Zhou Xiaowen said with a face full of happy smiles, “Hehe, no problem, Boss. You’re generous. With the salary you’re offering me, I could work for you for the rest of my life!
To be honest, I used to work on an Assembly Line. I worked more than ten hours every day and was exhausted. Sometimes, I couldn’t even earn one thousand five hundred yuan. On top of that, I was basically a Labor dispatch worker and didn’t have the Five social insurances and one housing fund.”
Labor dispatch only became official under the law in 2008, but it had already appeared in the 1990s. After China joined the WTO, foreign trade Business exploded, and Labor dispatch began to spread widely.
Twenty Years Later, many people fiercely criticized Labor dispatch and argued that it should be abolished. However, they viewed the issue only from the workers’ perspective, disregarding whether enterprises could survive.
Labor dispatch exists because factory orders are unstable, especially foreign trade orders.
When business was booming, a factory might need ten thousand workers. When orders slowed, one or two thousand might be enough. If the factory had to support all ten thousand workers and provide the Five social insurances and one housing fund, even selling the Boss’s underwear would not be enough.
Most workers also liked Labor dispatch jobs. Those who disliked them were generally people who did not work in factories or were temporarily between factory jobs.
One reason was that although this work was time-sensitive and urgent, it paid well per task, so workers earned more. Another was that Labor dispatch workers received severance pay after their contracts ended.
Many people might curse Labor dispatch after receiving their severance pay. But if they could choose again, actual wage workers would still choose Labor dispatch jobs.
Most people take the short view and prefer immediate cash over future benefits. If Labor dispatch were forcibly abolished, many people would curse the decision too.
When Xu Honglei heard Zhou Xiaowen say she could work for him for the rest of her life, he chimed in with a hearty laugh. “Work for the rest of your life? Of course, no problem! You’re welcome to work for me for the rest of your life!”
After celebrating, Zhou Xiaowen asked bashfully and tentatively, “Boss, can I live at the shop?”
“Huh?! How could you live at the shop?” Xu Honglei was a little stunned.
Zhou Xiaowen pointed to an empty area in the internet café. “I noticed there are still some empty spots in the shop. Can I lay out a bedroll and sleep here?”
Xu Honglei hurriedly shook his head. “Absolutely not. It would damage the image of our Internet Café, and I’d definitely be fined if inspectors came.”
Zhou Xiaowen said with a bitter expression, “boss, I’m out of money. I heard that rent is cheap here, but even so, it’s still too expensive for me. I can’t afford it. Could you help me find somewhere to live?”
She wiped the sweat from her forehead and nervously rubbed the corner of her clothes, looking desperate and at a loss.
Seeing her like this, Xu Honglei remembered the loneliness, drifting, misery, and despair he had experienced in his previous life as a drudge wage worker, and he could not help sighing.
Being a wage worker was not easy!
After thinking it over, he said helplessly, “I’ve only just begun my Entrepreneurship, and this Internet Café has only just opened. If you don’t mind, why don’t you Settle In at my house first?
My home isn’t large. It only has two old house rooms, including a small half-room bedroom. I used to live in that bedroom, but now I’m the only one left in the family, so it’s empty.
This is the only arrangement for now. If it feels inconvenient, find your friends or a Fellow Villager, or figure out some other way to make do. In any case, no one can live in the Internet Café!”
Zhou Xiaowen nodded repeatedly. “It’s convenient, it’s convenient. There’s nothing inconvenient about it. I’ll be satisfied just to have somewhere to live. I’ll stay at your place.”
Xu Honglei suppressed the wild joy in his heart and nodded. “All right. In a little while, I’ll make a copy of your Identity card, then take you to my house.
There’s a public restroom at my place. You can take a shower there first.
As for this job, I don’t have strict requirements for your clothing, but you must keep yourself neat and clean. There’s normally only one person in the shop, so your appearance as a Cashier also represents the image of our Internet Café.”
Zhou Xiaowen said, embarrassed, “Boss, I’m sorry. The weather is too hot. After moving out of the factory dormitory, I had nowhere to stay, so I had to carry my luggage around while looking for work.
Fortunately, Boss, you took me in. If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have known what to do!”
Xu Honglei asked curiously, “Didn’t you have a job before? Didn’t you save any money? How did things become so difficult for you?”
“Sigh, don’t ask. My family urgently needed money, so I panicked and sent all the money I had back home. Then I offended the factory’s Production Supervisor, and he fired me!”
Xu Honglei first went to a nearby copy shop and made a copy of Zhou Xiaowen’s identity card. Then he took her home, helped her settle in, and gave her a key to the house.
Before leaving, Xu Honglei pointed at the air conditioner remote on the bedside table.
“There’s an Air Conditioner in my room. If you’re hot, you can turn it on and cool off there for a while. However, wait until your hair is dry before using it, or you could catch a cold.
Catching a cold in this midsummer weather won’t be easy to recover from, and it’ll end up troubling me too. Understand?”
“Understood. Thank you, boss!”
Zhou Xiaowen went to take a shower, while Xu Honglei returned to the Internet Café and continued overseeing the installation of the computer system and software, as well as Local area network debugging.
The Internet Café had not opened today and would officially open tomorrow, so Zhou Xiaowen had no reason to come in yet. It was better to let her rest for half a day and start work tomorrow.
A boss who treated his employees better would earn greater employee loyalty. Everyone struggled to get by, so there was no need to make things difficult for them.
Xu Honglei could mobilize a maximum of two hundred and fifty thousand yuan.
Even four months of Rent would cost more than fifty thousand yuan. After paying the registration fees for the Internet Café’s various Licenses, Broadband Fees, a Floor-Standing Air Conditioner, a Freezer, a Bar Counter, and other expenses, he could afford only forty computers.
He could do that only because he had bought the Floor-Standing Air Conditioner through installment payments. If he had paid in full, he would have had to cut the number of computers even further.
Of these expenses, the Internet Culture business license alone cost Xu Honglei twenty thousand yuan. No one had cheated him; the license had become much more difficult to obtain.
A few years later, obtaining this license would be impossible. He would have to spend hundreds of thousands, or even more than a million yuan, to acquire it through a Transfer for sale from another operator.
Obtaining it now for twenty thousand yuan was not expensive at all.
Actually, the place he rented could hold roughly eighty computers. Unfortunately, his available funds were insufficient. Xu Honglei’s plan was to open the internet café first, then gradually add more computers with the money he earned.