Kim Jong-do must have swallowed rat poison somewhere. Out of the blue, he announced he was in a good mood and would buy drinks for his hardworking staff. His investments had probably risen. He held the strange superstition that, whenever he received unearned income, spending about one percent on food for others warded off misfortune by scattering his bad luck among them. That, in turn, would bring him more luck and profit.
Song told me about it. He said he felt uneasy every time Kim bought him something from a budget coffee chain. Taecheon had twelve people, including security officer Park Sang-ryong. The managers and above each named their preferred drink. Almost reflexively, I wrote every order on a sticky note. A habit from being Hwapyeong's youngest. Everyone below manager got an Americano. Kim summoned the desperately busy Bae, handed her his card, and told her to fetch the coffees. Twelve drinks seemed too much for her to carry alone, so I volunteered.
“I'll go with her and help carry them.”
I was busy as hell too, but how was she supposed to bring all that back? The instant I spoke, Kim frowned, and Song silently mouthed at me to shut up. At the time, I hadn't yet learned about Bae's courage, so I didn't know what I'd done wrong. I still don't think it was wrong. While we ordered and collected the drinks, she spoke to me.
“How are you finding work, Officer Eun?”
I wanted to say that I'd gone from leaving at seven and enjoying my own life to living in staff housing and finishing at midnight the moment I changed branches. For a second, I considered honestly saying it was awful. Picking up eight drinks first, I answered.
“So-so. How about you, Assistant Manager Bae?”
The first thing Kang Myeong-seong had taught me about working life was never to speak honestly. Bae took the remaining drinks.
“So-so for me too.”
We returned in silence. As I delivered the drinks, Song took his lemon smoothie and whispered that it had been meant to screw Bae over. If I didn't want to be dealt with as part of the same package, I should stop sticking my neck out. For some reason, he liked me. Maybe because I'd asked a customer shouting at him to be polite. He spoke loudly enough to shake the branch.
“Officer Eun has manners. Real manners.”
Did they put something wrong in that smoothie? He's lost it. I set Kim's grain latte and Goldlight Bank credit card on his desk. Sucking at his drink, he spoke.
“True. Not many young people like Officer Eun these days.”
What is this idiotic performance? A rehearsed play?
Something similar happened a few days later. As I returned from the bathroom, the manager handed me a credit card and told me to buy drinks for everyone. Officer Kim Jin-ju had already filled a sticky note with orders. She was one of the new recruits assigned to this hellhole three weeks after Bu and I arrived.
At work, I automatically got an iced Americano. I always had, since joining. If someone else was paying, I chose the cheapest thing. Even otherwise, wanting less sugar left me with an iced Americano or iced latte. Kim ordered twelve drinks. With her here, there should have been thirteen. I asked her about it.
“There are only twelve. Aren't we missing one?”
“No. Twelve is right.”
“That includes mine?”
“......Yes.”
“Could I see the note?”
Managers and above ordered what they wanted. Subtract their drinks, and we were one Americano short. I bought another iced Americano with my own card. These bastards are doing something even primary school kids wouldn't. Even little brats wouldn't stoop to this. Childish. Petty. Kim frowned at me.
“Officer Eun.”
“Yes.”
“Nobody's going to appreciate it.”
“Appreciate what?”
“You bought that for Assistant Manager Bae, didn't you?”
“No. I wanted another myself.”
“Officer Eun. Do you like her?”
Treat someone like a human being, and the company apparently assumes sexual attraction. Bae was the one training Kim, and she said this.
“No. We're not children. Why are they doing something so childish?”
We didn't talk much after that. Back at the branch, everyone from manager upward had gone into Ma's office for a meeting. Kim spoke.
“I'll take these into the office.”
She went in with the manager's card and the drinks. Her loud praise and gratitude carried outside. With the manager caring for and cherishing us like this, how could we not be inspired to work hard? ......Remarkable. I couldn't flatter someone that openly. She was twenty-three and had only just joined, but I thought she'd do very well at the bank.
Delivering the drinks, I placed an iced Americano on Bae's desk where the CCTV would clearly see it. Don't be petty over food and drink. Seriously. Leaving her out makes me feel like a pig.
Usually, CCTV monitors sat near the UPS (uninterruptible power supply) in a storage corner of a branch, awkward even for staff to check. Apparently, the moment Ma arrived, he'd thrown a fit demanding that all the screens be installed in his office. My intake friend Kim Ji-hun messaged that he was notorious for doing this at every branch he went to.
Unfortunately, last year a very inept robber had entered with a sickle, swinging it across the counter and demanding money. Hong had smashed a PIN pad into the robber's eye and forehead, while other staff repeatedly pressed the red buttons beneath their desks. The security company had arrived quickly. It had even made the news, apparently. This was the first I'd heard of it.
Afterward, Ma got his way. The CCTV monitors were moved into his office as a staff safety measure. Their presence there had shocked me most when I first arrived.
He routinely watched us on camera, then called our extensions demanding to know what we were doing or whether we were playing on our phones. Phones, my ass. Sometimes these bullshit calls came while I had a customer in front of me and was working. Even with no customers in the lobby, he'd occasionally call and give us hell for working seated. Don't sit. Stand. He insisted we stand when there was nobody there. I couldn't understand why. Ask whether we really had to stand without customers, and he'd complain about how slack new recruits were and hang up. He couldn't bear the sight of an employee in a chair.
If a customer stayed too long, he called. If they left too quickly, he called. Didn't we want sales? Sometimes, perhaps tired of calling, he used messenger. Fail to reply quickly and thunder descended. Had we sold something to the customer in front of us? Say no, and an angry call followed asking whether we even wanted to work at a bank.
The absurd part was that his CCTV surveillance barely counted as a problem here. The impossible targets were the worst thing about Taecheon. Daily dinners came next.
Having no choice over lunch ranked near the bottom, alongside surveillance. We ate where the supervisors wanted. Asking to eat separately was useless. Mention wanting lunch alone and the conversation went wildly off course. Why alone? Didn't we even want to eat with our colleagues? Why work with people whose faces we couldn't stand over a meal? We could go out to lunch and never come back.
I wanted to get away from the branch staff for at least my lunch break. But both manager and deputy treated eating separately as a great betrayal.
Those on the one-to-two lunch shift with Kim had a seventy-percent chance of going to the pork soup restaurant. Snow, rain, sunshine: pork soup. Did he have a connection with the owner, or had he been a pig in a previous life and felt drawn to his own kind?
Worse, employees who went there with him had a thirty-percent chance of getting alcohol with lunch.
Today, I unknowingly landed in that thirty percent. Drinking at lunch? When he ordered three bottles of soju, I thought I'd misheard. Horrified at this fXcking situation, which I'd never encountered before, I tried to stop him.
“Deputy Branch Manager. We still have afternoon work. What if we make a mistake? Let's have lemon-lime soda.”
“What? Mistakes? ......Officer Eun. There are no mistakes in our work. Everyone repeat. Now!”
His irritated expression hit me like an invisible blade. Would shutting up have been better? The moment he spoke, Gu, Hwang, and everyone senior to me began repeating like robots.
“There are no mistakes in our work!”
“There are no mistakes in our work!”
“There are no mistakes in our work!”
“There are no mistakes in our work.”
“......There are no mistakes in our work.”
After me, Kim muttered as though making excuses.
“I'm not telling you to get blind drunk. Just three glasses each. You can't have soup this good without a drink. Right?”
“Oh, of course. Are three glasses even drinking? Might as well be water. Our people aren't the sort to get drunk on a mere three glasses.”
Yes, we are, you lunatic, Gu. With your rank, you should be stopping him. Gu eagerly agreed and joked along, then gave me a kindly look. Reading it, I gathered it meant Shut your mouth. Kim nodded approvingly.
“Exactly.”
He more or less forced two or three glasses on everyone. Curses rose in my throat. Praising the soup, I quickly refilled his glass every time it emptied, meaning he could drink the damn stuff himself. He must have had more than a bottle alone. I wished someone would spread a rumor about Goldlight staff getting drunk and botching their work, or take a picture with our soju bottles in the background and post it online.
But our floor-seating table was in the restaurant's innermost room. Kim Jong-do, you bastard. Meticulous only about this sort of thing. Hoping to dilute the alcohol, I said the soup was hot and drank a whole jug of water myself. At a bank, you were responsible for your own mistakes. I had no intention of generating a reversal slip or getting my cash wrong.