Nineteen Painful Portraits of a Young Worker
Zhang Wei is a young worker who has changed 19 jobs in the past six years. He seems to be someone special. He has neither a good income, nor good health, nor close relationships. He is not in good spirits and has a strained relationship with his family.
If you are not in a Zhang Wei type of predicament, we are heartily happy for you. If you sometimes find your job difficult, yourself as a young person lacking in energy, somehow burned out or in despair, which you even take to be the zeitgeist, then Zhang Wei is just ordinary and common. He is like you and me, just to a different degree.
1. Getting Up
“Every morning is going to be a thrilling struggle with the self.”
Where to begin? Any job causes Zhang Wei pain that often begins the moment he wakes up. Why don’t we let him share with us how the pain happens and spreads, and how he finds temporary refuge from it.
“Every morning is going to be a thrilling struggle with the self. My work begins at 10 a.m. sharp, and it takes me at least 50 minutes for the commute. The ideal time to get up is at 8:30 a.m., so that I will have the time to eat breakfast and not rush to the subway station and my company. Of course, this is just an ideal situation.
A typical scenario is that I wake up exhausted from insomnia and dreams, glance at my cell phone listlessly, press the “snooze in 10 minutes” feature, and dream about work or the future in that brief period.
Of course, if it is just 10 minutes, that’d be okay. What’s worse is that there will be another “snooze in 10 minutes” or more up to the “critical point” ——meaning the deadline, when I’ll be late if I don’t get out of bed now. So out of a sudden, I jump out of my bed and into my clothes and struggle to rush out to work with half a dream still in my head.
But that’s not the worst situation. The worst scenario is that I am not able to go to work at all. Negative emotions come like a tidal wave, and fear and dread overcome any reason and my sanity. I bury my head deep under the covers. I am physically unable to move. Even going to the bathroom requires a great deal of determination and courage. I take out my cell phone with a shaking hand, make up an excuse for a leave of absence, then turn off the mobile and Wi-Fi networks, and put the phone away. I close my eyes in pain and try to sleep until the sun shines through the window or even until it sets in the west. I don’t want to eat or get up. I don’t think about anything. I don’t want to do anything. I just want to lie there until the end of the world. “
2. The Bullshit and Deceit in 19 Jobs
Zhang Wei is 30 years old and has just lost his 19th job. His 19 jobs run the gamut from sales, on-ground marketing, customer service, censor, 12345 Hotline operator. The earliest job he had to get up for was at 4 a.m. and the latest at 10 p.m. The job that lasted longest was eight months, the shortest three day. The most he got for a job was 7,000 yuan per month, the least -1000 yuan. He had to open his tax app to recall all the jobs. However, he said that without exception, they were all “bullshit jobs.”
After quitting his 19th job, Zhang Wei wrote:
“As I walked on the street, my heart was filled with two very different feelings: one was the sadness and reluctance of losing my livelihood and the aggrievance toward the status quo; the other was the bright joy of being off the market and not having to think about work as well as the contentment of finally returning to my comfort zone. “
“I wrote down ‘19’ in my cell phone notepad. It represents the 19th job that I have lost. Compared with those who are afraid of quitting their jobs, my strengths are doing interviews and quitting. Only work gives me continuous pain.”
Zhang Wei has worked at a bar, a pastry shop, and a bookstore. When he worked at the bookstore, some customers would naively ask, “Do you read all the time when you have some free time?” He said that there was no free time. A lot of small duties made up a day at the bookstore, but it was never easy. The bookstore had three floors. Every day, he rotated a different floor.
Sometimes, he’s on the third floor to organize books and restock the shelves up and down the ladder. Every other hour, he walked around to put away books that were in the wrong place. Sometimes, he’s on the second floor to simultaneously make coffee and tea, heat up sandwiches, toast fruit waffles, and take out and put away refrigerated mousse cakes. The most difficult was to make layered fruit smoothies. There was juice on the bottom and sparkling water in the middle, which kept bubbling, so with a little tilt, the top layer of slushie would tip over, and he had to redo it.
For customers who placed an order on the third floor, he needed to prepare the order on the first floor and carry a wobbly tray into the elevator. Meanwhile, three or four more orders were waiting for him. Only with proficient skills could one ensure not to be eliminated by the company. He eventually left the job because he had never learned to make designs in coffee.
He never knew when he could get off work at the bar. Some customers kept staying and drinking until three or four in the morning. He must stick around until they left. By that time, he was usually hungry, but all the shops were closed. After a 25-minute walk to his room in a house with no heat or gas, he went to bed with a hungry belly and thick layers of blankets.
He has worked as a creditor and a collection agent. The creditor job was the one that set him back 1,000 yuan. He spent 1,000 yuan buying 1500 “resource” cell phone numbers. Perhaps the call we once hung up after listening to one sentence came from Zhang Wei: “Hello, do you need a cash advance?” 1400 “resource” numbers were hung up on like this. 90 were hung up on after a couple sentences. 10 led to being added on WeChat, among which 7 did not work, 2 did not respond, and the last one said that they would consider, meaning no.
Since the calls did not work, he started to “expand business,” meaning to do on-ground marketing. He spent 40 yuan printing 2000 business cards. Some of them were inserted behind the windshield wipers of the cars parked on the roadside. The business slang for it was “insert cars.” Otherwise, he had to go from shop to shop. His biggest fear was the moment he entered the shop: he never knew what the person in the shop was going to say. There was a kebab shop with “transfer ownership” written on the front door. He went in, and the owner replied in two words: “Get lost!”
“If he was happy and I felt uncomfortable, I could accept that. But both of us felt uncomfortable. Neither of us was wrong. I could not blame it on anybody. I just felt uncomfortable.”
After taking care of an order, everything started from zero again. He’d been on the job for three months but fulfilled not a single order and still had 1500 business cards at home. Before he started, the company said the base salary was 800 yuan per month. Later, he said that since he was still in the probation period and not an official worker yet, he did not even get that. The day he resigned, he cried a lot.
A year and a half later, Zhang Wei became a collection agent at a call center for a state-owned bank, in the M3 league, meaning responsible for credit card overdrafts of two to three months. People with such overdrafts were not yet scoundrels but were pretty close. They usually wouldn’t answer the calls, so he had to call people around them, or in the words of the manager, “to pull them out from all layers of their social relationships.”
Zhang Wei started with different departments of the municipal government and then all the way down. If the person he’s looking for lived in the city, he would call the community grid attendants or the postmen of the district. If the person lived in the countryside, he would call the village head. As Zhang Wei was not allowed to disclose the reasons for his call, he would say: “We have an important legal letter to deliver to him.” The village head usually figured out what it was about and spread rumors around. Agents like Zhang Wei wouldn’t ask the person why he owed money or whether he had difficulty making ends meet, what Zhang Wei wanted to achieve was that the person felt ashamed and lost face. Sometimes before he could get in touch with that person directly, the money had already been returned, upon a quick check in the system.
Zhang Wei made calls to urge others to pay back their debts while he himself had a debt of 80,000 yuan. (He called himself “a slave of cards,” using a term that he had learned on TV during his childhood.) He moved money here and there, so that nothing was overdue. Still, he was very worried and thought these debtors of today would be his tomorrow.
“If the person is really short of money, like when one of his family members is seriously ill and he’s ready to mortgage his cherished car to me, I should give him the money without interest and without the mortgage. He pledges his honor as guarantee, and I think honor is such a grand and valuable thing. A civil society shouldn’t have so many people without honor, right?”
“I think it is pretty shitty work. It is not even work. We are just accomplices to capitalism. Honestly, I am terrified. I feel I have betrayed the working class and turned my back on the underclass and the real vulnerable people in our society.”
He wanted to quit. But the manager said he could only quit after the three-month probation period. So, he still clocked in to work every day, sat behind the most remote desktop, huddled up all by himself, waited until all his colleagues were gone before going out to get a bite. The worse thing than going to work was being in the company and having nothing to do.
So, he started to read a science fiction novel called Metro 2033. Coincidentally, on the second to last day of his probation, he finished the novel. “What about tomorrow?” Zhang Wei was so panicked that he decided to skip his last day of work. He sent his apology to the manager, but the manager did not reply.
He was behind his computer reading a science fiction novel, Metro 2033. Coincidentally, on the penultimate day of his probationary period, the novel was finished. What about tomorrow? Zhang Wei was panicked, so panicked that he decided to skip his last day of work. The leader didn't reply to the apology he sent.
He had worked as a headteacher at a tutoring agency, but actually he was cold calling people to sell online classes. Upon hearing the term “headteacher,” most parents paid him respect and listened. Some parents said that their children were at a boarding school, so he said that the parents should let their children live at home and take online classes that would help their children improve much faster. Some parents were migrant workers and only the grandparents were left at home with their grandchildren. The confused grandparents just enrolled their grandchildren, thinking the classes were offline. He said that just a tablet would do. The grandparents said they didn’t even have a smartphone.
Some parents picked up the phone, started crying, and talked in broken Mandarin, “I want to help my child improve his grades, but he won’t listen, and I don’t know what to do.” The parents expected Zhang Wei to “be able to save them.”
Some parents said no, so he turned to the children directly. He pretended to have a heart-to-heart conversation with the children. “Are you in love? It’s okay. I fell in love early too.” Some children gave in. Then, he would go on to say, “It’s wonderful to be in love. If you enroll in our class, you’ll be able to get into a good college.”
“It’s not the same to go to a university in the 985 Project than that of the second tier.” He said in an authoritative tone, “Gao Kao (Nationwide Unified Examination for Admissions to Universities and Colleges) is a relatively fair way of selection.” His bottom line was to add “relatively” before “fair.”
After persuading the children, he would let the children persuade their parents. The final goal was to get the parents to shell out 10,000 to 30,000 yuan for online classes.
“In that case, when I PUA (brainwash) innocent young people, they believe whatever I say wholeheartedly. What they tell me is heartfelt, but what I say to them is carefully predesigned. They would take me as a teacher who’s different from the average teacher, and they feel that I am there to help them. My stress explodes because I know I am only there to sell classes. They have such high expectations. How am I able to pay back?”
When he quit, the manager tried to persuade him to stay on: “Wait until the new semester starts, it is so easy to make money as if money could be simply picked up from the street. Easy to make 20,000 yuan per month.” Still, there was only money, money, and money.
As Zhang Wei said in his own words, he was good at doing interviews. For his recent job as a matchmaker at an online dating agency, he had written down only two sales jobs in his CV, whose duration he stretched. He had indeed done these jobs, so he had all the answers that the interviewers wanted.
The interviewer asked, “Why would you like to be a matchmaker?”
Zhang Wei answered, “The matchmakers’ job is to bring people happiness. It is valuable work.”
That’s also how he convinced himself. However, the first lesson he learned from being a matchmaker was deceit. He was single, but he had to tell his clients that he was a 31-year-old happily married man. In his notepad, his made up four fictionalized characters, two men and two women, and their stories. (These characters were those that the clients felt they could reach for, if they decided to reach.) If the other end on the phone sounded not so enthusiastic, he would pretend to check in the database and said that he had someone that could be a good match and then continued to introduce that person:
Height: 176cm, 27 years old, a local, a technical post at a state-owned company, an annual salary of 160,000 yuan, in possession of an apartment in the high-tech zone, monthly mortgage: 4,500 yuan, little stress, a clean-cut and bright young man, gentle, polite, hobbies: skiing, travels, reading, soccer.
He found that women could not wait to get married while men were in no hurry to get married but wanted to have children soon, so they often started by saying that they wanted to have a son before they turned 30. So, the pressure was back on the women. Zhang Wei would give the female clients a hint: “Do you want to be a mother at an advanced maternal age?”
No matter what the other end said, he was going to end up saying, “You cannot find someone, because your circle is too small.” Then, he tried to promote his products. Instead of selling a real product, he was selling anxiety. Some people thanked him and said clearly that they didn’t need it. Still, he continued to call them, until he reached the required number of calls. He thought of the so-called “harassing calls” and felt that was referring to what he did.
“People have to get married,” the supervisor said, and that’s the value he needed to instill in his clients. However, Zhang Wei didn’t understand why they had to get married.
Things seemed to fall into a cycle of repetitions: every time before entering the job market, he felt that he had enough rest and was ready to make a splash. But once he had a job, stress came like a tidal wave, and soon he felt wiped out, as if he were a balloon that kept leaking air. Once he couldn’t take it anymore, he had to quit or take a long break, until he felt he could go back to work again, thus into another endless circle of repetitions.
3. When You Want to Find Meaning in Your Work
At the end of three years of Covid prevention and control, Zhang Wei applied for a job as a Covid operator at the 12345 Hotline Call Center. During the interview, he said that it was too difficult for all of us, so he hoped to help others. This was what he really thought.
During the week of training, apart from how to use the call system, he was taught “not to have an emotional breakdown.” It was only later that he realized why this was taught.
The most frequent calls were, of course, about quarantine. He had four pages of notes in his notepad about the quarantine policies in different provinces and cities. The operators’ uniform line was: “The relevant policies have been formulated and implemented at the municipal level after an evaluation at the provincial level.” Whenever he said “evaluation,” an image of a group of bald experts cracking their brains to figure out something passed through his mind. If the other end was happy with the answers, this call could be immediately archived. If the other end still had doubts about the policies, there was nothing he could do, as policy issues could not be put down as a claim according to their internal rules.
To submit a claim meant to submit the callers’ inquiries and demands onto relevant departments, like an online mailroom. Zhang Wei was responsible for delivering the mail. He did not know whether and when these problems would be solved.
Zhang Wei’s first call on the job was from a cancer patient who had been quarantined. The patient was quite calm and hoped that the procedure could be simplified in the future. Zhang Wei thought this suggestion was germane, so he put it down as a claim and submitted it. The claim was rejected, so he revised it and submitted it again. Again, it was rejected. He figured the claim was probably kicked back and forth between two departments.
He had also received a call for help from a young man with acute meningitis. The young man would like to come to the city for a medical emergency from a medium-risk area, but he was concerned about possible mandatory quarantines. Zhang Wei tried to submit a claim but was rejected. The team leader said that the young man was just worried about being quarantined but was not actually quarantined, so this could not be submitted as a “claim.”
Once on a Friday afternoon, there were calls to protest the extended three-day closure of a neighborhood. Typically, the claims were processed within three to five business days. It was an emergency, so Zhang Wei pressed the “expedite” button. This was the best he could do, the limit of his power. Once the “expedite” button was pressed, an SMS would be sent to a relevant functionary. No matter how many times the button was pressed, the SMS would be sent only once. In the system, he saw that the claim was delayed for two days——he figured this had to be with the fact that the relevant departments were not open on weekends——but on the following day, the closure would be lifted anyways.
In the system, there was a large number of delayed claims that had not been processed. He figured that there must be no penalty for the delays. There were claims that had been around for more than three hundred days.
Some called to ask why the problem had not been resolved yet. He opened the claim, where stated “So-and-so department has returned the call at so-and-so hour on so-and-so date and the recipients have expressed their satisfaction.” But the other end said that they’d never received such a call nor expressed any satisfaction.
At the 12345 Hotline Call Center, there were also robots that returned the calls to ask whether the callers were satisfied with the service. Zhang Wei saw that most of the answers were “not satisfied.” But that’s it. It wouldn’t affect their salary and there would be no further actions.
The 12345 Hotline Call Center claimed that they operated at the same level day and night, but in fact, the night shifts had only one-tenth of the daytime manpower. Zhang Wei’s colleague once called the 12345 hotline himself in the middle of the night to complain about someone sawing trees in his neighborhood, thus disturbing the neighbors. With some hotlines, it took just a bit of patience. But it was different with 12345: once the music repeated three times, the callers would be automatically cleared off the line and the call would be cut off. So, the callers had to call and wait in line again, competing with other callers who called in at the same time, so on and so forth. On that day, Zhang Wei’s colleague went through after two hours and got a number for the State Grid Corporation of China.
Some would say, “Get your supervisor.” However, according to the rules, other than the operators, no one else was supposed to get on a call. Even if Zhang Wei got his supervisor, the supervisor could only show him how to calm the callers and was not the one who actually had the authority and could solve the problems.
“The parameters of our work are set in such a way that you can only do this, and it is the only right thing to do. When you try to go beyond your limit to help others, someone else will guard his responsibilities and cut you off from your good intentions. That’s what makes this job so comical. It’s designed to be a sheet of metal plate, where all the departments and structures seem to make sense, but when assembled, it becomes a very irrational thing.
If the 12345 Hotline can actually help people, I would be very happy with the job, but it is just a punchbag for the public. Someone scolds me on the phone, which provides him with some emotional value, but for me, it is not the same, I cannot count it as ‘value,’ I don’t think I have really helped him.
The public sees us as the terminus of power, but we’re barely the beginning and probably just the transitional station, and worse still, have nothing to do with power.”
Zhang Wei and his colleagues were not allowed to hang up on the callers. He was envious of other colleagues who would interrupt and simply say: “We are not functionaries. Even if you keep talking, your problems won’t be solved. If you want to have your claim submitted quickly, you need to hang up now.” So, the other end hung up.
If none of the above strategies worked, their ultimate move was this: “For more information, please consult the Epidemic Prevention and Control Command Center and their number is this…” In fact, no one could ever get through to that number. It was either busy or occupied. But most people did not know about this and would carefully note down the number. They would even say thank you for helping solve their problems. Their thanks made him feel guilty for deceiving them.
Once, a caller was able to get in touch with the Epidemic Prevention and Control Command Center twice but got two different answers, so he wanted to seek advice from the 12345 Hotline. The colleague who got the call was shocked that someone could get through twice in a row.
The colleagues joked among themselves: with a difficult person, there was no need to solve his problem but to end his call. If he continued to call, it wouldn’t necessarily be you who got the call.
Zhang Wei didn’t know how to hang up or to calm “someone exploding with rage.” What he could do was to get yelled at. Once the other end calmed down a little bit, he then gingerly said, “I’ll note it down for you and submit a claim for your problem.” 10 minutes had already passed, but the call was not yet finished. It looked like Zhang Wei wouldn’t be able to achieve his KPI (Key Performance Indicator) for the day.
The longest call, which was cut off a couple of times, added up to a total of 80 minutes, before he was able to calm the caller. So he had to work overtime. When he got home, it was almost 11 p.m.
After being scolded on the phone, some colleagues cried. Others were on the verge of an emotional breakdown and needed a half-hour break before they could take the next call. But three months had passed, and no one had quit yet.
Only once had be heard a colleague yell “I’m also a human being!” and leave his seat. Zhang Wei’s first reaction was fear: the colleague couldn’t have been yelling at the phone, could he? That would be penalized. It was found out later that the colleague took off the headset before he yelled. In any event, the colleague left the job.
Before joining the 12345 Hotline, Zhang Wei thought his job was to solve problems for the public. However, this was not included in their assessment requirements, which only asked for 60 to 100 calls a day. On average, it was 10 calls per hour. Under the pressure of the KPI, his job became an exercise of “hanging up a call as soon as possible.” A skilled operator could answer the phone, complete the claim, and submit it within 3 to 5 minutes.
If one made 80 calls and no mistakes, had no late arrivals nor early departures nor any leave of absence, and didn’t forget to punch the work card for three months, one would be “upgraded” to the highest level 3, which entitled them to the highest salary of 4270 yuan per month.
In December, the policy shifted dramatically. The operators were at a loss just like the whole country. No one called the hotline anymore. The operator group was buzzing like never before. One colleague said, “I’m spaced out.” “What a coincidence! I’m spaced out too.” Zhang Wei replied.
Upon the announcement of lifting the quarantine requirement for overseas travelers, calls poured in. “Is our city implementing the same policy?” Zhang Wei answered with a question: “Where did you get the information?” The other end replied, “It went viral on WeChat blogs.” Zhang Wei said, “I have not been informed yet. We will reach out to the relevant functionaries as soon as possible.” Then he pretended to write something down.
In any event, everything has really changed. Zhang Wei suddenly felt that everything was meaningless. Of the 80 people who came to the 12345 Hotline Call Center at the same time as he did, there were only 30 left. Zhang Wei also resigned.
4. Life Seems Like an Aimless Ordeal
The morning meetings at almost every job were a waste of time. Similar routines: the supervisor led the group to say “Good morning, everyone in so-and-so department! Good morning! Good morning!” Then three rounds of fast and loud claps. Some supervisors paired this with singing. Zhang Wei sold guihua jiuniang (a type of rice pudding made with sweet osmanthus flowers) in a fresh food market. At the morning meetings, his supervisor always took the opportunity to sneer at people from Henan Province, saying that quality rice, noodles, and oils were nowhere to find in a supermarket in Henan Province. Zhang Wei was not from Henan Province but hated this supervisor for saying that.
The 12345 Hotline Call Center was located in a government building. The cafeteria had a wide range of food, and Zhang Wei missed that. For lunch, there were two appetizers, a main meat dish, two dishes with meats and vegetables, two vegetable dishes, rice, noodles, two desserts, two soups, and two kinds of fruits. In the snack area, there were three dishes of the day. You could take as much as you wanted, unlike at one of the outsourcing companies Zhang Wei worked for, which had a sign saying you could only have one scoop from the main meat dish.
The operators and the civil servants ate in the same dining hall, except that the civil servants paid 4 yuan for a meal and the operators 10 yuan. The civil servants had one line, and the operators another. The operators had to wait until there was no one waiting in the civil servant line. The operators had their lunch box full of food, while the officials in their civilian clothes had only a thin layer of grains with some vegetables.
There were two treadmills in the de-stress room of the 12345 Call Center, but no one used it. There was also a boxing sandbag, but no one used it either. There were three massage chairs, two in good condition and the other not working. All of them were taken quickly. The operators wanted no massage but sleep. The operators hated weekends, because the civil servants did not work then, so the cafeteria was closed.
Zhang Wei has made a revolutionary friendship with the bathrooms. For some jobs, he had only one day off per week, but the cleaning ladies had two days off, so the bathroom trashcans were piled up especially high on Saturdays. The best bathrooms were those scented and had toilets, so that he could doze on them. Whenever he wanted to escape, he escaped into the bathroom. He clicked on videos on bilibili.com one after another and then closed them one by one. The time he spent in the bathroom was getting longer and longer. For at least three jobs, he had quit in the bathroom, including the most recent 19th resignation——
“It is time for me to leave. The last missed sales call gave me extra courage. I thought to myself as I quietly removed the headset off my ears.
The company’s working hours from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. have finally crushed all my hard-earned professional energies. In order to avoid face-to-face embarrassment, I slipped into the bathroom, found an unoccupied pit, locked the door, and sent a message to the supervisor. After a few pleasantries and polite thanks, I told her bluntly that I wanted to resign.
The supervisor calmly asked me why and I replied in a polite way. Then she told me to do the paperwork.
As I was still in the probation period, I didn’t have to report in advance, so I shut down my computer, handed over the materials, filled out two electronic documents, and left the company, without saying goodbye to my colleagues.”
“Life seems like an endless ordeal. There is no end and no relief in sight. When I am at work, I often have this thought: this life will go on for another 30 years or more. What’s the meaning of me going to work every day? I cannot figure it out. But 5 or 10 minutes later, I start to struggle anyways. Like a zombie, I put on my clothes, squeeze myself into the overcrowded subway, and start the day.”
Zhang Wei saw many people on Douban discussing workplace PUA (brainwash). He found it strange: could anyone really fall for it? He has changed 19 jobs, but seldom felt the PUA. Perhaps one reason was that he did not have a “career.” Like his colleagues, he worked and earned the money by the day with no intention for promotions and no expectations of “flatbreads” (promises) that the supervisors had made falling on his head.
Only once did Zhang Wei have a leadership position. At 12345, 12 colleagues were grouped together. He was the only male in a team, so all the women proposed that he should be the team leader. Team leaders were responsible for filling out the sign-in sheet for the team before the morning meetings and had no extra pay.
Almost every job required overtime, and he was already used to that. What he couldn’t tolerate was the “punitive overtime.” When he had the sales job, he was required to stay until 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. to keep making sales calls, if he did not perform well. By that time, not many people would pick up the phone, and even if they did, they would say they were going to bed.
Once, the supervisor sent him a 40-minute recording of a sales conversation and asked him to listen to it and then transcribe it. He stayed up all night for this. It didn’t do much to improve his performance, but rather to remind him of the painful feeling ——that this was where he was, and if he felt uncomfortable, then he would have to make some changes the next day.
Another punishment was to get up early. This was what happened at the fresh food market. “All of you will be here at 4 a.m. tomorrow. There will be consequences for those coming in late.” The goal was to rearrange and inventory the shelves all over again. One had to either take a cab or stay at a nearby hotel, which meant more expenses than what would be earned for that day.
Zhang Wei had also worked as an outsourced censor for some short video platform. He had the guilty feeling of being an executioner, but money came in fast. The censor’s job was simple, and the salary could go up to 5,000 yuan per month, almost the highest among all the jobs that he had had.
It was strange to be on the night shift as a censor: the brain slowed down, it took longer to move the mouse, the heart beat then fast then slowly, the stomach bloated, and all the organs were writhing. Sometimes, a line appeared on the screen: “All the videos have been reviewed. Please let your eyes take a break.” The censors then put the system on hold and went to take a seat in the lounge. Even the ladies who were keen on losing weight went to the vending machine to buy cookies during their night shifts. It was 6:45 a.m., just 15 minutes before Zhang Wei’s shift ended. He glanced out the eastern window, where the morning light pierced through and spread on his face. He said, “If I’m going to die, I will go home and die in my own bed.” Some colleague said, “But I will die in the company and blackmail them for compensation.”
However, Zhang Wei not only did not get the compensation, but was set back for 9 days of work. After the probation, the volume was getting larger and larger. Zhang Wei and several colleagues were planning to quit. HR said that to quit during the probation, 9 days’ worth of wages would be deducted. As a representative, he went to negotiate for a whole afternoon but had forgotten all the strategies that he had learned as a debt collector.
He quit the job on the spot but found a loophole in the contract: “If one were to be fired, only three days’ wages would be deducted.” He taught his colleagues how to get fired by just clicking “pass” for everything. The speed was up, but the accuracy rate became extremely low. A few colleagues were thus fired without an issue, but the company sensed that something was wrong and quickly changed the policy. The next colleagues to be fired had 9 to 15 days’ wages deducted.
Zhang Wei thought about gathering everyone and initiating a labor arbitration case together. But that would involve a two-month wait for a hearing, during which time one could not work. Even if he could afford to wait, what about the others? Thus, he stepped down from his position as the “chairman of the union.”
“During the first few years, I fantasized about a breakthrough——to improve my state of mind, my heath, and my work conditions. I hope that my previous efforts would bring a sudden turnaround and give me the impetus to get out of my predicament. But after all these times of trials and tribulations, I have slowly come to realize that the sudden turn to a good situation or the light at the end of the tunnel that people talk about is just some unattainable good luck, and that quantity affects quality is more of a philosophical possibility. It doesn’t mean that this will happen in real life.”
It's not that Zhang Wei hasn’t had a job that satisfied him. In October 2019, he joined an adult English training agency to do on-ground marketing. After all, it was a foreign company. He went to work at 10 a.m. and finished by 7 p.m. There was a break room and two full hours of break time. The morning meetings were set at 30 minutes, 10 minutes for the speech and the remaining 20 minutes for playing the game Werewolf. No one began work a second earlier than scheduled.
He gave himself the English name Leo and said to every passerby at the subway entrance: “Hello, wanna learn English?” Salesmen like him compared themselves to parrots. Being rejected had little to do with dignity. Parrots never thought twice. If anyone bothered to talk to him, he would panic. Among those who bothered to talk to him were for one, young people starting their careers who still fantasized about climbing up the social ladder with the help of English, and for another, “rich sisters” who had made enough money and planned to emigrate (however, he’d never seen “rich brothers” and didn’t understand why). Luckily, he didn’t have to panic more than ten times a day.
Zhang Wei never folded flyers in the arms of the passersby. He did not want to let flyers scatter on the ground and put street cleaners in trouble. An on-ground salesman had to have good relations with his “surroundings.” When he ran into urban management officers, he would stop to have a chat. As he was greeting people with “Hello, wanna learn English?”, he kept an eye out for the street vendors and often warned them in a low voice, “Hurry up, the urban management officers are coming!”
This job had little to do with diligence. For Zhang Wei, it was a matter of pure good luck. One month, he was really in luck. He won the second place in sales and received the highest paycheck of his life, close to 7,000 yuan. He went to a Japanese restaurant that was located in the “Grand Millennium” and ordered a teppanyaki set meal for one person that cost 600 yuan.
For the first time, he felt sure that he would do well in a job. In the fourth month of his employment, the Covid-19 pandemic broke out. He gritted his teeth and stayed in the job. In the winter of early 2020, he wore a black down parka and stood by himself at the empty subway entrance. The few passersby wore masks and hurried past him, as they were wary of the approach of strangers. Later, he and his colleagues took turns slipping into the fire escape and sleeping on the stairs. He took a base salary of 2,000 yuan per month until the month of April. After that, they all left the job.
5. The Next Zhang Wei
Zhang Wei had three to four temporary coworkers in the fresh food market. A female college student who worked part-time on weekends to sell canned Starbucks coffee had secretly given him a Starbucks canvas bag. After that, he carried the bag to work every day. He also had an eye out for the girl’s stand when she went to the bathroom. There used to be a young man at the noodle stand who, on his first day of work, burned the induction noodle cooker. The young man disappeared after that.
Zhang Wei has a total of 68 WeChat friends with the remark “coworker.” He changes his jobs frequently, so do his 68 coworkers. Most of them come from out of town, are in their twenties, and have graduated from junior colleges or undergraduate programs. Very rarely do they show the kind of thing called “ambition.” According to their WeChat Moments, some of the female friends have already returned to their hometowns, got married, and given birth.
But very few can be called real friends. A creditor colleague who once shared a meal with him may have forgotten that there were former coworkers and keeps sending him the same message: “Hello, do you need a cash advance?” It can be that all relationships turn into “resources” in the end.
Among his college roommates, the one who earns the most money nowadays works as a courier and gets a salary of 9,000 yuan a month. The price he must pay is to get up at 4 a.m. and return at 10 p.m. all year round without a single day off.
If you want to get a so-called decent position and reach a place higher up on the social ladder, you’d have to pay something other than hard work. After Zhang Wei’s cousin graduated from a railway vocational and technical school, the cousin’s family spent 100,000-yuan bribe money to get him a job in the state-owned City Metro, basically a ground staff member walking around in the subway. His cousin described the job as “dark work,” and quit after two and a half years.
Zhang Wei’s father works at a bank. A colleague’s child came back from studying in the UK, and the colleague spent 200,000 yuan to get his child a job at a state-owned bank. The child quit after less than a year and wanted to open an online store. After running the store for three months, the pandemic came, and there was no way of receiving and sending products, so the store had to be closed.
Zhang Wei’s parents took it as a negative example, from which they urged him to learn. With a bit of effort, they were able to find a middleman who promised them to get Zhang Wei into a state-owned enterprise. The first opportunity was the position of an urban management officer. For the written test, he was competing with people with master’s degrees or bachelor’s from a university in the 985 Project. He wasn’t even given an interview. He wasn’t enthusiastic about such opportunities, but his parents insisted and kept saying that they had spent 300,000 yuan for them.
Of the 19 jobs, his parents were most satisfied with the customer service job for auto insurance of a national enterprise. Upon hearing that he passed the interview, his father was able to finally relax. After the three-month probation, he was able to sign an official work contract. Most of his previous jobs were either without a contract or with a labor dispatch agreement.
When we scratched our cars and went to the insurance company for a claim, perhaps Zhang Wei was the one who picked up the phone. One time, a caller said in a sobbing voice that he had crushed a man to death with his big truck. Before Zhang Wei asked all his questions, the other end hung up the phone in a state of disarray. The man’s words just silted up in his heart.
Two and a half months later, Zhang Wei broke down. Upon his fifth leave of absence, the supervisor fired him. On this weekday, his mother and aunt happened to come to see him. After seeing him lying on the sofa in low spirits and the cup that he usually used at the company, they immediately understood what was going on. His aunt comforted him by saying: “It was always you who quit. Now it’s time for others to dismiss you once.”
His mother said nothing. Zhang Wei knew that she found him too vulnerable.
6. At the End of His Rope
Zhang Wei is such a young man:
He has mental health issues. After graduation, he was diagnosed with depression and was hospitalized for a month of psychotherapy. One might say that changing 19 jobs has something to do with his lack of stamina. But he rarely breaks down and works hard most of the time. During his first two years on the job market, he forced himself to act like a “normal” person. Even when his grandmother passed away, he only asked for three days off.
He overeats and has become addicted to junk food that was high in fat. Sometimes, he treats himself to a big meal at a restaurant after work. Sometimes, he gets up at midnight and orders 100- or 200-yuan worth of food from McDonald’s. He also throws his money at games for short-lived pleasure——like a shot of dopamine straight to the brain, followed by long lasting agonies and regrets.
He went into debt twice, once for 30,000 yuan and the other time for 80,000 yuan. His parents filled these holes for him. His father choked and said to him, “You spend 300 yuan for a meal while I spend 300 yuan on food for the month.”
He has been tested for osteoporosis, the cause of which is unknown. After he turned 28, he has become exhausted more easily. He thought about working at McDonald’s but found out that he wouldn’t be able to handle the intensity of the job.
He rarely sees his friends. It costs money to socialize and is also consuming. He doesn’t understand why people are so keen on these murder mystery games: most jobs already entail a lot of emotional labor, so why role-play and cry and laugh when there’s moment to rest?
When he’s “desperate,” he goes to a lottery shop and buys 10- or 20-yuan worth of scratch-offs. If he doesn’t win with the first scratch-off, he stops. If he does win, he buys another until his luck runs out. After buying a lottery ticket, he will eat the 15-yuan noodles instead of the 20-yuan braised chicken rice.
He once saw on the online content community Zhihu that someone had won a lottery of 100,000 yuan. He has set a limit of twice a month for the lottery run and his dream of getting rich. When he was 80,000 yuan in debt, he had the strong urge to “scratch out a big one,” so he bought 200-yuan worth of scratch-offs and won 50 yuan.
“I didn’t even feel happy when I won 50 yuan, because it’s just a small bait in a big scam. Just like the bait on the fishhook, what you see is the worm, but what they want is your life.”
“Though the chances are slim, it’s still an opportunity. What is the most important thing? An opportunity. If you have endless opportunities in life, you will have an endlessly wonderful life. However, there are often limited opportunities in life. “
In the eyes of his parents, he is a plus-size teenager. He still asks them for money and has no confidence of becoming independent. Once, he wanted to learn Kendo, which cost 10,000 yuan a year. When his parents heard this, they said, “It’s too expensive. We can’t afford it.” So, he bought a Nintendo Switch instead that cost 2,300 yuan and lied that it only cost 800 yuan. Nevertheless, his father almost threw his Switch out the window. A friend gave him a Lego for his birthday, but he didn’t dare to display it after assembling it. That was already his 29th birthday.
His latest worry is that his father will retire in two years, so the big breadwinner will be down. He thinks that these next years may be the last good ones of his life.
He lives alone in an empty apartment on the outskirts of the city, which his parents bought for him with the help of the whole extended family. Next door is a detention facility. During this intermission between jobs, he sleeps until 4 p.m., gets a bite, goes back to sleep until 10 p.m., wakes up for a bit, and then goes to bed again at midnight. In this clear moment of early March, he wears a black Polo shirt and jeans and paces back and forth in the living room with his hands behind his back. Upon hearing that he has quit his 19th job, his parents have written him a long letter, saying that the civil service exam this year would be his last chance. His father gave him a call at noon, but he didn’t pick it up. Finally, he sits down, holding his cell phone next to him, watching it, turning it on and off. He’s still waiting for his father to call again.
Summer is just around the corner. In summer, he finds it even harder to get up in the morning and go to work. It is a small miracle to survive each summer. So, he will celebrate: “To congratulate myself for surviving another year.”
*Zhang Wei is a pseudonym.
*Thanks to the podcast Dagongtan for their help.
