Upholding the principle of customer is king, Xiao Mi Yu thought she should just get the old man a new bathrobe. But no matter what, the old man refused, insisting that the lengths of the left and right sides of the current bathrobe were asymmetrical. Xiao Mi Yu was increasingly aware of what “difficult to deal with” meant. But seeing the old man’s flushed angry face as he stubbornly insisted, she had no choice but to run to housekeeping and fetch an actual ruler, carefully measuring the bathrobe down to the millimeter.
After measuring, there really was a tiny difference of around 2 millimeters. This was clearly within the margin of tolerable error. But the obsessive old man would not allow it to be ignored, not one bit. Seeing this 2 millimeter discrepancy, the old man relaxed, and even revealed a hint of a smile on his flushed complexion: “You see, I told you, your bathrobes are uneven on the left and right, it’s uncomfortable for me to wear!” After proving himself right, he finally agreed to let Xiao Mi Yu change him into a new bathrobe. However, even the new bathrobe, Xiao Mi Yu had to meticulously measure, and only data showing no discrepancies would satisfy the old man. Xiao Mi Yu nearly exhausted herself measuring bathrobes.
Later, she got a little smarter – when measuring, she would loosen or tighten the ruler a bit, and those couple millimeters of difference finally disappeared. She finally got past the bathrobe hurdle. Xiao Mi Yu thought she was in the clear. But in reality, it proved she celebrated too soon. After the bathrobe torment ended, new torment with the bedsheets began. The old man insisted the newly made bed had wrinkles. Xiao Mi Yu took a look, and was immediately rendered speechless. This old gentleman, the “wrinkles” he claimed existed, were actually just the horizontal and vertical fold lines left from folding the bedsheets. Those were clearly proof the sheets were clean and new, how did they become wrinkles?
But Mr. Cui would not accept Xiao Mi Yu’s explanation, nor listen to “after you spread them out, those lines will disappear on their own”. He demanded Xiao Mi Yu immediately iron those horizontal and vertical “wrinkles” flat right there. Xiao Mi Yu was at a loss, Mr. Cui had worn down her patience completely. She could only try her best to satisfy the customer’s demands. So she had no choice but to take the sheets off the bed, set up the ironing board, and carefully iron them. After ironing, she remade the bed with the sheets. As she was tucking in the sheets, following standard procedure she flipped the sheet. Because her flip was so neat, the old man actually demanded: “Hey, don’t finish making the bed yet, flip it a couple more times and let me see! Do it properly, if you don’t flip well I’ll give you a bad service review. I know if you accumulate too many bad reviews you’ll be fired!”
Xiao Mi Yu was rendered speechless again, and a little angry this time. When rules fall into the hands of unreasonable people, they become weapons to hurt others. But she had no way to contend against the rules, she could only submit, and had no choice but to take the iron and start ironing towels and bath towels at the old man’s insistence.
Mr. Cui tormented Xiao Mi Yu like this for over an hour. By the end, Xiao Mi Yu had even ironed his shoe pads, and shined his leather shoes until they gleamed, serving him meticulously to the point where she was about to hand-feed him his meals. After bossing her around to his satisfaction, the old man broke into a wide grin on his flushed complexion, saying: “Hmm, you have quite the patience. Other servers, I know even if they smile to my face, they’re cursing me for making trouble out of nothing in their hearts, I’m well aware. But you, I can see clearly, you’re not cursing me in your heart. Very good.”
Xiao Mi Yu thought, she was simply too tired to even curse. After finally finishing serving Mr. Cui, Xiao Mi Yu felt it was frightening – taking care of this one occupied room was more tiring than doing ten dirty rooms. But exhaustion wasn’t the scariest part. The scariest was, as she was leaving, she heard Mr. Cui actually say to her: “Oh yes, let me see your name tag, oh you’re called… Xiao Mi Yu, right? Okay, I’m very satisfied with you, from now whenever I stay here, I’ll specify for you to come clean my room!”
Xiao Mi Yu had always hoped to be affirmed. But today’s affirmation made her legs go weak with fear.
Over the past few days, Xue Rui had been going back and forth between the top floor and the administrative floor, conveying messages between Ji Feng and the potential partner. Ji Feng disliked how the potential partner had initially readily agreed, but later kept making more and more demands. He simply refused to deal with them directly, instead letting Xue Rui use his gift of gab to negotiate whenever issues came up, succeeding eight out of ten times in negotiating the other party into losing patience and not making more demands.
That morning Xue Rui went to the administrative lounge on the admin floor again on Ji Feng’s behalf to deliver documents to the potential partner. As he entered the lounge, he saw a room with the door open, where a white-haired, red-faced old man was bullying a frail server to do this and that. He remembered Li Kun Lan gossiping before about a regular in the admin lounge, an old man with white hair and a red face, extremely difficult to deal with – every server who suffered his torment ended up bursting into tears, he was practically a server-killer.
Glancing at that room, Xue Rui felt a little sympathy for the frail back. Over an hour later, after he finished discussing matters on behalf of Ji Feng and was walking back, passing the room again, he actually saw that the server hadn’t burst into tears. Instead, the white-haired, red-faced old man was praising her, even saying from now on whenever he needed his room cleaned he would specifically request this server.
Looking at the server’s slender back, Xue Rui thought, looks like she has some skills. When that slender back turned around, Xue Rui was surprised for a moment. It turned out to be Xiao Mi Yu. He watched as Xiao Mi Yu pushed her housekeeping cart towards another room to clean. He couldn’t help thinking, so she didn’t get fired yesterday after all. She had actually made it through that theft crisis. So she really does have some skills.
Watching Xiao Mi Yu’s back disappear into another room, Xue Rui couldn’t help thinking, he wondered what kind of expression the boss would have when he found out she hadn’t been fired.
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