In the summer of 2000, I went to work as a supervisor accountant in a factory in the northern suburbs of the city. The factory was far away, located at the foot of a mountain and next to a canal, but it had no aura of beautiful scenery. I only felt that everything was dirty and messy. The trees on the mountain and on the roadside were dirty.
There was a layer of dust on the canal, and an old cement boat loaded with yellow sand was slowly driving in the dark green water of the canal.
The factory is a gas factory that produces oxygen, nitrogen, and acetylene. It has been under poor management for a long time and is on the verge of bankruptcy. Even after the tree fell, some ambitious young people in the factory colluded with wealthy owners from outside to contract the factory. However, the original factory headquarters
The company has not been disbanded, and all important functional departments are in place, including the factory office, party branch, trade union, women's federation, family planning committee, youth league committee, security department, finance department, etc. It is located in the newest building in the factory, just like Emperor Puyi's
Forbidden City.
I was employed by a contractor and worked in a dilapidated small building opposite the old factory headquarters. I dealt with a lot of bad debts all day long and didn't get much done. I just wandered around the factory when I had nothing to do.
There are overgrown grass everywhere in the factory. Most of the workshops and warehouses are hung with rusty locks or twisted wires. The glass on the doors and windows is incomplete, and it is dark inside. Several bungalows with gray bricks and ridged tiles are about to collapse.
There are still production safety slogans written in lime on the crooked walls. Several other workshops are still producing. The tall workshops are also dilapidated. The machines are running fast and the sound is loud, but there are no workers in sight.
In the new company established by the contractor, except for the chairman and me, the rest are all the original employees of the factory. My immediate boss, the financial manager, is the female cadre who was engaged in family planning in the factory, and her husband is the current general manager of the company.
, the youngest and most promising deputy section chief in the factory. There was also a management director, who was also a highly respected engineer in the factory. Everyone looked very smug all day long, and they frequently held meetings, bringing together the salesmen from the supply and marketing department and several
I am a workshop director and discuss world affairs.
My daily life is the same. I get up at around 7 in the morning, try to get to the factory before 8:30, get off the car at the gate of the factory, show respect to the few shirtless men in the guard room, and then park the car in a small
In the yard, I checked to see if the manager's Honda 125 road racing car and the financial manager's Golden Bird 5o moped were there. If they were there, it meant I was late. I flew upstairs, entered the office, turned on the ceiling fan, which only had one degree, and swept the floor randomly.
, sprinkle some water, and after cleaning, you can sit in my seat and wait for everyone's announcement. Usually the first one to come is the management director Zhang Gong. He always throws today's newspaper into the office as soon as he enters the office.
On my desk, he started sorting out his endless old information, or drawing some diagrams with a ruler. I guess he was drawing a management tree or something. After reading the newspaper, everyone was there.
, the day's work officially begins.
In fact, my work is very idle. The company's business license has not yet been obtained, so I don't need to make reports. I just make some documents into vouchers. The costs cannot be calculated for the time being, and a warehouse management system has not been established yet.
When I have nothing to do, I run around, go to the toilet again and again, and hunt for treasures in the closed workshop. Above our office is the library of the former factory. I searched in it and found a batch of chemical magazines from the 1980s, and even found some
I received the graduation certificate of our general manager from Nanjing Chemistry School in 1988. It rains a lot in summer. Sometimes heavy rains come and I can’t go anywhere. I stand in front of the window and watch the rain. I watch bursts of pouring rain pouring on the open space, and then follow the rain.
The drainage ditch flows out of the door, and the moist cool breeze blows into the window. At this time, I always like to imagine that I am a state-owned enterprise director facing the tide of reform in the 1980s, unmoved in the face of the wind and rain that symbolizes resistance to reform.
The whole morning was so boring. The only interesting thing was during lunch time, when all the cadres and masses in the factory gathered together and could see all kinds of people in the factory. Speaking of eating, it is necessary to introduce the canteen first:
The cafeteria and the auditorium are connected together. It is a very tall building. The outside is overgrown with weeds as usual, and the lush fig trees are full of fruits. The inside maintains the original style of the 1980s, and everything is dark.
In the center of the canteen, there is a huge dining table made of thick wood. It is no longer very flat. There are some random benches and chairs scattered around it. Deeper is the stove, with three coal-burning stoves, one of which
There is a white chicken boiling in the pot on the stove. It is used to add a little chicken cooking water to enhance the flavor of the vegetables when cooking. There is an exhaust fan about two meters high on the wall next to the stove, which is dark.
The fan leaves are hung with old dirt, no matter how fast the fan blows, they will not fall off. On the other side of the stove is a large case with many dishes waiting to be fried. These dishes are always the same: cooking.
It's duck blood tofu, green vegetable belly, stir-fried vegetables are bracts, shredded pork, stir-fried gluten, stir-fried cauliflower, green beans and potato slices, stir-fried chicken. The vegetables are all soaked in water, so they'll be cooked right after you put them in the pot, especially the ones on the plate.
The chicken pieces were obviously swollen with water. I suspected that they were the meat from the chicken used to make the soup. The rice included rice and steamed buns. The rice was served in a large porcelain bowl in advance and placed on the table for everyone to take.
, the steamed buns were placed in a foam cake box, covered with a black cotton pad to keep them warm. Under the wall on the other side of the case, there was an old domestic refrigerator with mottled green paint. It could no longer be used, but there were still a lot of them.
Beer is used as a kitchen cabinet. There are three people in the cafeteria, a senior chef and a young man and woman. The senior chef is in his fifties. He is wearing a short-sleeved top, suit shorts, and a pair of green liberation shoes. He is clean and tidy. The young man also has
The man is in his thirties, with a BP machine in a leather case hanging from his waist. The young woman is wearing artificial cotton clothes and pants, with thick eyebrows. She is responsible for serving dishes and cleaning up. They don’t talk much, and their work coordination depends on
tacit agreement.
Lunch time is between 11:30 and 12:00. If you go early, you can grab a bowl of rice and the vegetables can be cooked earlier. If you go later, there will already be a queue in front of the stove.
Waiting for the cooks. As usual, the workers are the first to arrive. They wear dirty work clothes or bare their chests and backs, squatting or sitting around the dining table. Everyone orders a dish and eats it together.
I ate alone. What impressed me most was a fat worker with a canvas military belt around his waist. He had a thick head and was black and white. He walked to the table where the vegetables were placed, thought for a moment, and mumbled something.
...I'm tired from work today...let me fry some chicken. So all the workers around looked at him with admiration as he picked up the plate of swollen chicken and put it among the plates waiting to be fried. Most people don't have the luxury.
To the point where I insist on eating the three-yuan fried chicken with beans. However, you have to drink beer in summer. The master has already chilled some beer with cold water for those generous drinkers to enjoy. The work clothes of the female workers are relatively clean.
Most of them were in their 30s or 40s, and no one was remotely attractive. The male and female workers sat around, making non-vegetarian jokes to each other while eating. While the workers were eating, a group of people from the factory also
When they arrived, men and women, neatly dressed, all carried large teapots and rice boxes with printed words. Basically they only fried one dish, poured it into the rice box, took one or two steamed buns, and went back to their offices to eat slowly. They didn't
We greeted the workers in twos and threes, muttering something together, and left as quickly as we came. Worker Zhang and I went neither early nor late, and there were still a few dishes to eat every time, but we couldn't eat rice.
, stir-fry two dishes at will, or stir-fry and grill, but no matter how different they are, they are always the same dishes. There is not much oil, and there is not even the green and red peppers that Xuzhou people are used to, but they are not stingy with soy sauce and salt.
I also ate that famous dish, stir-fried chicken with beans. The pitiful pieces of meat made me realize what the meaning of tasteless meat was. The beans and potato slices were also numb, and there was only astringent feeling in my mouth. In comparison, I
I prefer to eat green vegetables from the belly of green vegetables. Sometimes I ask for vegetable and egg soup. The chef creatively puts a spoonful of vinegar in the soup, which makes it taste weird, but comrades other than me still like to drink it.
The last person to appear is the company leader. The leader takes time out of his busy schedule to come and have a meal in person. In order to show his different status, he often does not eat in the hall, but in the chef’s room at the back, where cooking and soup are all available.
Sometimes when there is not enough food, the manager will think deeply and order some scrambled eggs. The strangest thing is that the director of the factory never eats in the cafeteria. Whenever it is meal time, the director gets in his Jeep and goes to who knows where.
And the factory director never showed his face in front of the workers. He always maintained a sense of mystery. What I still can't figure out is why a factory director who is going bankrupt and most of the workers are laid off can be so airy.
After dinner, I would walk around the auditorium. The chairs had been removed and the auditorium had become a warehouse. Only the sheets of paper for the staff calligraphy competition posted on the wall were interesting. There was a huge picture on the wall behind the auditorium.
The mural "The Great Wall" shows the momentum of the factory when it was most prosperous. It was hot and boring at noon, and there was almost no nap time. Not even half an hour after lying on the desk, it was already time to go to work in the afternoon, at one o'clock.
I have nothing to do in the afternoon. Sometimes I receive a transfer check for purchases, and I get excited because I can go to the bank to send the check. Since the journey is far away, I don’t have to go back to the factory. I can take the opportunity to go to the city.
Take a walk. If you don’t have a check, you have to wait for work. If you have a meeting, you can’t leave. You have to take notes. I get off work at about four o’clock. That’s the happiest time of the day. I ride on the bike without even thinking about it.
Those who met just left.
This is how I live my daily life. I always feel like I am transported through the time tunnel to 1985 every morning, and then back to 2000 in the afternoon. Workers and cadres are all following the same lifestyle for decades. The most painful thing is the manager.
I was asked to be on duty on Saturday. I only had time to read, drink water, and go to the toilet. I didn't dare to go far because I had to answer the phone. I had to be on duty even during the National Day holiday. There were only a few people in the huge factory, and it was drizzling. I was alone.
Sitting in the duty room, I was bored to the extreme. The canteen was closed at noon, so I could only eat at small restaurants outside. The quality of the food was even worse than in the canteen, but what could I do? It would take me 20 years to ride a bicycle to find a store.
minute.
Fortunately, at the beginning of November, I left the factory and went to work in the most luxurious office building in the center of the city.