Episode 2. The Chairman Takes Care of Everything Himself
The office door to Department Manager Lee Jinhee’s room opened a crack.
"...Come in."
Team Leader Kim Donggeon beckoned with only his head poked through the gap. His face was full of anger, as though he might kill me on the spot, but the gesture that called me over was pitiful beyond belief.
It was a perfect demonstration of what it meant to bully the weak and fawn over the strong.
* * *
"Hey, where do you think you’re going? The IMF crisis only just ended, and you still haven’t got your heads straight. Think carefully. This is a savings bank, sure, but the pay is a lot better than most places. You’re contract workers and don’t know a damn thing, so at least work hard if you ever want to become proper bank employees. Huh? Like me."
Memories came back in sharp, vivid flashes. A guy who had lucked into a contract job on the bond team when the company was founded, then been promoted to team leader in just a year and had only just become a regular employee, was the same guy now swaggering around in front of dispatched and contract workers because his title said team leader.
"Hey, if the interest is short by thirty thousand won, just collect more. If they don’t have the money, then, damn it, deposit it yourself and make up the numbers. If the team misses its target because of you, there are twelve people on our team, and every one of them loses a hundred thousand won in incentive pay. Huh? Isn’t that right?"
"Team Leader, even if you say that, why should I pay when the debtor can’t repay it?"
"You selfish bastard. Do you only think about yourself?"
"Even so, that violates company regulations..."
"Ha, damn it. Who said to put it under your name? Don’t you have a wife or a mother? Or a girlfriend, a friend, anyone? Tell them you’re sending the money and get it deposited first! We have to hit the target first, don’t we?"
The way Kim Donggeon treated the weak had always been like this. By contrast, in front of the strong, he hid his own incompetence and clung to them like a parasite.
* * *
Yes, that was right. He had always been that kind of bastard... Back then, why had I quietly resigned? Thinking about it now, nothing in my life would have changed just because I’d made an enemy of a guy like that.
"Hey, Do Jaehyun. What are you doing standing there? Get in here."
As I stood there remembering the past, Kim Donggeon urged me on in a low voice. He must have been panicking. Department Manager Lee Jinhee was furious, and I had no intention of cooperating.
"I’m not the one with approval authority, am I?"
I didn’t move an inch. I just turned my head and asked Kim Donggeon, "
"What?"
"I submitted my resignation, and I’m the one who drafted it. The first approver is you, Team Leader, and the second approver is Department Manager Lee. Once she signs off, then the branch manager confirms it and the resignation is processed. That’s the procedure, right? So why should I, the drafter, skip the first approver and go to the department manager?"
"You, you bastard..."
He was in no position to yell at me while he was being torn apart in Department Manager Lee Jinhee’s office, and his face turned beet red.
"You can process my resignation as of yesterday. You don’t need to pay me for today. So instead of clinging to someone who’s leaving and making a scene, just handle it yourself."
"Hey!"
At last, Kim Donggeon exploded.
"You bastard, don’t move from there."
Like a man who had lost all reason, Kim Donggeon was still careful enough to shut the department manager’s office door, where Lee Jinhee and the other team leaders were gathered, then strode over to me and grabbed my collar.
"You son of a bitch, you think you’ve got nothing to lose because you’re resigning? You make a mess like this and walk out, and you think you’ll ever get hired properly anywhere else? Wherever you go, if it’s a real company, they call the previous manager. They ask how the applicant behaved at the last job, what kind of person he was, all that. Huh? Got it?"
"This isn’t even a major corporation. I doubt they’d check that thoroughly."
"This bastard still hasn’t learned his manners, has he?"
"Cut the casual speech."
"What?"
"I said cut it out."
"Ha. Damn it, you little shit. I hated that disrespectful look from the moment you first came in. But I took you in anyway because I thought you’d be sharp and good at the work, and now you’re acting like some lowlife at the end of the line and climbing all over me? Today I’m going to make you regret it."
"The one who’ll regret it is you, Team Leader. This is the last time I’ll say it. Calm down and let go of my collar."
"Ha, you piece of shit. Go ahead and report me if you want. You bastard, report it as mutual assault."
"Mutual assault?"
"I’m about to slap the hell out of you. That means you hit me too. There isn’t a single person in this office who’ll testify for you. If anything, you struck me first, and I’m only defending myself."
"Hah?"
"Do you really think anyone’s going to side with you when this company takes in idiots who don’t know a damn thing and pays them a generous salary? You think there’s a single person here willing to back you up when you resign?"
Kim Donggeon tightened his grip on my collar and swept his eyes over the employees in the office.
"..."
"..."
The employees avoided his gaze. Just as he said, not one of them openly sided with me. But I knew. We knew.
Every employee who resigned, worn down by an incompetent manager and a miserable workload, said the same thing before they left: they couldn’t take the company anymore, couldn’t take the team leader anymore. And then they all walked out.
"I’m reporting this to the Ministry of Labor."
"I’m telling the chairman."
"I’m requesting a meeting with the department manager."
And some of the people who had quit before had said things like that, too, but this damned company had never changed. Instead, it protected its own, covering for incompetent team leaders, while it never made room for the people who left or the people who stayed.
That was why nobody could side with me. And yet, even so, there were eyes that looked at me with a faint kind of hope. Jaehyun, our ace Do Jaehyun, might just do something here.
"Clench your teeth, you bastard. I’m prepared to take the punishment and fix your rotten manners. You’re leaving anyway, so I’ve already made up my mind. Even if you beg me, I’m never taking you back, you son of a bitch."
"That’s convenient. Fine, I’ll speak casually too from now on, so you do the same. Donggeon."
"What?"
"Let’s just talk like people who know each other. Want me to say it again?"
"You, what did you just..."
"Why? I’m not even an employee here anymore. I can speak casually, can’t I? You kept acting like an ill-mannered bastard, so I thought I was allowed to do the same. Isn’t that right, Kim Donggeon?"
"You... damn it!"
In a fit of rage, Team Leader Kim Donggeon threw a punch at me, but I easily slipped past his fist, twisted the hand gripping my collar, slammed him to the floor, and pinned his fallen arm down with my knee.
"Aaah! Aaaah! Do Jaehyun, you son of a bitch, let go of this! Let gooooo!"
"No, I’m not letting go. All the times you lashed out because you were in a bad mood, all the times you casually hurled abuse whenever something annoyed you, there must have been at least thousands of those aimed not just at me but at the people who already quit and the people still left here. If this is the price, isn’t it cheap?"
"You bastard... th-this, you won’t let go?"
"If your head is that bad, you should at least have a nice personality."
I twisted his arm a little harder, keeping my knee pressed into him.
"Aaaaargh! Let go, you son of a bitch!"
He writhed like a man making a final, desperate struggle, but the more he thrashed, the worse it was only for him.
Bang!
"Hey, Do Jaehyun, stop him!"
"Hurry up and pull that bastard off!"
The team leaders who came out of the department manager’s office rushed to grab me and separate me from Kim Donggeon, but I didn’t budge easily. And no employees came to help the team leaders.
"If I move wrong now, this bastard’s arm is done for."
"?!"
"Wh-what...?!"
The heads of Bond Team 1 and Team 3 both jumped in alarm and took their hands off me.
"A fine thing to be doing first thing in the morning."
In the end, it was Department Manager Lee Jinhee, unable to watch this any longer, who came out of her office.
"Everyone get back to work. Team leaders, return to your seats. And Deputy Do Jaehyun."
"Yes."
"Come out with me and have coffee. Go downstairs first."
"...Understood."
Lee Jinhee, as always.
With her fiery temper, she was also a capable and forceful woman. Just the way she sent me, the center of the incident, out of the office while first restoring order in the workplace showed the same judgment and sense I remembered from her youth.
"Hey, Do Jaehyun."
"Yes?"
Remembering the Lee Jinhee of the past, I was just about to leave the office when Department Manager Lee stopped me.
"Take the corporate card. If you’re talking to an employee about work, you use the corporate card. You were planning to pay with your own money first?"
"Of course not. I was just going to mention your name and start eating first."
"You little punk, you never give me a straight answer. Go wait downstairs."
"Yes."
I gave Lee Jinhee a slight nod and stepped out of the office. Then, as the door closed behind me, her shout thundered through the hallway outside as well.
"You useless bastards! Including Kim Donggeon, every single team leader writes a statement of remorse and puts it on my desk before I get back!"
* * *
"Still the same. Haven’t you gotten tired of it?"
Department Manager Lee still didn’t understand my taste for black coffee, the kind people rarely drank back then instead of mix coffee.
"It’s good, isn’t it? Sweet and bitter. Like the taste of our lives."
"You young punk, talking like some ancient old man. Do Jaehyun, over the past few days... haven’t seen you, but you seem a little different."
As expected, Department Manager Lee was quick on the uptake. Then again, that was exactly why she later became my right hand and helped me build the company. She had to be this sharp.
"You really are leaving?"
"Yes."
"Hoo... Right. This isn’t the place for you. I wondered why a smart bastard with such a good academic background would skip over civil service or the major conglomerates and come here. Hell, even if you wanted to play with money, you looked like you could have gotten into a securities firm or a commercial bank without trouble."
"It wasn’t so bad."
"How so?"
"I’ve met every kind of person, from those who borrow money and pay it back properly to those who tell you to rip out your own stomach and then go on a knife fight. What better experience could there be? And..."
"And?"
"Honestly, how many jobs let you raise your voice at customers? Loan sharks, cops, and prosecutors, maybe?"
"That’s hilarious. These days even low-level criminals complain when detectives tell them to speak politely."
"Haha, exactly. That’s why it was good. I could keep my manners and still play at being a creditor, telling people to pay up while using company money that wasn’t even mine. And now..."
"And now?"
"Now I need to become a debtor again. A debtor carrying a very large debt."
"Oh?"
"Want to invest?"
"If I had that kind of money, I’d have bought stocks, you brat."
Department Manager Lee drained her cold green tea in one gulp and got to her feet.
"I know you’re not leaving because of that punk Donggeon. You have somewhere to go, and you’ve already decided what you’re going to do, so I’m not worried about you. Still, if whatever you’re doing doesn’t work out later, come back anytime."
"I’ll keep in touch often."
Department Manager Lee took out the corporate card and set it down in front of me.
"Pay first, then take your time and eat lunch too. Don’t make the atmosphere worse and keep the others from focusing on work."
"Since it’s my last day, I was planning to at least say goodbye to the branch manager and the chairman. They helped me a lot."
"Helped you my ass... the company sucked the marrow out of your bones. Thanks to you, the department’s performance was good, and I had it easy too. The ones who work well are the first to leave, and the ones who should leave are the ones who stick around like chewing gum..."
As Lee Jinhee turned away, she looked a little lonely.
"Oh, and when you come back up after eating, buy a few boxes of Bacchus too. Don’t pay with your own money; use the corporate card, and tell the employees you bought it. One last thing..."
"Yes."
"Take only good memories with you. Leave the people who stay behind with nothing but good memories."
"I’ll remember that."
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