84 Chapter Eighty-Three
This process took Li Yingqiao two years.
...
When Li Yingqiao first joined Convey, an online travel agency (OTA) platform, her thinking was simple: if the Thai cruise she had booked was non-refundable, she would work at Convey and earn back her money with interest—an hour of fishing was equivalent to an hour of free wages.
So she could slack off without a care in the world, collect her salary without a care in the world, and start working properly again once she had earned back the money from the cruise. If things didn't go well, she would switch jobs. In fact, she didn't plan to stay at Convey for long at that time; she was keeping an eye on things and waiting for her next job to contact her. After all, the refund scandals involving flight and hotel bookings on major OTA platforms during the pandemic had caused quite a stir, and Convey was one of the hardest hit, with its future looking bleak.
Zhang Zongxie hired her because of the words "Fengtan Middle School" on her resume. However, Li Yingqiao's initial performance disappointed him. She would lie down at her workstation if she could, and sit if she could, and went to the toilet all day long. She was very good at talking and made promises quickly, but she never carried out a single word.
He often berated her. Zhang Zongxie's sharp tongue was well-known throughout the park. It was common for female subordinates to be scolded to tears by him, and everyone was used to it. But there were also those who didn't cry. Those who didn't cry fell into two categories: either they became his assistant like Lilith, receiving a high salary and enduring his nitpicking, or they were like Li Yingqiao, who had thick skin and looked at him with a thick eye, saying, "Oh, I'll pay attention next time."
She was so invulnerable that even Zhang Zongxie couldn't do anything about her at first. Until one day, Convey was exposed several times for using big data to discriminate against customers, and his public relations efforts were ineffective. The number of complaints per week remained high, so he went online to monitor public opinion. He happened to come across Li Yingqiao's account on social networks. The system recommended people he might know, and he immediately associated the name with her: Pure Dung Beetle Jumping Cha-cha.
He thought it was a perfect description. She really was like a huge, unkillable dung beetle; he hadn't expected her to have such a clear self-perception. And she even did the cha-cha.
Sure enough, after clicking through and looking at the profile and related posts, one of them was a panoramic view of the company taken from my workstation on my first day at the company: "A new journey is about to begin." The accompanying picture was a [meow] emoji.
She seems to really like kittens; almost every post she makes on social media ends with this little cat paw.
But Zhang Zongxie knew that she didn't keep cats, and the company didn't allow it either. However, he often saw her feeding stray cats downstairs at the company.
That winter, it snowed in Beijing. There were many stray cats in the park, and several kittens froze to death. She wrapped the remaining kittens in towels and put them in cardboard boxes. Every day after get off work, she would linger and not leave, secretly putting them in his office after he left. She would move them out when he came to get off work and bring them back in after he came home. She did this all winter without him noticing.
Perhaps because of his guilty conscience, Zhang Zongxie felt that there was a hint of fawning and ingratiation in her gaze when she looked at him during that period. Zhang Zongxie thought that she had become cunning and shrewd from slacking off too much.
It wasn't until he saw the whole story on her social media that he realized she was after the cat, and that Li Yingqiao had even bribed him with coffee.
Later, when she went to Y Province, she would occasionally send him some local cat poop coffee. She didn't specify the reason, but he knew it was probably because of those kittens. Because of his tacit approval, they survived and were sent to a rescue center soon after.
Zhang Zongxie never understood why this matter was so important to her. No matter how difficult things were at work, she had never expressed any gratitude to him.
In fact, she is quick-witted and very clever. Several times in meetings, she came up with brilliant ideas that were refreshing. Compared to the others next door who relied on their seniority to fool people, Li Yingqiao is at least someone who can use her brain.
Chairman Convey was getting on in years, and his two children were vying for power within the company, with the outcome uncertain. At that time, he was focused on cultivating his own influence, and Li Yingqiao was initially excluded, until that year when she repeatedly demonstrated her brilliant planning and performance.
At the end of the year, the marketing department planned a "zero-cost hotel stay" campaign, which completely fooled the elderly men on the 38th floor. Li Yingqiao had anticipated the public opinion at the time and advised them not to overdraw the company's brand reputation for short-term gains, but no one listened. At the beginning of the following year, complaints skyrocketed, and the company spent money on maintenance only to lose even more money. The elderly men were dissatisfied and criticized the public relations department.
Li Yingqiao and her colleagues were verbally abused, and of course she felt indignant. At that time, she had only been with the company for a short time and believed that justice would prevail. After being scolded on the 38th floor, she went straight to his office and loudly questioned him why she had to take the blame for the marketing department's wrong decision, why no one listened to her when she spoke, and why he didn't stop it. He could have foreseen the public opinion risks, so why didn't he stop them!
Zhang Zongxie had actually spent an afternoon debating with the old men on the 38th floor, but at that time he could only reply to her without any emotion: "If a company makes this decision and gets criticized, it might get criticized for that decision too. After we issue a public opinion warning, we reject all the plans and don't do them. So do you think we get consulting fees or public relations salaries every year? Do I need to teach you how to write the word 'public relations' again?"
If you're in brand PR and you can't handle anger, you might as well get out of here. In the past, Zhang Zongxie would have been much more blunt, but that day she had just been scolded, and he was worried she might quit in a fit of anger. He'd finally found someone he could manage.
He had recently seen a post on social media where she said, "Why do I want to quit my job every Sunday night? [Meow]"
But Zhang Zongxie's seemingly mild remarks unexpectedly touched a nerve with Li Yingqiao, who retorted indignantly: "Aren't these all legacy issues? Refund complaints keep increasing, the problem of price discrimination based on big data comes up every now and then, and there are the default selected bundled consumptions. How many times have we raised this issue? Why doesn't the technology department implement it? And what about the price war with the airlines? How are we supposed to respond?"
"..."
"Okay, I admit these involve high-level decisions and the company's long-term development. So when can the brand and public relations departments at headquarters and local branches do a unified online aggregation? I haven't received any response to this one request yet. Aren't our internal conflicts clear? Any planning that succumbs to short-term business targets is completely contrary to the long-term brand effect that our brand department wants to maintain. Not to mention that some local departments are now trying to decentralize power. Do you understand what I mean?"
Zhang Zongxie looked at her carefully for the first time.
Li Yingqiao glared at him angrily: "What are you looking at? Did you even listen to me?"
For the first time, he laughed out loud in front of his subordinates. It was the first time a woman had ever questioned him like that at work. What was even more surprising was that he saw his former ambition in a woman whose temperament, work habits, and even lifestyle were completely different from his own.
So he tried to give her some pointers, for the first time setting aside his prejudices and talking to her about this and that, but she probably didn't listen. That evening, she posted on social media:
"Li Yingqiao, you're doing well now, people are even making empty promises to you."
She had that vibrant energy of a Gen Z young person back then, and she loved making jokes. Sometimes, when I listened to her chatting with Lilith, Lilith would laugh out loud at her antics. Zhang Zongxie rarely saw that kind of carefree and unrestrained attitude in a female subordinate, so calling her irresponsible would be quite innocent. Li Yingqiao's natural temperament and personality were truly rare.
So he became curious about her upbringing and how she came to Beijing from Fengtan.
That's when I started seeing her likes and saves on social media, starting from the beginning:
"The Seven-Day Workplace Slacking-Off Rule: Be a Workplace Assassin and Make Your Boss Cry"
Later:
How to respond with high emotional intelligence when you're a new employee.
How to restart your stagnant life after giving up?
"Three sentences to get my boss to promote me and give me a raise"
She rarely liked posts related to relationships; they were all workplace guides. Zhang Zongxie thought at the time that she was probably like Lilith, only interested in money and personal value.
Li Yingqiao didn't have many close male friends, and even female friends were rare. He thought Lilith was one, but Lilith said they weren't actually close. He didn't understand relationships between women; his mother died young, and he only knew that women of higher rank than him were generally assertive and aloof, while those of lower rank were always timid and had many close female friends. Until Lilith told him—
“Boss, you’re so old-fashioned. Just like not all women have to get married, not all women have to have best friends. Joe and I both believe that there’s only one kind of relationship between people: equality and friendliness, not just friendship or best friendliness. Because we both have to survive in Beijing. Equality allows us to keep up with each other when facing workplace competition, and friendliness allows us to retain some dignity for each other.”
Zhang Zongxie gained a new understanding of workplace relationships among women at that time. Indeed, Li Yingqiao had suffered too many losses at Convey, because public opinion work is inherently prone to being attacked from all sides. Poor user experience inevitably leads to criticism, and when superiors see negative public opinion and are in a bad mood, she becomes the first to be blamed. The conditioned reflex between departments is to first pass the buck to each other, and then stab each other in the back. Only the public relations department cannot escape the blame; it is a battleground of open and covert attacks, impossible to defend against.
Therefore, she longed for equality and friendliness, but Convey was a typical wolf-like corporate culture, where the strong prey on the weak. If you didn't climb up, someone else would climb up over your dead body. Li Yingqiao was successfully tamed.
From initially storming into his office and loudly questioning him about why she should take the blame after being held accountable by senior management for a decision-making error in the marketing department, to later being able to calmly descend the elevator from the 38th floor no matter how infuriating the public opinion explosion was, Li Yingqiao took about two years to complete this process.
She quickly realized something was wrong with her. She started having insomnia day and night, losing clumps of hair, and finding it difficult to concentrate at work. She even felt an urge to go to the toilet as soon as she sat down in the office. She wondered if she had developed a habit of slacking off.
When Li Yingqiao heard the doctor say she had severe anxiety disorder, she found it hard to believe. Her first reaction was, "Will I die?"
The doctor glanced at her and said, "People don't die that easily. Are you under a lot of work pressure?"
Li Yingqiao actually felt okay: "The pressure is okay, it's just that I feel like there's not enough time, and the day seems to pass by very quickly."
The doctor sighed and said, "Because you're sick, it's hard for you to concentrate, and you get distracted easily, right?"
***
When Yu Jinyang came out of the ward, Zhang Zongxie gave him a social media account and changed the name to "Beng Cha Cha".
She deleted all social media posts related to Convey's work, leaving only two:
"I miss Meow Meow Station so much. Brother Siyi is actually a very good person." Posted 4 years ago.
"Hey, how are you doing in Chicago? The doctor said I'm sick." Posted 2 years ago.
[Author's Note]
See you the day after tomorrow!
Wishing everyone all the best.
This chapter will give out red envelopes to everyone~
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