Chapter 82: Gossip (2)

“Hi, I am Shu Yan and you are Huaxiu? Come and have a seat over here.” Shu Yan looked Zhang Huaxiu up and down. Sure enough, she was everything that Wu Xiuyue had said about her. She was quite pretty with light-skin, thick brows, and big eyes. Her height was about 1.65 ~ 1.67 meter. She’d make a good model for the clothes. “Your sister-in-law mentioned that you work at a country-owned factory. That’s like an iron rice bowl job.  Sure you won’t regret just resigning like this?”

Zhang Huaxiu smiled bitterly. Everybody said how great an iron rice bowl job was, but looking at the current situation of the factory, could that really still be called an iron rice bowl job?

“Truth be told, the factory hadn’t paid us a salary for six months already. There’s no guarantee that it’d stay open for much longer. I figured it probably best if I take what I can get and resign now. It’s better to have the money in hand.” Zhang Huaxiu was open and honest about her situation. 

Shu Yan hadn’t expected Wu Xiuyue’s sister-in-law to be such a resolute person. ’92 was the time when most left their factory jobs. It was best to get out early. Shu Yan stopped trying to talk her out of it. 

“Your physical appearance is not a problem at all, but my work here won’t start till a month from now. Plus, you will need to sell and there will be a sales goal. It might be more stressful than working in the factory. Are you sure you are okay with that?”

Many feel that all a sales person needed to do was to make money by talking and was much cozier than working at a factory. In truth, it was a different kind of tiring. From a certain perspective, one could say that being a sales person was more stressful than working in a factory.

“I can handle stress.” Thinking about all the pressure for her to get married over the years, if she could handle that, what else couldn’t she handle?

“Hours are 8:30 AM to 9 PM. We provide food but not boarding. Salary is made up of base pay plus commission. Base pay is set at $200 plus 1% of sales. The more you sell, the more you make. If you are okay with the terms and conditions, I will count you in.” Shu Yan told her the working hours and terms and conditions and just waited to hear her answer.

Two hundred dollars plus 1% commission. In the event that she didn’t sell anything at all, she would just be making $200 a month. Zhang Huaxiu hesitated for a little bit before she said, “Okay, no problem. Do I start a month from now?”

“If you don’t mind the job being difficult, you can start as soon as you want. You know that I have two kids. If you can start, I’ll have to oversee the progress of the remodeling. Possibly, I will be needing your help to grab a few things from the renovation shops. Once the remodeling is done, you will have to do inventory and put everything on the rack with me. But there’s added benefits to that – managing the inventory with me means you will be familiar with all our products and their pricing. You will ramp up a lot faster. We won’t be selling anything this month, so there will be no commission. I will just pay you $500 for the month. Once we are open for business, we will move to our agreed upon wages.” 

Shu Yan needed to drop her kids off and pick them up in the mornings and evenings and to look for bringing in merchandise on top of that. If Zhang Huaxiu could come and help out, it would free her up some. Overseeing the construction project might not sound like a lot of work, but there was a lot to take care of. Toward the end, she’d also need to clean up, categorize, stock, etc. Might as well pay her a higher amount to make up for that.

$500? Zhang Huaxiu didn’t expect Shu Yan to offer her such a high amount. Did Shu Yan think that she could make even more with commission later on?

“Okay. I don’t mind more work. When the factory was doing well, it wasn’t unusual to pull all nighters all the time. This won’t be a problem at all.” Zhang Huaxiu really didn’t think this was a big deal. She just wanted to make more money right now. She refused to believe that she couldn’t live a good life without getting married.

They chatted for a little longer, and Zhang Huaxiu took off for the day. She needed to go back to the factory to resign. That might take up to a few days. Once she received the approval, she could start right away.

Zhang Huaxiu had grown more comfortably around Shu Yan, and Shu Yan had noticed that Zhang Huaxiu was a very articulate person. Her tone was neither fast nor slow, it was a steady pace and good for a sales person. Maybe with some training she could even become the store manager. This was just her thinking right now. She knew nothing about clothing, and she couldn’t possibly hire another person who was not familiar with the industry to be the store owner. Perhaps, when she opened up more branches one day…

But that was too premature to think about right now. 

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