09/13/24 - Use your knowledge of geography to explain why Ding Zhen is so hot.
A compilation of how stingy companies can get:
“Newly founded company is welcoming everyone and held an office party. They ordered two shitty pizzas for 10 people and nobody got full. When we got hired, we were promised afternoon snacks and it never showed up. One day, they finally announced there was going to be afternoon snacks, and it ended up being a single bowl of yogurt fruit for 10 people. It was put on the desk in the middle and nobody wanted to take any.”
“We can only get one pen at a time. If you’re late, you get fined 20 RMB, but the fine goes on for three months in a row. If you go above your KPI, there’s no rewards, but if you fall short, you get fined out the ass. Have to pay the union every month, but they only gave me a 200 gift card for my birthday. Only get 20 RMB travel expenses when on a business trip, and only cover up to 20 RMB in food expenses. Now, look at my IP.” [IP is in Shanghai]
“I gotta mention my company here. If you don’t repost company social media posts, you get fined 10 RMB. Tardiness is a 50 RMB fine. Not wearing hair clips or having a name tag or wearing uniform is a 50 RMB fine. No Tiaoxiu [where you work extra days on the weekends so you can put your weekend days together to form a holiday]. And you have to scan the QR code to pay right then and there.”
“Speaking of mooncake, I’m telling you, this one is a doozy. Our boss gave everyone a single piece of mooncake. Literally one piece. And we weren’t allowed to post about it on social media. I would just be embarrassed posting about something like that. It’s so stingy.”
“I’ve worked at a company where clock in time was 9AM, but the morning meeting starts at 8:55, and you get fined if you’re late. At the interview, they said clock off is a 6PM, but actually, you’re required to work until 7. If there happens to be training classes, it’s normal to stay at work until 8-9PM. Of course, they don’t make any time for dinner, and you’re not allowed to eat breakfast at your desk either. Our boss is constantly patrolling the office, spying on people. You have to leave your phone in a designated area. You have a work phone but you’re not allowed to lower your head—you have to keep your head up, looking at the computer at all times. Working there was literally like being in prison. All our new hires left. I have no idea how the old employees stay on.”
“There’s only one water dispenser in the company, and they endlessly reuse the same bottle. Every time it runs out, they get more water from the bathroom sink. To save on money, they installed a water filter, and just put filtered tap water in the water dispenser for us to drink.”
“We had a workplace raffle and I ended up getting “a big box of snacks”. Just as I was getting excited, they brought out a box not much bigger than what phones come in, with “a big box” written on top, and three crackers inside. They asked me if I was happy and I almost burst out into tears. That was the first time I knew what embarrassment felt like. I went completely red in the face. I have no idea how I managed to keep smiling.”
“Went on company bonding trip with the boss, 10 people total, and we had to split the bill, 100 RMB per person, to buy ingredients to barbecue ourselves. Over half the food was left over, and the boss took it all home with himself to eat with his friends.”
“The worst companies are the ones who fine you. I had just started my internship as a lecture advisor [basically people who try to sell tutoring classes]. It’s a national chain, and every time, I have to sell experience tickets to students and parents for 5 RMB per ticket. And we have to buy the tickets from the company at 3 RMB per ticket. And we have to pass out toys to students and parents who show up from our own pocket. They say the toys came from the company, but we’re the ones paying for it. And there’s a system where whoever didn’t sell any tickets today has to buy everyone fruit tomorrow. If students and parents don’t show up on Saturday, we get fined too. The very first month I was there, I got fined 100 RMB. I have to start selling tickets by the daycare at 6:30 AM every morning. Go to the company around 8:30 AM and have to do the money dance there. Then I have to go to the park and the mall. The latest I worked was 11:30 PM, and I’d wrack up 30K steps per day easily. And the worst was, that was when the double reduction policy was out [less tutoring, less homework] and I got yelled at every day by security guards and parents, and they’d call the cops on me. I worked that job for a month and got so stressed out that I ended up with appendicitis, and I only got paid 420 RMB at the end of the day. Fuck, I was worse off than a slave.”
“The computers were second or third hand. If I open up a couple web pages and photoshop at the same time, it gets so laggy it can’t do anything. There’s no trash bags in the trash bins. Employees have to buy their own pens, and the boss sometimes steals our pens. If we have to travel for business, we’re only allowed to ride the bus (and we have to use the boss’s kid’s student card). Get called in for overtime on weekends all the time (for no pay, unless you count a 9.9RMB Luckin’ Coffee that the boss had to switch 4-5 different accounts to use enough coupons to get. The boss went personally to pick it up in the store so he could save on delivery fees). We have to practically freeze to death in the winter before the AC gets turned on, and the very first thing the boss does everyday is mess with the AC settings to save on electricity. It’s like working in an ice cellar. The boss goes to pick up our water bottles from the store himself, and we haul it up the stairs and send the empty bottles back to the store (since delivery costs extra). He only ever gets us dinner on membership days and always gets skewers (however many skewers you eat on membership day, you get that many skewers for free the next time you go, and the boss will take his family there next time).”
“You guys wanna hear something explosive? Our boss has always wanted to hold a company dinner, but we didn’t have the budget for it, so he started coming up with all kinds of ways to fine us money. If someone gets pregnant, he immediately started a betting pool on gender, and if you guess wrong, you have to pay 100 RMB towards the dinner budget. Every time we eat out, he demands we bet on the final price, and if you’re off by more than 100 RMB, you get fined. I think it got changed to fines if you’re off by more than 50 RMB later. Even eating became terrifying. There was tons of others too. Like, what the fuck. I’ve lost hundreds on guessing whether people are having boys or girls cause I got it wrong every time. That’s partially why I quit. I didn’t make that much money to begin with and I kept having to hand it over.”
“Never pay for a house in full!!!
I’m best friends with my high school physics teacher, and I told her that I wanted to use a million to buy a house in full. She immediately told me not to do that, that I should get a mortgage, one with as long of a date as I can, because that’s a part of the government benefits we get. That I should get the biggest piece of bread I can within my abilities.
She told me she was gonna go house-hunting with me on the weekend too. This is her advice, and this is some of my thoughts. I hope people shopping for houses lately can see this. Let’s discuss this together!”
The texts read, “Money depreciates really fast. You can’t think of it like that. The longer of a loan you have, the better. You can buy a bigger place. You can’t just use math when calculating money. So long as you have a stable job, don’t be scared of mortgages. You can rent out whatever you buy, and your tenant will pay your mortgage for you. Since you’re a girl, it’s even more important that you do this.”
Comments say, “Are you okay?? Do you know that mortgages have interest?”
“Where the fuck do you work that you can claim to have a stable job?”
“Do you remember the girl who jumped off a building in China International Capital Corporation? She got a mortgage when the market was doing great and she was making tons of money, and then she got a 40% pay cut and couldn’t keep up with her payments anymore and killed herself…only do things that are within your ability. If you start falling behind on your payments, it’s not like your physics teacher is gonna pay it for you.”
A compilation of the how geography has the most ridiculous questions:
“Use your knowledge of geography to explain why Ding Zhen [Tibetan celebrity] is so hot.”
“Plenty of sun and daylight hours means he has tanned skin.”
“Question: Why are the trees on the two sides of a road different? Answer: Because they’re in different states.”
“Question: What influence did the invention of the compass have on British voyaging? Answer: A big influence. I wrote an entire fucking page and that was the standard answer.”
“I remember this question very clearly. Question: Why do people in Shanbei wear scarves over their heads? My answer: To keep out sand. The actual answer: So they don’t have to wash their hair.”
“I mean, why would you keep sand out of your hair? So you don’t have to wash it, right? So there’s some logic in that.”
“Question: Why do textile factories get built next to steel factories? Answer: Because steel factory workers are mostly men and textile factory workers are mostly women, so it facilitates arranged marriages.”
“And there was a question that asked why a certain region had particularly high quality pork, and the answer turned out to be that the pigs were in a good mood because that place had a lot of beautiful scenery. I filled up the whole answering section with considerations of local climate, diet, and even shipping routes, and just because I didn’t write that reason, I lost two points.”
“I study geography, and I’ve encountered a question asking why bugs in the desert come out in the morning. Multiple choice, A) It’s cooler B) To find food C) Cause it’s fun and D) to go to school. The correct answer was C.”
“I’ll never forget the question, why do Sha’anxi people plant red dates? The answer was, because red is a lucky colour.”
“Why did Emperor Shang of Sui build the Grand Canal? Answer: Because he was a perv and there are lots of hot women in Jiangnan.”
“Question: Birth rates rose in 2024. Why? Answer: Because it’s the year of the dragon and people want dragon babies.”
“Question: Why are car sales lowest in February? Answer: Because there are only 28 days in February.”