Losing Money to Become a Tycoon: Starting with Games
Chapter 348: Caught the Dog
After returning to his residence, Pei Qian first sent a message to Assistant Xin, asking her to take some time after work on Monday to look into the old industrial district of Jingzhou City, find a relatively large factory building, inquire about the price, and roughly estimate the investment required for this haunted house project.
After that, Pei Qian checked the message Tang Yishu had sent him.
Today was Saturday, and quite a few people had gone in to work overtime.
On the surface, Tang Yishu had gone to clean up Yin Tang's litter box, but in reality she was also helping Pei Qian keep an eye on those working overtime, to see whether anyone was crossing the line.
Pei Qian read the message and compared it with the overtime roster submitted by Li Yada.
"A girl wearing framed glasses—this should be Li Yada."
"One with a mole on her face—that should be Xiao Li."
"Very tall, crew cut… huh?"
As soon as Pei Qian compared Tang Yishu's report with Li Yada's submitted list, he immediately spotted a problem.
There was one extra person.
The declared number of people working overtime was five, but according to Tang Yishu's record, there were actually six members of the design team present!
This tall, crew-cut guy should be Chen Kangtuo from the design team, yet he wasn't on the overtime list Li Yada had submitted.
Pei Qian sneered. Hmph, I knew it.
Sure enough, there were always people in the design team who just couldn't let go of their obsession with working overtime.
Caught the dog.
Pei Qian pondered how he should deal with this die-hard repeat offender who was still sneaking in overtime despite repeated warnings.
Fire him on the spot, "send him off joyfully" to a bigger stage to showcase his talents, kill the chicken to scare the monkeys?
No.
That would treat the symptoms but not the root of the problem—momentary satisfaction at the cost of long-term harm.
Pei Qian hadn't asked Tang Yishu to identify exactly who was working overtime on the weekend, nor had he ever considered installing surveillance cameras in the office, all for the same reason.
Suppose he used a "Top-Ranking Elimination System" and transferred Chen Kangtuo to another department. That would essentially signal to all employees that anyone who worked overtime would be eliminated first.
Those who wanted to get promoted would deliberately start working overtime, while those who already wanted to work overtime would go even further. Things would spiral completely out of control.
At that point, Pei Qian would be utterly unable to distinguish who was slacking off and who was a genuine workaholic.
Alternatively, what if Pei Qian warned Chen Kangtuo not to work overtime and strictly prohibited such behavior?
On the surface, that might deter those who wanted to work overtime, but they would simply move into the shadows and start secretly working overtime at home instead.
When everyone is working overtime at home, he would still be unable to tell who was a slacker and who was a grind addict.
So that wouldn't work either!
Whether it was strict attendance checks or installing office surveillance, on one hand it would make many employees subconsciously work harder and reduce their slacking, but on the other hand it would also prevent him from seeing those workaholics hiding in the shadows.
Pei Qian's ultimate goal was to create an environment where everyone could slack off freely, while also making people feel that even if they secretly worked overtime, President Pei wouldn't interfere.
That way, slackers would slack with a clear conscience, while workaholics would secretly work overtime—and only then could the two be clearly distinguished.
After that, Pei Qian could grasp the list of these workaholics and quietly, imperceptibly "arrange" them.
No alerting the enemy.
Thus, Pei Qian didn't act rashly. Instead, he silently noted down the name Chen Kangtuo, preparing to settle accounts later—waiting for autumn to come before delivering a covert blow.
Meanwhile, he was also waiting for more fish to swim into the net.
...
December 6th, Monday.
Pei Qian still arrived at the company at ten in the morning as usual, only to notice that the office seemed a bit emptier than normal today.
After a moment of confusion, he remembered—today was the day of Tengda's recruitment entrance exam.
Quite a few people from HR and Administration had gone out to maintain order at the exam venues.
Although many graduate students from Handong University had come to help, they could only handle auxiliary tasks and still needed people like Hao Yun to lead them.
Pei Qian planned to sit in his office for a bit first, then head over to the exam site for a look.
Recruitment was a major matter, after all. Whether they could screen out more slackers was directly related to the company's future development, so Pei Qian didn't dare take it lightly.
He hadn't been seated for long when Assistant Xin came in to report.
"President Pei, regarding the factory buildings, I've already gathered all the information."
"The abandoned factories in the old industrial district are planned to be developed collectively under the name of a cultural and creative industrial park, so they're not for sale. But the good news is that the rent is very cheap because no one wants them."
"The rent for these factories is only eight or nine yuan per square meter per month. At that level, the cost can basically be ignored."
"If you're planning to convert these factories into a haunted house, then you'll need to carefully plan the scale—how big you want it to be and how many factory plots you'll occupy."
"That way, it'll be easier to calculate the initial investment."
Pei Qian nodded. This was far cheaper than he had expected.
Eight or nine yuan per square meter per month—by that calculation, renting ten thousand square meters, several large factory buildings, would only cost a bit over one million yuan a year. Compared to office buildings, it was a world of difference.
Of course, whether rent was expensive or not ultimately depended on location.
These factories were in a remote area. If you rented them and couldn't make money, that one million-plus a year would be pure waste, so most people weren't willing to take them over.
Assistant Xin continued, "There's a second matter, President Pei. Are we holding a year-end party this year?"
"If we are, it's about time to start preparing."
Pei Qian froze for a moment, then immediately said, "Yes, of course we are!"
How could he almost forget about this?!
What a perfect opportunity to spend money—how could it be missed?
They hadn't held a year-end party last year because Tengda was still too small at the time; there simply weren't enough people for one.
But this year, Tengda had so many employees already—holding a year-end party was only reasonable!
Add some big prizes at the party, plus a "sunshine-for-everyone" consolation prize for every employee—wouldn't that be another huge sum spent right there?
Thank goodness Assistant Xin reminded him!
Assistant Xin nodded. "Alright, President Pei. I'll notify them to start preparing. If you have any requirements for the year-end party, you can bring them up at any time."
Pei Qian said, "There's no other requirements, just make sure it aligns with the Tengda spirit. Understood?"
Assistant Xin replied, "Understood. The prizes will definitely be high-end."
Pei Qian nodded in satisfaction.
After Assistant Xin left, Pei Qian planned to catch up on a bit of TV drama, then head to the exam site after lunch to take a look around.
However, just as he opened the Aili Island website, his phone received a message.
It was from Lin Wan.
"President Pei, BE QUIET already has an initial demo. On the mobile side, the first version of the system prototype has also been roughed out."
"If you have time in the next couple of days, would you like to take a look?"
Pei Qian thought for a moment and started typing: "Alright, I'll go to Shangyang Games tomorrow, and the day after I'll go to OTTO Technology—"
But halfway through typing this line, Pei Qian suddenly felt that something was off—and deleted it all.
He shouldn't go over there himself, he should have them come over instead.
At a stage like this, when it was time to evaluate phased R&D results, Tang Yishu—the nuclear weapon—definitely had to be deployed.
But if Pei Qian brought Tang Yishu along to Shangyang Games or OTTO Technology to inspect their progress, it would look a bit strange.
After all, Tang Yishu's current title was merely "Encouragement Master's Litter-Scooping Assistant." Taking her around everywhere like that felt unjustified and improper, and it would also easily arouse suspicion.
So it would be better to have everyone come to Tengda Games instead, letting them be subtly influenced by Tang Yishu's halo effect without even realizing it.
With that in mind, Pei Qian retyped his reply:
"Then come over to Tengda in the next couple of days to do the demo."
Not long after, Lin Wan replied:
"Alright, President Pei."
...
Noon.
Tengda Recruitment Exam Venue.
Wu Bin ate the meal delivered by Moyu Delivery, full of praise in his heart.
He was the HR from Hengtui Games who had previously tried to poach Hao Qiong, only to get utterly shown up. He had been keeping a close eye on Tengda's recruitment ever since.
Now that the recruitment exam had finally arrived, there was no way he would miss this opportunity.
One subject had already been completed in the morning; it was now the lunch break.
As for this recruitment exam, Wu Bin could only say that it left him with extremely deep impressions.
His first feeling was: strange.
The timing was strange, the process was strange, and even the exam questions themselves were strange.
From a scheduling perspective, holding it on a Monday was downright outrageous.
Many companies held meetings on Mondays, making it extremely difficult to take leave.
As for the process, there were many baffling steps that seemed completely unnecessary.
Wu Bin himself was an HR professional and was very familiar with such procedures.
In his view, although Tengda had already grown to a decent size, organizing such a large-scale unified exam was nothing but taking off one's pants to fart—pointless busywork. It wasted money and effort and was far inferior to standard recruitment methods.
What confused him the most was that one part of the recruitment process was actually something called the Tengda Spirit Compatibility Test. If you didn't pass it, you couldn't be formally hired. That, too, was pretty absurd.
And the questions were genuinely difficult!
Wu Bin had taken civil service exams and other similar written tests before and had prepared for such questions.
He had originally thought that since Tengda was just a private company, the written exam would be much easier.
But he couldn't have been more wrong.
The difficulty level of these questions was unprecedented!
The entire morning nearly broke Wu Bin mentally. He had thought his preparation was extremely thorough, yet he was still ground into the dust by these high-difficulty questions.
But there was nothing to be done about it.
After all, Tengda's benefits were excellent.
You could tell just from this lunch.
There were at least several hundred job applicants in this hotel venue, and Tengda was directly providing meals. Just this one expense alone had to be at least tens of thousands of yuan.
And this wasn't even the only exam site.
Hiring these graduate students to invigilate the exams and grade the papers would probably cost another huge sum of money.
Sigh~ being rich really is nice.
As Wu Bin ate the Moyu Delivery meal, he couldn't help but daydream about how wonderful it would be if he could one day enter Tengda and work there.
After finishing lunch, Wu Bin noticed that quite a few people were leaving the venue.
For those applicants who had come from other cities, Tengda had arranged accommodations, so they could head back to their rooms to rest a bit and then return before the afternoon session began.
Wu Bin, however, lived locally in Jingzhou, so he didn't enjoy such treatment.
He could have gone home to rest, but the round trip would be troublesome, so there was no point in going through the hassle.
With nothing else to do, Wu Bin's gaze swept across the hall as he observed the other candidates—his competitors.
Young people made up the overwhelming majority, and many of them were clearly university students from Jingzhou.
That was only natural. Seniors were in the midst of a frantic job-hunting phase and certainly wouldn't miss an exam like this.
As for employed professionals around Wu Bin's age, many had either been unwilling to give up their year-end bonuses or found it difficult to take leave on a Monday, so quite a few had simply given up.
"It feels like Tengda really favors younger employees,"
Wu Bin murmured to himself.
"I wonder if an old slacker like me even stands a chance of passing."
A hint of melancholy crept into Wu Bin's heart.
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