DM Chapter 14

Chapter 14: Unexpected Results

Of course, Chen Fangzhou wasn’t just a simpleton; he still had some tricks up his sleeve.

After enthusiastically delivering his sensational opening remarks, he conscientiously taught Jiang Xiaoyuan several massage techniques. Each technique was both familiar and unfamiliar to Jiang Xiaoyuan, seeming like something she had encountered before but needing to be learned from scratch.

“You learn things pretty quickly,” Boss Chen said. “Remember to keep your nails trimmed. Some customers have sensitive scalps, and scratching them can cause dandruff. Did you see those plastic mannequin heads at the entrance? Practice with those whenever you have free time. After a week, master the techniques, then practice on your colleagues’ heads in the shop. Only when everyone has passed your practice can you officially serve customers… Ahem, I mean, receive customers.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan was surprised; she hadn’t expected the training for a shampoo girl to be so rigorous.

Chen Fangzhou glanced at her. “What’s wrong? Surprised? Well, it’s true that other places don’t do it like this. Many hair salons don’t emphasize shampooing. They just let newbies wash customers’ hair without any guidance. But then again, those small shops can cut hair for ten or twenty yuan. Our lowest-level apprentice stylist charges at least eighty for a simple trim. Why? There has to be something exceptional about us, right?”

Jiang Xiaoyuan nodded. “Oh, I see.”

She noticed that when Boss Chen became serious, he had a certain air of a manager about him. There was a barely noticeable fine line at the corner of his eye, faintly shifting with his movements, giving his profile an intense focus.

“Study well, young lady,” Chen Fangzhou said. “Look at me. I didn’t even finish junior high. Besides being good at cheating, I didn’t know anything else. I started doing this at fifteen or sixteen, and after all these years, I haven’t changed my line of work. But look at me now, pretending to be a manager after studying abroad and recently buying a house and a car. Am I successful or not?”

Perhaps Jiang Xiaoyuan had limited experiences in other aspects, but she had seen many successful people and didn’t particularly agree with Chen Fangzhou’s self-proclaimed status as a “successful person.”

Chen Fangzhou chuckled. “What’s wrong? Don’t believe me?”

He was easygoing, and Jiang Xiaoyuan couldn’t help but relax a bit. She casually joked, “Boss Chen, being a manager for others isn’t that impressive. You need to establish your own brand to be proud of. Besides, what’s the point of buying a house? You should at least have a ‘big flat’ in the city center, a villa with a hot spring in the suburbs, a property with a view in the resort area, and even a horse ranch overseas to barely count as having some assets.”

Chen Fangzhou looked at Jiang Xiaoyuan in shock. “Wow, I underestimated you. Girl, you seem so quiet, yet you can talk big! You’re quite something!”

Jiang Xiaoyuan didn’t want to be considered a peer by him at all. She forced a smile and said, “Boss Chen overpraises me.”

“Give it a try,” Chen Fangzhou stepped aside, wiped his hands, and took out a small booklet from his pocket, handing it to Jiang Xiaoyuan. “Oh, this is the employee handbook of our shop, which I compiled myself. Take it home and memorize it. I’ll test you before you officially start.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan thought it was some kind of technical manual. When she opened it, she was shocked.

Most of the content consisted of questions and answers, normal questions like “How to handle it if the waiting time is too long and the customer is dissatisfied” or “How to resolve conflicts if the customer is unsatisfied with the service.” These questions only made up a small part.

The majority were bizarre questions like “What to do if a customer wants to introduce you to someone.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan asked, “What does it mean for a customer to introduce you to someone?”

Chen Fangzhou explained seriously, “This happens quite often. Many of our customers are middle-aged or elderly women. You know, uh, last time a customer wanted to introduce me. The next day, she brought a girl who looked she was searching for firewood¹长得柴禾似的 (zhǎngde cháihé shì de): a Chinese idiom that literally means “to look like firewood.” It is used to describe someone who is very thin and frail, often with a hunched back and stooped posture. The phrase can also be used to describe someone who is sickly or weak., clueless about everything and just giggling foolishly. Later, I found out she had some intellectual disabilities.”

A whole new world unfolded before Jiang Xiaoyuan’s eyes. Curiously, she asked, “And then?”

Chen Fangzhou raised his chin at her. “Read the handbook yourself.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan looked down and saw the next page of the booklet: “Tell the customer you’re already engaged in your hometown.”

“Why would she do that? After all, you are a store manager, and you are also that… Jiang Xiaoyuan stumbled over her words, almost biting her tongue, insincerely saying, “That successful person with a house and a car.”

“Just kidding,” Chen Fangzhou chuckled. “Thirty-year mortgage, the car is an electric scooter—besides, even though the times emphasize equality for everyone,  no one can tell who will be poorer than who in the future, but you are serving others now, so in their hearts, you will always be inferior. You should be aware of this and don’t humiliate yourself. In our line of work, hehe, even banks won’t give us a discount on loans.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan’s mood suddenly sank.

“What’s wrong? Don’t act like you’re in mourning…  If people are paying you, they have the right to look down on you. Do you want dignity or money?” Chen Fangzhou said.

Jiang Xiaoyuan blurted out, “There’s nothing impressive about it.”

“Good! That’s the spirit,” Chen Fangzhou said. “I like good kids with brains and a grudge against money! Come on, turn around and wash her head clean, and watch the foam dry up.”

In order to show that she was still a living thing, the model on the shampoo station couldn’t help but interject, “Boss Chen, what you’re saying isn’t right. Everyone in the world needs money. Does that mean everyone has no dignity?”

Chen Fangzhou gave her a slap on the head. “Nonsense! People in the office building next door holding coffee and laptops have dignity and money. Can you do what they do? Don’t move! Lie down properly!”

The model hissed, and Jiang Xiaoyuan, for the first time, accidentally pulled out two strands of her hair a bit too forcefully.

“People holding coffee and laptops are learning how to wash hair with you.” Jiang Xiaoyuan thought to herself in frustration.

How big were the differences between people?

Jiang Xiaoyuan once thought that there was a big difference between people, like her and Feng Ruixue. Feng Ruixue worked diligently and frugally day and night, but she couldn’t earn enough money in ten years to buy a car that she didn’t want to drive and could give up at any time.

Now she found that the gap between people was actually so small. The only difference between her and those shampoo girls was a thin layer of skin.

Peeling off this thin layer of oily skin, she couldn’t distinguish between fish and pearls.

And so, Jiang Xiaoyuan began her pre-job training. In the past, when others did her hair, she always complained that the service staff washed her hair too perfunctorily and that the scalp massage was too short for her to even close her eyes. When it was her turn to switch roles, she realized how tiring this job could be. It was not good if it was too light, and it was not good if it was too heavy. Her nails could not touch the scalp, and the first joint of her fingers were always straining. The store required at least ten minutes of scalp massage for each head. Apart from wetting the hair, applying shampoo and conditioner, and other simple steps, her hands had to be soaked in water and cold hair care products.

Apart from practicing and cleaning, Jiang Xiaoyuan was like a transparent person in the store. She didn’t talk much to her colleagues. For the past 20 years, Jiang Xiaoyuan had always thought of herself as an outgoing and sociable person. However, after arriving in this time and space, she suddenly realized that she was not actually good at dealing with others.

Among her group of colleagues, the oldest was only in their thirties, and the youngest were even underage. From the store manager to the shampoo girls, none of them had finished junior high school. Most of these children came from the countryside and had left home to work at a young age. They had no skills or intelligence, and they were like floating duckweed, coming and going in three to five years, like running water. They wanted to gain a foothold in the city where the cost of living and housing was high, which was simply impossible.

Jiang Xiaoyuan shared the same lack of skills and intelligence as her colleagues, but she was different after all.

Ideas, beliefs, hobbies… even seemingly irrelevant small habits in daily life, all determined that she couldn’t easily get along with her colleagues.

On the day of the assessment, Jiang Xiaoyuan washed more than ten colleagues’ hair in one go. After washing, her fingers couldn’t bend, and the pads of her fingers were white from being soaked too long. Chen Fangzhou asked her to wash her hands first and gave her a small bottle of glycerin, instructing, “Remember to apply this regularly. The weather is getting cold, and the period before the Chinese New Year is our peak season. Your hands can’t afford to get frostbite.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan moved her lips tiredly, accepted it without a word, and went to the restroom.

She didn’t turn on the tap first but propped her hands on the sink, lowering her head deeply until her chin almost touched her chest. Jiang Xiaoyuan took a deep breath and inexplicably thought, “How did I end up doing this?”

It took Chen Fangzhou over ten years to reach his current position. Jiang Xiaoyuan couldn’t imagine how much he had suffered or how hard he had worked in private. But then what?

Despite Chen’s hard work, he was still a city dweller burdened with loans, unable to afford even a decent family car. He was still an out-and-out poor guy—and judging from the quality of the people introduced to him by others, he might still be an undignified poor guy.

The young girls and boys in the shop looked up to him as a role model and a goal, but in Jiang Xiaoyuan’s eyes, Chen Fangzhou was poor and short. In a few more years, he would even have to add the word “old” to his forehead. As a man, there was hardly anything to look forward to in his life. Jiang Xiaoyuan felt hopeless for him and couldn’t understand what Chen Boss had to be so happy about all the time.

Working like a dog every day, just to end up like Chen Fangzhou?

Jiang Xiaoyuan raised her head and looked at her completely makeup-free face in the mirror, thinking, “What if the assistant lighthouse keeper were here? What would he do?”

Standing still for a moment, she remembered the teenage athlete. It seemed like the golden finger inside her body was working again, gradually stabilizing her confused mind. With this calmness, she found her thoughts clearer.

“I have to make a living,” she quickly washed her hands and applied the unpleasant-smelling glycerin. “First, do the current job well, and then as soon as possible… within two months, find a direction for the future. I can’t do this forever.”

She had to settle down immediately. She didn’t know how to deal with Qi Lian’s side, her relatives and friends from the original Jiang Xiaoyuan, and she even planned to spare some time to visit the hospital to see Sister Zhang and the others, hoping that Zhang Tian could remember to repay the money.

There were still so many things to do. With this in mind, Jiang Xiaoyuan straightened her back and walked out confidently to face the results of her assessment.

She had thoroughly shampooed all the plastic models in the shop, believing she had worked very hard and wasn’t worried about the results. Jiang Xiaoyuan thought that even if she didn’t pass with a perfect score, she would at least get an eighty percent approval rating.

Little did she know, the results greatly exceeded her expectations.

T/N: We got nothing much to say, but Happy New Year, guys! Hope you guys are doing great! I guess one of my new year’s resolution for this year is to complete all the projects that we are currently working on hehe

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  长得柴禾似的 (zhǎngde cháihé shì de): a Chinese idiom that literally means “to look like firewood.” It is used to describe someone who is very thin and frail, often with a hunched back and stooped posture. The phrase can also be used to describe someone who is sickly or weak.