Chapter 5
Edward Quan ·
“This is the notice about the dinner. It says leave requests are, in principle, not permitted.”
“And this is HR’s chat history asking us to complete facial recognition and authorize electronic signatures.”
There was silence on the other end for a few seconds.
“Preserve the originals. Don’t delete anything. The company cannot require employees to sign again or withdraw their complaints.”
After I hung up, everyone in the meeting room seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.
The boss looked at me.
“You’re really going to do this?”
I said, “You’re the one who did this first.”
He gave a cold laugh.
“If the company goes under, you won’t get a cent.”
I looked at him.
“You weren’t paying us when the company was still standing, either.”
That left him completely speechless.
That afternoon, labor inspectors arrived at the company.
The boss could no longer suppress the matter by calling it an “internal discussion.”
Documents were spread all over the large meeting-room table.
Employee contracts.
Wage statements.
Records of unpaid performance pay.
Screenshots of reimbursement approvals.
The red-envelope page screen recording.
Electronic-signature logs.
Videos from the dinner at Jinlan Villa.
The admin system’s configuration logs.
Ms. Zhou sat beside the boss, her face pale.
An inspector asked the company:
“Did the claim page prominently warn employees that tapping it would affect their wages, bonuses, reimbursements, employment relationship, and economic compensation?”
HR stammered, “It was in the agreement appendix…”
“I asked whether there was a prominent warning.”
No one spoke.
The inspector asked again:
“Why was the event template named ‘Mass Settlement Plan for Employees with Unpaid Wages’?”
The boss said, “The internal tech team was careless with the name.”
Lu Chuan slid the creation history forward.
“The account that created it belongs to the boss himself.”
The inspector glanced at the boss and made a note.
9
I brought out the email.
The client had paid the remaining balance half a month earlier.
But the boss had told the internal group chat:
“The client still hasn’t paid. The company’s cash flow is under a lot of pressure. I hope you’ll understand.”
More importantly, an email he’d sent to Finance said:
“Don’t disclose the money that’s already come in for now. Keep pressing the payroll issue. We’ll deal with it after the co-creation plan goes through.”
The meeting room fell utterly silent.
Even Xia He looked at me differently now.
So it wasn’t that the company had no money at all.
He’d simply put his employees’ wages last.
The inspector placed the email in the file folder.
“We’ll look closely into this.”
A vein twitched at the boss’s temple.
He finally lost his patience and called me outside to talk.
I didn’t move.
“Say it here.”
He held back his anger.
“Lin Zhao, don’t back me into a corner. I can pay you half your bonus up front. Tell the others to stop making a scene.”
I started recording on my phone.
“Could you say that again?”
The boss’s face stiffened.
I looked at him.
“Weren’t you out of money? How can you pay half now?”
He said nothing.
At that moment, the last bit of hope in me disappeared.
He wasn’t helpless.
He was calculating.
Calculating who would be easiest to fool.
Who would be afraid of a hassle.
Who would swallow the money they were owed for the sake of a dinner, a worthless red envelope, and his claim that adults had to take responsibility.
That evening, the boss sent a long message to the main employee chat.
“The company has come a long way since it was founded. I have always treated everyone as partners.”
“The co-creation plan was intended to let everyone share in the company’s future profits. There was no deception.”
“The terms were perfectly clear. Certain individuals are deliberately misrepresenting them and inciting conflict. The company reserves the right to pursue the matter.”
“Employees who claimed the red envelope and completed the confirmation should respect their own choices.”
I looked at the phrase “certain individuals” and knew he meant me.
Soon, Ms. Zhou posted in our department chat, too:
“Everyone, don’t let yourselves be misled. The company needs stability most of all right now. You’ve already signed, so please follow the process. Don’t make a big issue out of nothing.”
A small issue.
Several months of wages.
More than twenty thousand in reimbursements.
A change to our employment relationship.
In her mouth, they were all small issues.
Xia He replied first:
“Please pay our wages first.”
A Kun chimed in:
“Please settle our overtime pay first.”
Xiao Song wrote:
“Please reimburse us first.”
Lu Chuan dropped the labor inspector’s receipt into the chat.
“Please cooperate with the investigation.”
The group went quiet for a few seconds.
Then the message “Please pay our wages first” began filling the screen, over and over.
For the first time, I felt that everyone had truly woken up.
The next day, the boss changed tactics.
He stopped yelling in the group chat.
Instead, he sent me a private message.
“Lin Zhao, let’s talk privately.”
I replied:
“If you have anything to say, go through the labor inspector or send it in writing by email.”