Hearing the number “5,000 yuan,” a ripple of emotion appeared in Meng Chang’s otherwise dead-like eyes.
“Huh? 5,000 yuan?”
“Didn’t you say before that the base salary was 4,000 yuan, with an additional 2,000 yuan minimum commission if I lasted two weeks?”
“Now that there’s no minimum commission, is the extra 1,000 yuan added as encouragement because you see how hard I’ve been working?”
Meng Chang suddenly felt a little touched.
Although it wasn’t much money, it was quite heartwarming.
Pei Qian was stunned for a moment. “Huh? Did I only mention a 1,000 yuan base salary before?”
“I’m sorry, I remembered wrong. I thought it was 2,000 yuan all along.”
“Then we should still follow the agreement…”
Meng Chang: “…”
The light in his eyes quickly dimmed again, replaced by an expression of bewilderment, confusion, and disbelief.
This was so infuriating!
Even if you remembered wrong, shouldn’t you just let the mistake stand and give me the extra 1,000 yuan?
How could you take back what you’d already said?
Deliberate—this must be deliberately trying to anger me!
Meng Chang was silent for a moment. “Mr. Pei, I quit! I want to terminate the agreement!”
Pei Qian hurriedly stood up. “Don’t be impulsive! Let’s talk this through. Don’t break up over a single disagreement.”
“How about this—seeing how hard you’ve been working, I’ll give you an extra 1,000 yuan out of my own pocket! What do you think?”
Hearing Meng Chang say he wanted to quit, Pei Qian became a bit anxious.
Don’t quit, please! If you quit, where would I find someone with your talent in marketing?
I can’t trust outsiders!
It was only because Meng Chang was burdened with massive debt that Pei Qian could manipulate him freely, using this method to stimulate him to seriously create reverse marketing campaigns.
Although Meng Chang hadn’t had any particularly successful marketing cases so far, he had one major advantage: he wouldn’t be corrupted by the Tenda spirit.
If someone else took his place, they might quickly become completely assimilated, causing the entire advertising and marketing department to rapidly fall, becoming like the other departments—useless for anything except making money and stabbing Mr. Pei in the heart.
So, Meng Chang couldn’t leave!
The advertising and marketing department would be incomplete without Meng Chang!
To keep Meng Chang, Pei Qian was making a significant sacrifice. These extra 1,000 yuan wouldn’t be reimbursed by the system; he had to pay out of his own pocket.
Fortunately for the current Mr. Pei, although he hadn’t lost much money and hadn’t converted much of his business assets to personal wealth, he had still managed to save up some money by frequently freeloading meals at the company.
His personal assets had exceeded 3 million yuan.
He could easily afford the 1,000 yuan.
It wasn’t much money, but he was somewhat reluctant to part with it. However, for longer-term benefits and to retain Meng Chang, this expense couldn’t be spared.
Meng Chang’s face turned green. “Mr. Pei, my mind is made up. Nothing you say will change it!”
Because of this 1,000 yuan, Meng Chang had finally exploded.
Look at what Mr. Pei was saying!
Out of his own pocket to give me an extra 1,000 yuan?
There were so many issues with this statement that he didn’t even know where to begin!
The entire Tenda Group was his, and weren’t all those advertising budgets of several hundred thousand or even millions allocated to the advertising department by him? Couldn’t he spend them however he wanted?
If he just took a few coins out of the advertising budget, wouldn’t that solve my base salary and commission problems for a long time to come? Did he need to pay out of his own pocket?
And even if he was paying out of his own pocket, why did it seem like this 1,000 yuan was such a struggle for him?
The entire Tenda Group was his personal property. Not to mention cash flow, he had bought several buildings. His net worth must be several billion yuan. Not just 1,000 yuan—even if he took out 10 million yuan on the spot, it wouldn’t be difficult!
Yet he made it seem like he was making a huge decision to give 1,000 yuan?
Keep pretending, go on!
I’ll be the first to object if the Oscars don’t give you a gold statue!
After being tormented for so long, Meng Chang’s perception of money had severely atrophied.
Or rather, had it become more acute?
In the past, when squandering investors’ money, he wouldn’t bat an eye at hundreds of thousands or millions, being quite extravagant.
But now, for some unknown reason, he was agonizing over this base salary of a few thousand yuan.
He suddenly realized that this wasn’t the life he should be living.
No more—no matter what anyone said, he wouldn’t suffer such humiliation here any longer!
Meng Chang’s face was full of determination.
No matter how eloquent you are, I will never be fooled by you again!
Seeing Meng Chang’s expression, Pei Qian felt something was wrong.
How could the only person in the entire Tenda Group who was aligned with him also want to leave?
“Here, have some tea and calm down. Don’t be impulsive.”
“Think about it again. There’s still a long time ahead.”
“We signed a ten-year agreement, and less than half a year has passed so far. We’ve barely started!”
Meng Chang had picked up the teacup intending to take a sip, but upon hearing this, he immediately put it down.
“Then I want to leave even more!”
Pei Qian: “…”
Great, another misunderstanding.
Pei Qian quickly explained, “What I meant was that with our unremitting efforts, your marketing plans are getting closer and closer to success.”
“Perhaps in a few more months, you’ll be able to get the full commission!”
“It’s just an unfortunate start, earning only the base salary for a few months. Giving up on the high commissions for the next ten years because of this small setback would be too unwise!”
Pei Qian tried to reason with and appeal to Meng Chang’s emotions, hoping he would abandon the idea of running away.
However, Meng Chang gave a polite smile, his face clearly saying “Yeah, right.”
The implication was, you’ve been deceiving me for months, and you really plan to deceive me for ten years?
Although he was currently blacklisted for defaulting on debts, which made finding a job difficult, Meng Chang was still confident in himself. Even after a failed startup, what was the difficulty in earning thirty to fifty thousand yuan per month as a diligent employee?
At Tenda, while ideally he could earn 200,000 yuan in commission each month and repay his debt much faster, this money was like a carrot dangling in front of a donkey—visible but untouchable. What use was it if he couldn’t actually get it?
Moreover, working elsewhere would lead to constant accumulation. The earnings might start small but could increase over time, still offering hope of paying off the debt early.
So, Meng Chang was determined to leave.
No matter how eloquent Mr. Pei was, he absolutely would not be fooled again!
Pei Qian was also somewhat helpless, seeing that Meng Chang was adamant about leaving.
In that moment, he slightly regretted not making the breach of contract penalties heavier when they initially signed the agreement…
The agreement they’d signed didn’t set the breach of contract penalties too strictly, only stipulating that the defaulting party had to pay a certain percentage of the original debt amount as a penalty.
The three-year term had the lightest penalty, while the ten-year term had the heaviest, but even the heaviest penalty was only 30% of the original debt amount.
Of course, since Meng Chang owed several million, this penalty would also be over a million.
But Meng Chang was clearly in a state of “too many lice to itch, too much debt to worry about.” He already had to repay several million in debt—what was another million in penalties?
But there was nothing to be done. When Pei Qian created this agreement, he didn’t dare set the penalty too high for fear of scaring Meng Chang away.
If Pei Qian had initially set the penalty at ten times the debt, tens of millions, Meng Chang would certainly have suspected a huge conspiracy and never signed the agreement at all.
It was precisely because the penalty wasn’t that high that Meng Chang took the bait.
So, there was no use regretting it now.
Pei Qian silently took a sip of tea, continuing to think of new arguments.
“Meng Chang, I think we both need to calm down and weigh the pros and cons carefully.”
“Working for me, I’ve waived all the interest on your debt, which is a benefit you receive as a Tenda employee. If you go to work for another company, I would have no reason to continue waiving this interest, right?”
“I won’t charge too much—I’m not going to take advantage of you with the highest private lending rates. But even using normal bank commercial loan rates, if these few million take ten or twenty years to repay, just calculate how much interest that would be.”
“Are you sure you want to leave Tenda?”
Pei Qian didn’t know exactly how much this would be, but anyone who’s bought a house with a mortgage knows that while bank loans seem to have low interest rates, once extended to ten or twenty years, it becomes a frighteningly large number.
For a loan of 5 million yuan, the interest alone could be 2-3 million yuan. This wasn’t exaggerated at all.
If soft tactics didn’t work, he had to resort to hard ones. Since Meng Chang was insistent on leaving, Pei Qian didn’t mind playing the villain.
Meng Chang: “…”
He never expected Mr. Pei to have this trick up his sleeve. How despicable!
Initially, he had only considered the breach penalty, thinking that 1 million yuan, though painful, was still tolerable.
But if interest was added, it became intolerable!
Adding everything up, the debt would almost double, making the difficulty of repaying through regular employment increase dramatically—it would become an almost impossible task.
Meng Chang slumped on the sofa, looking somewhat desperate.
“Mr. Pei, you won’t be happy until you see me dead, will you?”
“I understand now. This was a trap from the beginning. You just want me to work for you for free for the rest of my life!”
“All I wanted was to scam some money from investors at the start. There are plenty of entrepreneurs who scam investors, why are you fixating on me and torturing just me…”
Meng Chang wasn’t pretending anymore, reaching a point of giving up.
Pei Qian noticed this state wasn’t right.
Don’t give up!
He quickly coughed lightly: “You’ve misunderstood. I absolutely have no intention of harming you. I’m sincerely looking out for your benefit, wanting you to clear your debt quickly!”
Meng Chang responded skeptically: “Mr. Pei, do you even believe that yourself? If you hadn’t been sabotaging everything, I would have earned the high commission long ago!”
Pei Qian: “?”
How could this blame be shifted onto me?
Haven’t I been helping you all along?
This is like a dog biting Lü Dongbin (a Chinese idiom meaning to mistake kindness for malice)!
Pei Qian said, “Fine, I won’t hold the previous instances against you. But what about this marketing plan for the Inspiration Class? How can you blame that on me?”
“Does it have anything to do with me?”
Meng Chang opened his mouth but was momentarily speechless.
It seemed… it really had nothing to do with Mr. Pei.
Thinking carefully about this Inspiration Class marketing plan, the reason it had achieved such a good promotional effect was mainly due to several coincidences overlapping and producing an inexplicable chemical reaction.
Old Qiao and Yu Fei’s incorrect statements were one aspect, and the internet users’ incorrect assumptions were another.
Using incorrect known conditions, they had derived correct conclusions.
In this process, Mr. Pei truly wasn’t at fault, because Mr. Pei couldn’t manipulate internet users.
If Mr. Pei himself, or if he had hinted to other official personnel to leak the news about the Inspiration Class’s copyright development, some traces could definitely be found online. And if Mr. Pei had anonymously released the news, it wouldn’t have much credibility, and internet users definitely wouldn’t buy it.
Only when internet users spontaneously reasoned and believed in all of this would the current situation arise.
In other words, blaming Mr. Pei for this was indeed inappropriate.
Let’s not mention the previous times, but this time, Mr. Pei truly wasn’t at fault.
Meng Chang’s mouth twitched slightly: “Then I have even more reason to leave! If you didn’t interfere and instead fully supported me, yet I still failed, that indicates the difficulty of this task far exceeds my imagination, and the chances of success are extremely slim.”
“So why should I persist?”
Pei Qian: “…”
This Meng Chang was quite a logical thinker, not easy to deceive.
But that was fine. He would increase the deception effort.
It might even be necessary to personally take action and prove it to him.
Pei Qian thought for a moment and continued, “In my view, how about this.”
“Next month, I’ll personally create a marketing plan for you, and you’ll implement it according to my plan.”
“I can’t guarantee it will last a full month, but two weeks should be possible.”
“If my plan also fails, then we can discuss parting ways.”
“If my plan succeeds, lasting two weeks and helping you earn the minimum commission, it would prove that the issue lies with your marketing plans. Then you should stop mentioning leaving and settle down to think about how to market in the future.”
“What do you think?”
Meng Chang blinked, completely surprised by Mr. Pei’s proposal.
The current situation was like Meng Chang complaining that the work was too difficult, challenging Mr. Pei to do it himself.
And Mr. Pei responded, “I’ll do it, just watch and learn. I’ll prove it’s not that the work is difficult, but that you’re incompetent.”
Originally, Meng Chang didn’t want to stay, but after hearing Mr. Pei’s proposal, he thought he could stay for one more month to see how Mr. Pei would operate.
If Mr. Pei could really accomplish reverse marketing, perhaps it would prove that there were issues with his previous marketing methods?
Then he could learn from Mr. Pei’s marketing strategies and continue pursuing that maximum commission of 200,000 yuan.
In short, staying for one more month to observe Mr. Pei’s operations wouldn’t be a loss.
Thinking of this, Meng Chang nodded: “Alright, I’ll stay for another month. If next month you can really earn the minimum commission and convince me, then I’ll continue working.”
“However, I have one condition.”
“Next month, I’ll designate the marketing project. Is that acceptable?”
Pei Qian was quite surprised.
Oh, already learning to take control?
Previously, Pei Qian would designate the marketing projects for Meng Chang, choosing one from several upcoming projects, and Meng Chang would always choose the wrong answer.
Now Meng Chang wanted to experience being the questioner?
Pei Qian nodded: “No problem.”
A true warrior dares to face challenges directly.
For Pei Qian, all of Tenda’s projects were approved by him, and all the industry heads were appointed by him. He was confident he could think of appropriate reverse marketing plans for any project.
Although the final result would most likely be failure, lasting two weeks shouldn’t be a big problem.
Let’s figure out how to keep Meng Chang first!