Chapter 1
Chapter 1:
As usual, the statue of Raffles surrounds many tourists.
The sun is too big today. The sparkling waves under the bridge made people’s eyes hurt. I blocked the car window with the folder until I passed that section.
On the opposite side of the river is a large area of traditional Nanyang buildings with white walls and shallow tiles, with low orange roofs strewn far away. The old parliament building is faintly hidden in between. Behind that is Singapore’s most expensive office building group, one after another, which is dazzling and unreal because of the strong sunlight reflection. More and more people around are rushing in the same direction. Occasionally I see people wearing long-sleeved shirts only with a pair of low-weight light-colored trousers, and leather shoes are polished to a mirror effect. I quickly walked a few steps and swiped the access card, and caught up with this elevator.
“Yao, this shirt is really good-looking! It matches you very well.” Hui Lin leaned over and talked to me in a low voice. She is wearing an orange short-sleeved T-shirt with our company logo printed on her chest.
I took a breath. God, I forgot again!
“I have to rely on clothes, unlike you, wearing company T is so glamorous.” I almost laughed and talked to her. Without the lower half of the face to express, it is even more difficult to convey goodwill by relying on the eyes and eyebrows above the mask. Of course, for the benefit, I may have less inhaled the smell of perfume that interacts around in a confined space.
“Thank you! Speaking of which, do you plan to change it later?”
“I’m just about to tell you…” I got out of the elevator on the HR floor with her, folded my hands together, “Help me—”
Huilin was taken aback and laughed: “I have to look for it. You know, there are not many new T-shirts left this year. I’m not sure if there is a size that suits you. Do you want to speak today?”
“Yes. I’m so sorry, I have to trouble you.” I grinned and waited outside. Today is the day of the conference. Employees who are not in other places have to come to the company. Every time our company culture conference, the scale is made quite large. This may also be regarded as the tradition of Internet companies with too healthy cash flow? Due to the special circumstances this year, we finally did not rent any high-altitude restaurants in Marina Bay, but simply held themed events within the company.
I only came back because I was busy yesterday, and in a hurry, I forgot to wear the company T-shirt. It is also possible that I selectively forgot: the memory of last year is really not good. A group of elites who are barely able to be regarded as a little professional, uniformly dressed in big orange short sleeves, appeared in the gym… and even a light show…
Hui Lin came out with a packaging bag. Her eyes were slightly apologetic: “Maybe it doesn’t fit well…”
“No, this has been a great help, thank you Huilin!” I blinked at her before flashing into the elevator.
Now, only people from our company are left in the elevator. Some familiar greeted me, and I nodded in greeting. When I got out of the elevator, Huang from the same group asked me: “It’s been a long time since I saw you in real life! How does it feel to be trapped in Jakarta?”
“Not very good. I didn’t dare to take off my mask in the hotel.” I talked to him very quickly in a low voice, “I heard there was another long queue at the Carter Center in Little India last weekend?”
“Yes, my wife and I queued for more than an hour to buy two boxes of 100. But the company will send one out every day, I thought Huilin told you.”
“Did you see it?” I replied with a smile, shaking the T-shirt in my hand. He nodded.
I realized that Huang had something to tell me. He must have been waiting for me somewhere just now.
We went around to the small meeting room. It’s only nine o’clock in the morning. It’s easy to find an empty conference room. Huang sat down and pretended to turn on the computer—because the walls and doors are made of glass—and said, “I didn’t tell you after the meeting that day. Does it smell fishy?”
I motioned him to continue.
Old Huang’s expression was weird. Because he is a weird person, I can’t tell what he means. I just heard him say: “I saw someone from BCG on the sixteenth floor.”
“you sure?”
“I can’t be more sure.” He raised his hand, reminding me of Donald Trump. “This is Singapore. No one can wear a suit, and neither can the legal department of our company. You think, a team of formal attire Men and women, raw faces, appeared on the 16th floor. Who else could be besides the consulting company? Besides, I happened to ran into them drinking with Kevin last week.”
Kevin is the boss of the next-door department. He worked for BCG Singapore for eight years before quitting. He also has two years of experience in the New York office. He is now an old consultant.
I made a noncommittal nasal sound.
“Wake up, Yao!” He suddenly slapped his palm, “There is a war!”
I looked at Lao Huang and only said, “Today will be a long day… Maybe we should go to the office first.”
“You’re right, but I still think I should talk to you first.” He tapped the keyboard twice with a sense of concern, “I haven’t told the boss yet.”
I’m aftertaste.
This grandson!
“Don’t stare at me,” he still stared at the screen, “I just think we need to let you know about this first. You see, although it’s a war, it’s a battle between Kevin and the boss—”
He didn’t say the second half, but the meaning was already clear.
Lao Huang is really nothing like a Singaporean. The common writing of Huang’s surname here is “Ng”, it is hard to think of it as “yellow”. He may have been mistaken by foreigners too many times, so that the first time he was recognized by me, he was somewhat surprised. -Other than that, he is really nothing like a Singaporean: For example, he would cheat me, first put a gossip, and then wait for me to talk to the boss.
For another example, he will give me gossip, although the main purpose is to cheat me.
When I returned to the office, almost everyone arrived. The boss’s jacket was placed on the chair of the small desk at the end. No one was seen. Maybe he went to the 16th floor. I put the souvenirs I bought at Soekarno Hatta Airport into the pantry, and went out to chat with my colleagues for a while. My desk is in the opposite direction of the boss, looking at him from a distance, like underachievers with two chairs pulled out and placed in a corner of the classroom. This kind of special treatment sometimes makes me think that the so-called flat management is just a kind of unspoken fig leaf. Even the newly recruited children know that the person in charge alone is the person in charge. What else is this flat? What’s the meaning?
Yes, like some big factories, we do not display ranks internally. Although I think this sometimes brings a lot of negative effects to the department responsible for docking with third parties, the immediate boss seems very proud.
—The boss and I come from this negatively affected department, and our reporting object happens to be the big boss.
In my opinion, asking someone from the consulting company to stir up the muddy water is not necessarily a bad thing.
Although it is a new company established less than ten years ago, the group we backed by can be described as a super giant in Southeast Asia. With the dual blessing of opportunity and capital, our company, which first entered this field for the past two years, has squeezed its competitors. , The limelight is no different for a while. This gave the Internet giants of the domestic counterparts a good advantage. After being acquired by the giant next door, they soon had a large amount of resources to engage in traffic wars. During peak periods, colleagues sneakily asked for leave to go to the next door for interviews almost every week. Of course, some models cannot be copied. In the whole year of last year, our company’s stock even went up 40% against the wind, which can be regarded as employee benefits.
The big boss likes to say that this is our ‘system victory”; what I see is the increasingly sharp factional conflicts in the past few years after selling to the group.
I just don’t know if these people from the consulting company are here to be shit-scrapers, or are they really going to pretend to be borrowed murder knives?
It was almost ten o’clock, but I just processed most of the mail in a hurry. I greeted my colleague, put on my cosmetic bag and flashed into the bathroom-this T-shirt is really too big, and I found out that it is an XXL size. I am afraid that only a person of 1.9 meters can wear it. Putting on this T-shirt, I looked like, like—like a large orange shopping bag in the mirror. I can swim in it!
This is obviously the result of Huilin’s best efforts, and I have nothing to complain about. I tucked my dress into my skirt and pulled it out, repeating it several times. In the end, I could only gather the hem to one side and tie a knot.
Wearing a T-shirt like this, I’m a little bit suspicious of pretending to be a young man. At today’s conference, I might be caught by the big boss to discuss affairs. With this in mind, I spent too much time organizing my clothes. When the makeup comes out hastily, only the old yellow is left outside.
This old man was obviously waiting for me on purpose.
The venue was on the fifteenth floor. Most people didn’t wait for the elevator. They all passed by the stairs. Of course, we were no exception. While going downstairs, I listened to Lao Huang digging a hole for me: his eyes were absent-mindedly peeking at the entrances and exits of the floors, which were directly opposite the meeting rooms on each floor. As mentioned before, most of our company’s meeting rooms have glass exterior walls. Although no sound is heard, it’s a good habit to see who is having a meeting with whom.
When he reached the sixteenth floor, Lao Huang suddenly made a sound similar to a tricky success. I heard the very dramatic “Aha!” echoing in the empty corridor, and I didn’t even bother to lift my eyelids, just by the way, I looked out the window of the entrance and exit.
There were indeed people in the farthest conference room on the 16th floor. Two men in suits were sitting with their backs facing the stairs, with figures leaning against the window.
“I’ll just say that there was a movement today. Didn’t you just consult before? How about it, look at someone like BCG?” Lao Huang rarely showed a little complacency.
After two layers of glass, the clothes of the two men in suits are blurred and colored, and the texture is hard to talk about, but their fashionable hairstyles and dresses that are incompatible with orange shopping bags do not look like people in our company. The person in front of the floor-to-ceiling window was holding a coffee cup in his hand, just looking out the window, not knowing whether the reports had passed into her ears. She was a tall woman, wearing charcoal grey wide-leg trousers, with her long hair draped, as if on vacation.
She doesn’t look like an orange shopping bag at all—to be precise, she is wearing a linen shirt.
“That’s Sonia Pande.” Old Huang said.