Chapter 14 — The Bed of Your Own Choosing

"If you hadn't changed rooms that year, we would have been very close." He said. I smiled: "We know each other now." "Familiar and close are not the same." He leaned against the door frame, rarely not laughing. "Nianchu looked for you, right?" "Yes." "You don't agree." "Yes." Gu Cheng bowed his head and kicked the door step: "Before, I thought you were narrow-minded. Then I realized you just don't give others a chance to owe you." I did not pursue the thought. He raised his head: "Let's meet in Hangzhou." "Graduation doesn't mean you have to run away." "I know." What really needed to be left is not a city, nor a person. It's a position that I've always relied on to carry first and take precautions in exchange for a sense of security. It's just this that I really learned after coming to Hangzhou.

My first job in Hangzhou was at an e-commerce company that was just three years old. The office was in an old building whose elevator shuddered whenever the doors closed. The boss said every day that the company would go public the following year, the finance department reminded everyone every month that refunds would be a few days late. I worked in operations for a base salary of 3,200 yuan. Based on my understanding of the development of e-commerce in my previous life, I avoided some industries that were bound to lose money, and also grasped two waves of platform activity. Half a year later, I was promoted to team leader. My colleagues complimented me on having good eyesight, only I knew that this was not a genius, but that I had lived one more time. But the future did not follow my memories perfectly. There are products that were booming in the past but died prematurely, and there are brands I've never heard of that suddenly pop up. Gu Cheng's company, which would have gone bankrupt two years later, received investment capital again in this life. I quickly realized that being reincarnated didn't mean I had the answer ready, I just looked at the wrong deck of cards more than anyone else. After graduating, Han Dongming also went to Hangzhou to work as a sales staff for a logistics company. We rented a two-bedroom apartment together, he cooked, I washed the dishes. Whoever got home first was responsible for booking a hotel for the other person.
When you return home, that person is responsible for renting a hotel for the other person. But in two years, this rule was only followed once, and that was when his cousin came to stay. The first time Meng Lan appeared in Hangzhou was for an industry interview. She quit the newspaper and joined a financial newspaper. Her short hair had grown a little longer, but she still spoke frankly. After the interview, she invited me to eat noodles. "I heard that Manager Zhou has been very good recently." "Where did the news come from?" "Han Dongming. He said that now you can scold others for crying in meetings." "How impressive. I only ever scolded Han Dongming." "He really cries easily. He cries when he drinks too much and even sings the song "Cha." We talked until very late. She said she was tired from work, traveled a lot, edited an article ten times, and in the end the editor still changed the headline at the last minute. But she liked the current state, at least what she wrote had people reading it. I asked her how she felt. "No. How about you?" "Not at all." "Still waiting for Shen Nianchu to make a mistake?" I smiled bitterly: "Before graduating, she scolded me to wake up.
Already." Meng Lan looked at me and didn't mention it again. A month later, the company hired content operations staff. I passed the position information to her, only saying the salary was higher than the media side. She came for an interview, the boss was very satisfied, and on the spot offered me a salary five hundred yuan higher than mine. On the first day of work, I placed a stack of documents on her desk: "This is the brand background, let's get acquainted first." Meng Lan flipped two pages: "Manager Zhou, I'm sitting across from you. Are you considered a senior or a former classmate?" "Working hours are superiors and subordinates." "What about after work?" "Let's see if you invite me to dinner." She laughed. We really came together after a failed project. Based on my past life experience, I persevered in launching a smart home appliance. Meng Lan surveyed users, felt the market was not yet ripe, and suggested reducing inventory. I didn't listen, I felt like I had seen this type of product explode later. As a result, the return rate of the first batch exceeded twenty percent, and the company had nearly one million yuan's worth of inventory. The boss slammed the table in the meeting, and I took the main responsibility. That night, I stayed in the office to work out a solution. Meng Lan placed a box of fried rice next to the keyboard. "Eat first." "It has no taste." "This sentence is a bit familiar. Do you men only have two types of taste, one is normal, one is when you make a mistake and end up on a hunger strike?" I raised my head: "You can say you reminded me before." "Indeed I did." "After that?" "After that, we have to deal with it. Scold at you, you're dead, you're out of stock." The stock was not going to walk away either." She helped me contact the media for evaluation, repositioned the product, and proposed separating the product sets to reduce each order's value. We were busy for more than two months, eventually recovering most of the costs. On the day of the celebration, the boss drank a lot and said Meng Lan was a great partner. She immediately put down her wine glass: "I'm in charge of content. I'm not here to fill a vacant position for Manager Zhou." There was silence at the table for a moment. The boss smiled awkwardly: "Just kidding."