Chapter 144: Am I Supposed to Know?

“My doing?”

“What do you mean, my doing?”

Chen Mo was confused by Li Maode’s question.

“What exactly is going on? What does that empty workshop have to do with me?”

“President Chen doesn’t know?”

“Am I supposed to know?”

Seeing Chen Mo’s expression, Li Maode realized he genuinely looked clueless. After thinking for a moment, he explained:

“That was a machinery factory. Yesterday, about 80% of their employees resigned.”

“And what does their staff quitting have to do with me?”

Chen Mo was even more puzzled.

“Isn’t your garment factory currently hiring? All those employees who quit went over to your place. That machinery factory has now suspended operations. Even if they try to hire new workers, they can’t compete with your factory. This morning, the factory owner came to me to terminate the lease for that workshop—he’s looking to rent a new one somewhere else.”

Li Maode laid out the whole situation.

This didn’t just affect that one machinery factory—other factories in the industrial park were impacted too. The ones hit the hardest were the small factories that hadn’t signed labor contracts with their employees.

Employees who had signed contracts needed to go through formal procedures to resign.

But those in the smaller, contract-less factories? They could leave just by saying they quit.

When Li Maode first heard about this, it gave him a scare. But after seeing that the job posting on the recruitment site was only for 70 people—and that most had already been hired—he finally relaxed.

If other factories experienced the same thing as that machinery factory, with mass resignations and landlords pulling their leases, he’d be in serious trouble.

After all, his income was tied to those rented workshops.

Wait, this really happened?

Chen Mo was stunned after hearing the full story from Li Maode.

Sorry about that, machinery factory boss. I didn’t mean to.

Chen Mo apologized in his heart, then said casually:

“Let’s get back to discussing the rent for the garment factory.”

“Sure!” Li Maode nodded. Until now, he had assumed Chen Mo had done it on purpose to target that factory.

After some negotiation, they settled on a two-year lease at 160,000 yuan per year.

That meant another 320,000 yuan gone from his system funds.

And that didn’t even include renovation costs for the new workshop.

Who would’ve thought that hiring a few fashion designers would lead to such major expenses?

But honestly, these designers were worth every penny.

After signing the contract, Chen Mo contacted the finance department to transfer the payment to Li Maode’s account.

Li Maode said his goodbyes and left.

Once he was gone, Chen Mo turned his focus inward and checked the system panel.

After all his recent spending efforts, his system funds had dropped to just over 16 million yuan. Still a pretty hefty sum.

But Chen Mo wasn’t in a rush.

He hadn’t yet budgeted for renovations, and the 3.2 million yuan earmarked for machinery hadn’t been spent either. Once those two items were handled, the system balance would definitely nosedive.

Not long after—

Shen Rou returned to the office. The fashion designer from earlier hadn’t come back, probably left for the day.

“Shen Rou, this is the new workshop I just rented. Take a look at the info. Contact Wang Yang this afternoon and have him come measure the place tomorrow. Also, have the four rooms upstairs renovated too.”

“Got it, President Chen.”

Shen Rou accepted the documents from Chen Mo, a little bewildered. She’d only stepped out for a short while, and now he’d already rented a whole new workshop? That was fast.

By the time the renovation matters were sorted out, it was nearly lunchtime.

Noticing the time, Shen Rou packed up the workshop documents and went to the cabinet, pulled out a few lunch boxes, and headed to the cafeteria to get their meals.

Chen Mo leaned back comfortably in his chair.

Getting lunch delivered by Shen Rou during work, and dinner brought by Yang Duoduo after hours—now this was the life.

The only downside… was being broke.

That’s right—broke.

He’d had over 80,000 yuan in personal funds, but after one trip home, he was down to less than 40,000.

Sigh…

Other people’s systems gave them instant billions, luxury cars, and beauties by their side.

His system? He had to spend money just to get money back.

And on top of that—

He had to deal with a bunch of sly, lazy employees.

Thankfully, after a series of rearrangements, those troublemakers had all quieted down.

Ring ring ring—

Suddenly, his phone on the desk rang.

Tang Qiu.

He answered the call.

“President Chen, the 500,000 yuan worth of cat and dog food has been prepped at the factory. If you’re ready, it can be shipped out tomorrow.”

“Okay, let’s ship it tomorrow,” Chen Mo replied after thinking about his schedule. Other than Wang Yang coming to measure the workshop, there wasn’t much else going on. No need for him to be there personally—someone else could handle it.

“Got it. I’ll tell the factory owner to start loading the goods today.”

With that, Tang Qiu hung up.

………

Employee Cafeteria.

“Old Lu, those new hires—weren’t they from the machinery factory?”

Jiang Cheng looked at the new employees and found them familiar. He recognized them as former coworkers from his time at the machinery factory.

“Not just them. Those guys over there too,” Lu Zhenguo replied, pointing toward another group standing in line. He chuckled dryly.

Back when he quit, he’d casually mentioned the garment factory was hiring while chatting in the dorm.

One of the younger guys from the same dorm looked it up on a job site and confirmed it was true—they were hiring 70 people.

And then… things just snowballed.

Apparently, the machinery factory was now shut down because no one was left to work.

Totally unexpected.

“Hey, Jiang-ge!”

One of the new employees came over with his food and greeted Jiang Cheng.

Jiang Cheng glanced up. It was someone he’d worked with before.

They hadn’t been particularly close, but they had no bad blood either.

So Jiang Cheng nodded and said, “Sit down. Let’s eat together.”

He had no strong feelings about all these ex-machinery workers coming to the garment factory. It didn’t affect the company at all.

Besides, he hadn’t liked that machinery factory anyway. All they did was exploit workers—nonstop.

Otherwise, why would so many people leave the moment the garment factory posted job openings?

“Thanks, Jiang-ge.”

The guy quickly sat down.

Jiang Cheng looked at him and said calmly:

“No need to thank me. That doesn’t fly here. If you want to stay, work hard. Don’t slack off.”

“If I find out you’re slacking, no amount of thanks will save you.”

Since President Chen had promoted him to department head, Jiang Cheng was determined to manage the workshop well. He wasn’t going to keep anyone who tried to get by without pulling their weight.

It was the only way he could repay President Chen’s trust.