s house, he immediately took it out and gave it to him.
After taking out the gift, the weight of his schoolbag decreased by 99 percent.
"Brother Saw, what did you buy? Why is it such a big bag?" Ning Shixia looked at Ning Shiqiu's gift curiously.
She could more or less guess what other people's gifts were. Some were music boxes, some were crystal balls that could snow, some were notebooks or pens, and someone even gave a particularly large lollipop.
However, the square thing that Yao Ju sent had no logo on it, and it was not wrapped in gift wrapping paper, but was tightly wrapped with tape.
Yao Ju felt a little embarrassed when he saw other people's gift wrappings were so beautiful: "I'm afraid the book bag won't fit, so I can only pack it like this."
In fact, he forgot to buy gift wrapping paper. He only remembered it when he saw the gift his cousin was going to give him in the afternoon, but it was too late to buy it.
"It's okay, I don't mind this." Ning Shiqiu touched the edges of the gifts and guessed that there were books inside.
Originally, they were going to open the gifts while eating cake in the evening, but Ning Shiqiu saw that his sister was so curious, so he asked Yao Ju and opened them in advance.
After opening it, I found that my guess was correct.
Ning Shixia lost interest when she saw that it was a book, but she had to admit that Yao Ju gave a good gift: "They are all things my brother likes."
"Are they foreign magazines?" Ning Shiqiu touched the covers of the books happily.
Yao Ju nodded: "Yes, I thought you might like it, so I asked someone to bring some of it. These are the latest issues. I have other books at home, but my schoolbag can't carry so many, so I didn't bring all of them. You can come to my house to get them after you finish reading these."
"Thank you!" Ning Shiqiu touched the magazines again and flipped through them. He couldn't understand some of the professional terms.
But my mother said that in a while, the electronics store in the county would buy a computer to help people download songs and videos. Everything could be found on the computer, so he should be able to go there and use the computer to look up words and sentences he didn't understand.
"As long as you like it." Yao Ju smiled and looked at Ning Shixia, "I didn't get a gift for Xiaoxia's birthday last time. I'll make it up to you next time."
Ning Shixia waved her hands: "No need, I didn't invite you last time, next time I invite you just need to give you a gift."
Yao Ju didn't say anything, but still decided to give Ning Shixia two copies on his birthday next time.
Ning Shixia pulled him to the kitchen at the back, where Ning Shaoming and Ning Shichun were busy.
Seeing her coming in like a little mouse, and this time bringing another little mouse with her, Ning Shaoming habitually gave her a small bowl with some food in it, letting her satisfy her craving first, and also gave some to Yao Ju.
Yao Ju held the small bowl, feeling a little overwhelmed.
Ning Shixia directly used chopsticks to poke a beef ball and stuffed it into his mouth: "This is a privilege for children. Isn't it delicious?"
Yao Ju chewed it subconsciously. The beef ball was not only chewy but also juicy. The juice almost oozes out of his mouth. He was so scared that he quickly covered the entire beef ball with his mouth.
"Delicious!" He ate one and took another from his small bowl and put it in his mouth, "It's really delicious!"
"Hey, I told you that my dad's cooking is delicious. I wasn't lying to you! And the food I secretly eat in the kitchen early is even more delicious!"
"Well! It would be great if Uncle Ning could also open a restaurant. The food in the county town's restaurants is not very tasty." Actually, it's not that all the food is not tasty, it's just that most of it is not to his taste.
Yao Ju had been going to the Ning family's restaurant to eat recently, but after eating too much rice noodles, pasta, and bread, he sometimes wanted to eat some dishes.
But he has not yet found a restaurant that suits his taste in the county town, and the food cooked by the cook his family hired is just average.
"Xiao Xia, can you help me ask Uncle Ning if he will open a restaurant in the future?"
"I can answer this without asking. It will definitely not be opened."
"Why?"
"Because my mom said that my dad is already very busy. He lost a lot of weight when the new store opened some time ago. If he opens another restaurant, he will probably be so tired that he will lose weight like a man."
Yao Ju thought of his own parents: "That's right, being too busy is not good. Your family is good the way it is now. Uncle and aunt are free to go home every day and have dinner with you and Xiaoqiu. You can see each other every day, unlike my parents, who can only see each other a few times a year."
"Brother Saw, don't be sad. I'll ask my dad to bring you food from home in the future, okay?" Ning Shixia asked curiously, "Have your parents also gone to work in Pengcheng? My parents went to work in Pengcheng before, so they couldn't come back often. I only saw them a few times a year."
She originally wanted to comfort Yao Ju with what the adults had told her before, that her parents went out to work so that she and her brother could live a good life.
But I heard him say: "No, I heard from others that they each have a new home."
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