When Qin Zhiwei walked into the factory the next day and saw piece after piece of lingerie and swimwear hanging along the production line, he very nearly had a nosebleed.
Seeing him standing there as if he couldn’t move his feet, Xu Ye immediately jabbed a knee into his backside and swore at him. “I’m warning you. Don’t embarrass your old man.”
Only then did Qin Zhiwei give a sheepish laugh and say twice in a lowered voice, “I won’t, I won’t.”
Xu Ye took him to meet the person in charge of the warehouse first, and once Qin Zhiwei’s duties were settled he left him in the warehouse and went off around the factory on his own.
Xu Ye’s memory was quite good. He could already put names to all the people Pei Youwei had introduced him to the day before.
Factory Manager Cao Bin, for one.
The two workshop supervisors, Tan Peng and Wang Wei, for another.
And Taobao operations Zhang Pingping, customer service head Jiang Xi, and warehouse keeper Shen Mengmeng.
Apart from the factory manager and the two workshop supervisors, all the other employees were women — the younger ones around twenty-seven or twenty-eight, the older ones close to fifty, but nearly all of them married.
Xu Ye worked his way down from the second floor to the first, and once he reached the workshop it took him only two or three sentences to have a whole group of women laughing out loud.
Making women happy had become a talent Xu Ye came equipped with after being reborn.
After a few off-color jokes, Xu Ye changed the subject and asked, testing the water, “I looked at your pay slips for last month. Some of you are on seven thousand a month now?”
Seven thousand a month, in a fourth-tier city like Jiangzhou, already counted as very high.
An ordinary university graduate coming out on an internship in those days got three or four thousand a month, and most of them were treated like dogs at the company on top of it.
Somebody answered quickly. “Only Zhou-jie and Wang-jie get seven thousand a month. They’re quick with their hands — the same amount of work takes us a day and they can finish it in half.”
“Zhou-jie and Wang-jie have both been tailoring for nearly twenty years. We’re nowhere near them.”
“Then you’ll have to work at it. The factory is only going to get busier.”
“…”
Cao Bin, over at the cutting table discussing something with the master cutter, watched Xu Ye talking away happily with a group of workers — and for some reason a faint unease came up in him.
Before this, the boss had rarely asked about anything downstairs; matters large and small had all been his own responsibility. But this new little boss — how was he already talking to the staff downstairs on his second day? Was he going to start putting his hands into things down here?
What Xu Ye had in mind, of course, Cao Bin couldn’t guess.
When Pei Youwei got to the factory and saw Xu Ye standing over by the workshop, deep in conversation with a group of workers all older than he was, she was a little taken aback as well. She thought it was a good thing, though. As the boss she already had a great deal to manage and no time at all to talk to the workers downstairs; Xu Ye doing it in her place set her mind very much at rest.
Xu Ye had only just sat down back in the office when Zhang Xiaonuan brought over a cup of tea.
He reached out and took it, smiling. “Xiaonuan-jie, why so formal?”
Zhang Xiaonuan smiled back. “I’m only the little assistant now and you’re the little boss. It’s what I should be doing.”
“Ha. I’m not used to drinking tea. Next time just pour me a cup of plain hot water.” Once he had said it he added quickly, “Oh, and Xiaonuan-jie — this afternoon I want you to buy a cup of lemon water for every worker in the factory. Remember to tell them it’s on me.”
“You got it.”
Zhang Xiaonuan’s office was next door as well. Once she had agreed she went off in small quick steps.
Pei Youwei was holding a black coffee. She took a light sip and asked, “Are you trying to win the production workers over?”
“Winning over isn’t quite the word. Being good to middle management is worth less than being good to the people at the bottom directly. The reason Factory Manager Cao dares to come to you again and again demanding a raise is that he’s betting you need him to keep the cutting table and the sewing workshop downstairs running properly. I’ve already worked out how to deal with it.”
“How?”
Xu Ye deliberately kept her in suspense. “Don’t worry about the details. First put out a notice and have somebody post it at the factory entrance. Give me an official position, so that everyone here knows I’m the number two. Otherwise there are things I can’t say and things I can’t do.”
Pei Youwei nodded. “Fine. I’ll write it right away.”
“Oh, that reminds me. I’ve taken all my money out of the market, and I’ve already opened an investment company in Shanghai. I’ll speak to them later and we’ll get the investment contract signed. This summer I’m going to try to raise our brand’s profile, and if the money isn’t enough I’ll put more in on top of the five hundred thousand.”
“An investment company?”
Pei Youwei’s brows drew together, and she pressed on, very curious. “Doesn’t an investment company take a lot of money? Where did you get that much money?”
“The stock market. I had over thirteen million when I pulled it out.”
“How much!”
Pei Youwei got straight up out of her seat, her eyes filled with disbelief.
Xu Ye said it lightly. “Thirteen million or so, Boss. Why are you carrying on like you’ve never seen anything of the world? What’s there to get so excited about?”
“You — you — you! How could you have that much money?”
“I was running leverage on the stocks, and it happened to be a bull run all this while, so I made a small killing.”
“Over ten million, and you call that a small killing?”
Xu Ye laughed. “Keep at it, Boss. One of these days you’ll be making a small killing just like me.”
Pei Youwei rolled her eyes and could only feel that, set against Xu Ye, her own life had been a complete failure.
If time had run back to this point last year, how would she ever have believed that in one year Xu Ye would go from a poor boy with nothing to a multi-millionaire?
At lunchtime a notice went up at the factory entrance.
There was very little to it. The gist was that from today Xu Ye would serve as general manager of the Youwei company, responsible for handling all the company’s and the factory’s affairs.
The notice had very little to do with the ordinary workers. Most people gave it a glance and went back to work.
Once Xu Ye had a position with something behind it, he became more active around the factory, going off every so often to walk around and look at things.
Halfway through the afternoon Xu Ye even wandered into the warehouse where Qin Zhiwei was working. All the company’s stock was piled on the racks in there, and Qin Zhiwei’s job was to take the order details, find the corresponding style of lingerie or swimwear, and pack it for shipping.
Xu Ye had assumed Qin Zhiwei wouldn’t last at work this dull. He hadn’t expected that when he arrived he would catch sight of Qin Zhiwei packing away quite cheerfully, humming a tune, the very picture of a man at his ease.
Xu Ye crept up on him and gave him a slap on the backside, laughing. “Zhiwei. How’s the job?”
“It’s pretty good.” Qin Zhiwei laughed. “It just took a bit of getting used to at the start.”
“Getting used to?”
Qin Zhiwei lowered his voice. “It’s easy to get distracted. But you can’t blame me for that. Whose fault is it that you designed the clothes this filthy? Look at this bodysuit — there’s actually a zip down the bottom of it. Don’t tell me that isn’t your masterpiece.”
“That’s art. What the hell do you know.”
“Yes, yes, yes, you understand art so well.”
“I’ve got a job for you.”
“What job?”
“Pack a few swimsuits and send them to Red Leaf Estate. Just put ‘Qingqing’ down as the recipient.”
Qin Zhiwei scratched his head. “Don’t you go over to your girlfriend’s all the time? Just take them to her yourself.”
Xu Ye rolled his eyes. “I’d have the nerve to hand them over. Would she have the nerve to take them?”
“Christ. You really do know how to play it.”
Qin Zhiwei stuck his thumb up. “So which styles do I pick?”
“Never mind. I’ll pick them myself.”
(End of Chapter 255)