After the company declared bankruptcy, 48-year-old Chen Min suddenly lost his motivation to live. In order to find a stable job, Chen Min has gone through two rounds of interviews, two departures, and hundreds of resume submissions. She had been struggling in Shenzhen for more than 20 years, and what came to her was a new dilemma. This dilemma belongs to middle-aged people, but also to women.
1
After the company declared bankruptcy, the first thing I did was to go on a “trip” with my former colleagues.
The first stop was my colleague Lily’s hometown Hengyang. We left from Shenzhen, took the train, then transferred to a bus, and arrived in the countryside at 8:00 pm. Her parents were going to bed, so they left us a meal. Outside the house was dark, the sound of frogs, insects and tractors dominated the night. Lily lamented that after more than twenty years of work, she had never been home at this time of day. The three of us chatted in the dark, talking about the way out, retirement and supporting our parents into the early hours of the morning, and the more we talked, the more panicked we became.
Fifteen days ago, on June 20, we lost our jobs. At 9:10 a.m. that day, a message suddenly popped up in the company’s WeChat work group: “On the 30th of this month, all employees are invited to return to the company to do the departure procedures, so you can go find a new job. “The Hong Kong-owned garment company, which was already listed, did not survive the epidemic and finally filed for bankruptcy.
In 2001, I came to Shenzhen from Shanghai to work and became a member of the management of this factory. Most of my colleagues were the first women to work in Shenzhen, and we worked together for more than 10 years. Since the epidemic, the factory was shut down and all employees were paid 1400 RMB per month. We were over 40 years old on average, and had no choice but to stay in the “family” with our salaries.
Going north from Hengyang, I took two colleagues back home to Hefei. My father wiped his eyes in surprise and asked me why I came back at this time, my answer was the same as Lily’s: the factory was on vacation. If I had told the truth, my father must have been more anxious than I was.
This was my first trip since I joined the workforce. For many years, the company only took three days off for the November and May Day holidays, and the five-day annual leave was offset by three days of Christmas leave and Hong Kong’s handover holiday. During the week, we take small and large weeks, keep an eye on the goods, and return customer e-mails whenever and wherever possible. After losing my job, my colleague and I wanted to go to the popular tourist cities in China, but we felt sorry for not going back to see our parents. Finally, we decided to see the scenery in each other’s hometown.
Eight days later, I returned home to Shenzhen. A house and family of my own, the fruit of my years in Shenzhen. My husband is in the insurance sales industry, and my daughter graduated from college this year. There is no longer anyone at home who takes money, except for the elderly and me.
My husband asked me what my future plans were. I asked back, “Do you have any idea about me being unemployed? ” He said: “I don’t care, anyway, there are still a few years to go before you retire, I’m afraid you stay at home anxious! “
He was right, the first week after losing my job, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I bought a stack of motivational books from the Internet and didn’t read a single page into them. Every day, after I failed to read, I walked around the house in my pajamas, talking to former co-workers on the phone and encouraging each other.
In a few days, on the way to the family dinner out, my daughter laughed and said, “I’ll give you a piece of advice, don’t be angry. Recently you are like a resentful woman, do not pay attention to their image at all; also move to lose temper, my father and I are a little afraid of you. She said, “Are you going through early menopause? “
I felt a “thud” in my heart.
“I have? I’m used to going to work, and suddenly stop to adapt. I defended myself.
My husband, who had been silent, said, “Yes, you have to go out and find a job. “
After that day, I put my resume on all the job boards. Two weeks passed and I didn’t receive a single interview.
2
In order to be brave, I asked two other old colleagues, Ah Fang and Ah Xiu, to patrol the streets together and find a way out.
We gathered at the entrance of an industrial zone in Longgang District, where factories are classified as very mixed, with a large proportion of garment production. On the wall at the entrance of the industrial area, there were many job advertisements. I saw a job posting written: “recruiting senior foreign trade order manager”, job requirements and company name seems to have seen somewhere. A check, it turns out that two weeks ago, I had cast a resume to this place.
The company is in an old building on the seventh floor, the elevator opened, we are facing the front desk. I hadn’t looked for a job in years, so I was nervous and walked in to say hello. Xiu and Fang pretended they didn’t know me and walked to the other end.
There was a young girl sitting at the reception desk. She gave me a job information sheet and a test paper, and told me to sit on the chair next to her and write. The content of the test paper is very conventional, the basic operation of foreign trade orders, requiring 60 minutes to do, I 30 minutes to turn in the paper.
She swept the paper with an appreciative eye and told me to wait a while. Twenty-five minutes later, she came out of an office and spoke to me: “Our boss said, let you go back and wait for news. “
I couldn’t help but ask in a whisper, little beauty, I gave you a resume two weeks ago, I have not been informed that I came to interview. Please tell me the truth, so I don’t have to go back and forth.
The beautiful girl took a look at the boss’s office. Perhaps out of sympathy, she lowered the volume and told me: “The boss said that female employees over 40 years old, not recruiting. You can check the phone number of the recruiting unit on the Internet, call and ask, and inform you to go to the interview and then go over, so as not to run in vain. “
We continue to patrol the streets. Look at my sadness, Fang said angrily, more than 40 years old, not maternity leave, not easily resign, which is not the most prime age of women? Those young people, just learn a little experience to jump ship, recruit them in, is not a waste of manpower and material resources? Do foreign trade with the order is not engaged in scientific research, I really do not know how the bosses are thinking!
We suddenly thought, is not our own can also be the boss it? Doing so many years of clothing trade, we know how to get the cheapest goods. If a few of us pool our money to share the rent and take orders ourselves, what’s not to like? Ah Xiu added: “Dong Mingzhu is not also 40 years old after the start of the sale of air conditioners? “
The three people perked up a bit and began to observe the stores on the street. Half of the stores on the street in front of us were closed. To make sure we were not wrong, we turned back from the end of the street and counted again: a total of thirty-four stores, sixteen of which were closed. We walked three or four more streets and found that half of the stores on the street near the industrial area were closed due to the epidemic. It was not the right time to be my own boss, at least not now.
One day later, I was cooking dinner and heard Shenzhen TV reporting on age discrimination in the job market. It was about a man who was 46 years old and had applied successfully for a job at a company, but was rejected again on the day he reported for work. He approached the media to complain that the company was discriminating. A viewer said in the comment section that even if you are successful in your complaint, who can guarantee that your boss will not give you small shoes when you go back to the company?
I realized that these companies do not want people over 40 years old, and that it is useless to complain.
3
Two days later, Xiaohong, who had been working as a logistics supervisor in the company, announced that she had found a new job. She went to work as a caregiver in a private kindergarten, cleaning and taking care of the children for a few thousand dollars a month.
This gave me a new idea. I started to search online for “caregiver”, “cleaning lady”, “child care worker” and “child care worker”. cleaning staff” and “receptionist”. Sure enough, a children’s education institution a few hundred meters away from my house was looking for a receptionist. The monthly salary is 3,000 to 4,000, not including food and accommodation. I estimate that in Shenzhen, these wages can barely survive, and the work is not skilled, young people should not be interested in competing with me.
I dialed the phone number above and told the personnel that I lived nearby. The other side told me to bring my resume to the interview at three o’clock that afternoon. At noon, I ate haphazardly, packed and dressed with care, arrived at 2:30 and knocked on the door at 3:00.
A woman who looked like she was in her thirties enthusiastically asked me to go upstairs and talk. She smiled and took my resume. When she saw my birth year, her smile froze and her eyes scanned the resume section.
She looked at me and said, “When you came in, I thought you were only in your thirties. We’re looking for a receptionist to come in right now, and this is more than enough work for you. “Then the conversation turned,” but the boss asked to recruit women under 35 years old. I can’t even protect myself if I recruit you, when the head office comes down with accountability. I’m sorry that I didn’t ask your age on the phone and caused you to make a trip for nothing. She handed me back my resume.
I walked to a nearby KFC and drank cold drinks furiously into the air conditioner, hoping to dispel the desperate feeling of annoying heat.
I opened my cell phone address book and scrolled down from top to bottom, subconsciously asking for help from my acquaintances. I dialed the phone number of my apprentice Wang Fenfang, who had applied for a job at our company when she graduated from college more than a decade ago, and I insisted on keeping her after the interview. After we worked together for five years, she jumped to another bigger company.
She was surprised to hear about my recent situation and advised me to take this opportunity to find something I like to do.
It’s not that I hadn’t thought about it. After I lost my job, I remembered that I had many dreams before I started working. I wanted to be a writer, and I also wanted to open my own clothing store. But after years of working, these things are far away from me.
I said, “I don’t even know what I like anymore except for work. “
She paused for a few seconds and said, “A colleague in our group went on maternity leave last month, and we need to recruit one over. The work is simpler than your original, and the salary is not as high as your original. One more thing, you will be my group member, can you accept it? I’ll talk to the manager about it. “
Ten minutes later, Wang Fenfang called me back and told me to go to their company for an interview.
4
I entered the group where Fanfan Wang was working, and my colleagues knew where I was coming from.
There was another employee in the group, Xiao Xu, who was 37 years old. One day at noon, I heard her and her husband on the phone, cursing and crying at the same time. When she hung up the phone, she rushed back to make lunch for her children. Colleagues told me that she had come to the company for three years, lived a cautious life, and rarely took the initiative to talk. She has two children at home, her parents are in the countryside, and most of the expenses depend on her.
My relationship with Xiao Xu became strained due to the new layoff plan. The company, which specializes in Olympic trademark products, was also affected by the epidemic and cut its orders by most of this year. The company’s rules stipulated that one person from each group would be laid off, which meant that Xu and I could only keep one.
On August 18, Fanfan Wang went on a business trip to inspect the goods, and I received a batch of orders with special requirements, not knowing how to operate the information classification.
I took the orders and went to the workstation next to Xu and said: “Xu, I do not know how to split these orders into the company system, you teach me, thank you! She looked at the orders handed over and said, “It’s not complicated, I have a dozen pages of orders to enter into the system of customers from three countries. Then, she found the dozen pages of orders to me to see.
Earlier, I thought of Xiao Xu’s difficulties, moved to resign, and also wanted to find the opportunity to reveal the news to her. I was silent for a few seconds and said, “Oh, so, why don’t you teach me to enter this order into the computer first. It’s so hard, I don’t even want to work here anymore. “
Xu will look at me skeptically, “I came in when they did not teach me, it is my own fumbling, do more is not complicated. “
At my begging, she began to enter the information in the computer of this batch of special requirements orders, without saying a word. I watched in silence for more than an hour.
The next day after work, I told Wang Fenfang about my own tangle: I did not want to squeeze Xu out, but also angry that she was so defensive of me. I sputtered for a while, my anger subsided again, or decided to quit the competition.
On August 25, I handed my resignation letter to the manager. At noon that day, the manager came over to persuade me not to mind the money, after all, work is difficult to find. I excused myself, saying that it was only because the daily commute took four hours, and my body just couldn’t take it anymore.
On the night of the departure banquet, in front of the whole company, the manager mentioned once again about my departure. She said to me, “Your ability and response are no worse than your younger colleagues, but if it wasn’t for Fanny Wang, you wouldn’t have had a chance! Do you want to reconsider, this time the layoff is not you.
I glanced at Xiao Xu next to me with my afterglow, she lowered her head and pretended to drink water, looking uncomfortable. The colleagues listened and agreed with the manager, persuading me to stay.
I picked up the glass, stood up and said: “Manager Zheng, this glass of wine I toast you! Although I have only been here for less than two months, I think you and your colleagues are really nice. However, my home is really too far from the company, and I really can’t eat. The manager also raised his glass and said: “At this age, we can not fight, not to fight. “
I just sat down, Xiao Xu and I clinked glasses and asked softly: “Sister Min, you really quit! “I nodded my head. She asked a round about my situation, her expression relaxed: “like you such conditions, do not have to come out to work. “
At 9:30 p.m., the leaving party broke up. In early September, the summer night in Shenzhen was very windy, and the light passed through the leaves, reflecting shadows on the road. I walked and talked with my new colleagues, my heart welling up with a sense of attachment. Many young people skipped past me, and I wanted to take out my phone to shoot their backs, but I didn’t because I was afraid my colleagues would see me.
I thought to myself, “Tomorrow will be another day when I don’t have to go to work.
5
Under constant pressure, the first weekend after I left my job, I made up my mind to go to work as a real estate agent. Although there was no base salary and no suitable client base, the manager did not refuse me to join with the largest age in the group.
This company is a well-known chain of real estate companies in Shenzhen. I followed the example of my 90s and 00s colleagues and called the phone numbers of website customers for seven days in a row before someone finally said they wanted to buy a house.
I held the phone to my ear, afraid to miss any information point. I put the phone down and worked excitedly overtime until 11:30, finding a total of seven options. If the house sold, the commission would be higher than my annual salary from my previous job.
The next day, at 9:45, a middle-aged man paced in and stared at the youngest colleague, Xiao Huang, asking with a smile on his face if she was the one who called yesterday. When I stood up and said “Yes, I am”, his eyelids suddenly pulled down.
With my experience over the years, I think he just came to have fun. Before I finished my introduction, he said he was not interested in the listing and would not look at it. The manager chided me for not doing my best, and I said that this man was either here to buy a house or to flirt with a pretty little girl. The manager didn’t believe me.
The next afternoon, Xiao Huang called again to invite him to see the seven houses I introduced, and the other party agreed. At around nine o’clock in the evening, Xiao Huang returned to the company, the briefcase to the desk heavily: “This person always wants to take advantage of me, a few times he tried to pull my hand, I dodged. And said the house today to look at is not ideal, but to keep in touch, I believe a ghost! “
She said towards me: “Sister Chen, you have a great eye for people, the old journeyman ah. “
My last order was to help a woman in her thirties to rent an apartment: the rent could not exceed two thousand, two rooms, finely decorated, near the subway entrance. I learned from my colleagues to run the plate in the residential area near the subway and get close to the security guards. Shenzhen’s summer heat was breathless, and I searched all day, but found nothing.
The next day I searched the streets and found an A4 sheet of paper taped to the side wall of a newsstand with handwritten rental information and contact numbers. I hurriedly tore it down and finalized the viewing. On the third morning, an hour after the appointment time, the client showed up with a small dog in her arms.
She scanned around and got angry: “This house is no good, it’s too dark! I told you, I want good light from the north and south, the house you showed me is not for people! “
The landlord immediately anxious, I pulled the customer out of the door, accompanied by a smile: “Beauty, this lot is expensive, can only be rented to the old house, you know, old residential buildings are not very good on the house type. “
“I pay you to find a satisfactory house! You delayed me half a day to show me this garbage house, this is the efficiency of the work? “
“You asked for it the day before yesterday, and you had an appointment to see the house yesterday, that’s not bad efficiency, right? “I want to curse, and want to give my not-so-young self a little virtue, and finally retorted.
The woman looked at me and said lightly, “I’m thirsty from walking half a day. “I took out the water in my backpack, unscrewed the cap and handed it over to her. She took a sip, picked up her puppy and said, “Boy, let’s go, such a garbage house still let us see”, turned her head and walked away.
I shouted at her back: “Take care, goodbye. “No one responded. I felt a sense of humiliation in my heart and thought of leaving my job
6
The day after I resigned from the real estate company, I went to several kindergartens and shopping malls and approached the people in charge directly, asking if they were looking for janitors and stockers. I was told that they don’t recruit inexperienced people.
I gave up completely on finding a job.
On Friday of that week, six old colleagues and I arranged to meet at a restaurant near my former company. We talked about the past, and all the arguments we once had became beautiful. The reality seemed hopeless: except for Xiaohong and Xiangmei, the rest of us were unemployed. A-hsiu’s second child has already stopped her tutoring classes because her family has no money; Lily and Fang, who live at home with their in-laws every day, feel that their family status is gradually declining and are afraid to talk more. Xiangmei, who found a job in insurance sales, began to calculate expenses in the supermarket and shop carefully.
I said, a few days ago there was a news, a few mothers on Taobao selling wool, live teaching knitting sweaters, monthly income of more than a million. You guys say I go to the stall, selling the handmade bags I made line?
This is probably the only hobby I’ve had for decades, outside of work. My time off is almost all spent on hand-made bags and doll sewing, the family has saved three big boxes, has not been able to throw. I’ve been thinking about selling them at a stall for a long time, but I don’t have the courage to sell them. People say I’m keeping up with the times – isn’t this year’s promotion of the stall economy?
When I got home, I told my family about the idea of setting up a stall. My husband’s face sank: “I lack you to eat, less you wear it? By our colleagues and friends see, and think how I abuse you? You’d better go find a job and do it. “I said, what can’t I do?
In the evening, I put my small bag, small doll and earrings from home into the bag and went to the subway entrance. At six o’clock, the rush hour was approaching, and among the crowd coming out of the subway, a few occasionally glanced at me. I said to myself, “Come and have a look, it doesn’t matter if you don’t buy, but I just didn’t dare to say anything.
An hour passed, I smelled the aroma of sweet potatoes wafting from the next stall, remembered that I had not eaten dinner, and asked the stall’s sister: “Sweet? Give me one. “
The elder sister looked up, her face was sunburned and baked sweet potatoes as dark as the hands. Her hair was tied haphazardly with a rubber band, and half of her bangs were stuck to her head with sweat.
I took the sweet potatoes and ate them while striking up a conversation: “Good baking, fragrant and sweet, where did you buy them and how much is a pound? “She did not answer me, and asked me somewhat guardedly where I was from, whether I also want to bake sweet potatoes to sell?
I quickly waved my hand. Seeing that she couldn’t take care of the sweet potatoes when a customer came to buy them, I went over to help her, and the air finally heated up. Sister said she previously worked as a waitress in a restaurant, the restaurant has no business this time, she lost her job. She used to sell baked sweet potatoes in her hometown and returned to her old job. She also pointed to another middle-aged woman selling books and told me that the woman had previously worked in a shopping mall and had come here to sell books after she lost her job.
After 8 p.m., there were more and more people hanging out and setting up stalls. An older woman, about seventy years old, squatted down in front of my stall, picked up several small bags and looked them over, giving her opinion: some had too many stitches and some used extra materials. A few other older women said that fewer and fewer people are doing handicrafts nowadays and asked me how much it cost.
At 8:30, Xiangmei came up to my stall in professional clothes, pointed to the ground and said: “Beauty, this, that, and that I want all. “I hastily slapped away her hand:” business, stop! “
See me a little scared, she put the briefcase on the ground, pick up the small package yell: “passing by, come to see, all handmade limited small package, unique in the world! “said while loading cell phones into the small bag to demonstrate the capacity. I peeked at both sides of the stall, fortunately, they are busy with their own, no nasty expression.
At 9:30, Xiangmei and I combed through the night’s earnings: $190 in the bank, $155 removed from costs, manual fees excluded, and an average income of $10 per hour.
This is the first money I have earned since I lost my job. Before that, I had been asking my husband for 4,000 yuan a month. Sometimes, he forgot to give it to me voluntarily, and when I asked for it, I was bottomless. I remember clearly that the streetlights were particularly bright on this night, and Xiangmei and I walked downtown at night, imagining what would happen when the business became bigger. It was the happiest night I’d had in six months.
*Personnel in this article are pseudonyms to protect the privacy of the people involved
Recent Comments